In today’s business world, there are many methods for optimizing processes, which are essential to achieving and maintaining a high level of competitiveness in the market – regardless of the industry or economic sector. How can maximum efficiency be achieved in time-saving, cost minimization, quality, security, or transparency? Procedures are one of the tools through which companies can better achieve their goals.
Company procedures
A procedure is a description of an agreed way of carrying out an activity or process. It identifies the people responsible for carrying out the tasks, defines the relevant roles, and defines the authority and responsibilities.
Such a document usually outlines:
• what needs to be done
• who is to do it, when, if any, and at what time
• how it is to be done
In the form of a procedure, we can describe activities that concern different positions and levels in the organization. Documents of this type should be written in such a way that even an inexperienced person can perform the task (in the case of the simplest, repetitive work). They are also extremely helpful when carrying out complex activities carried out by highly qualified staff, where the risk of making a mistake is high and can expose the company to huge financial and image losses.
Benefits of having procedures in place, reviewing and updating them regularly
• Minimise or even reduce to zero the risk of errors
• Minimizing losses and the risk of losing customers’ trust
• Increasing the efficiency of implemented activities, saving time
• Having a basis for business process analysis and modeling
• Improving business process management
• Streamlining the organization of work in the company
• Creating a knowledge base, more effective training of new employees
• Positive influence on shaping the organizational culture
Tackling resistance to change
So why do most entrepreneurs not write procedures at all? Research shows that they explain this mainly by a lack of time. And here the circle closes – the lack of procedures, which should streamline the execution of various tasks in the company, minimize the risk of making mistakes, and thus devoting sometimes many hours to fixing them, is a factor inhibiting the optimization of business processes. Instead of moving towards the development of the company – entrepreneurs often ‘put out fires’, postpone service delivery deadlines, often lose out on quality, and reduce their operational efficiency.
Sometimes entrepreneurs treat the writing of procedures as unnecessary bureaucracy and do it only to obtain certificates required for certain tenders, e.g. ISO 9001 or 27001. They forget that, after all, procedures present clear guidelines and the best methods of performing work – they are based on standards derived from the knowledge and experience of employees. So they are not unnecessary ballast, but something that makes life easier.
Many companies have a different problem – the lack of employees who are competent to write such documents – although this does not change the fact that having even linguistically or graphically non-ideal procedures is much better than operating without them.
Some entrepreneurs, on the other hand, believe that the type of activity they carry out is too creative and imaginative to be put into a framework of procedures. This is also a mistaken assumption, often resulting from ignorance and resistance to change. Indeed, in every job, some areas can and should be described in procedures to eliminate the risk of mistakes or to create and update the know-how base. What is more, working according to procedures does not make the work dull and devoid of creativity – there is always room for continuous improvement of processes and implementation of changes in procedures and in the work we do!
The role of procedures and processes versus cloud computing services
Changing the perception of the role of procedures in a company, both by business owners and by employees, as well as cleverly counteracting resistance to writing and implementing them are key success factors on the way to optimizing processes and shaping the desired organizational culture.
At Polcom, procedures play an important role – we know very well that without developed standards it would be very difficult to create high-quality processes and provide services, e.g. cloud computing, at the highest level. Procedures and described processes allow us to act efficiently, minimize the risk of mistakes, and follow the best international standards. It is thanks, among other things, to the creation and systematic improvement of a specialized knowledge base at Polcom, consisting of documents in the area of security and quality, as well as operational procedures used by individual departments (in the area of IT, maintenance of data center infrastructure, logistics, trade or finance) that we can meet customer expectations and implement our business development strategy professionally and more effectively.