Why Having an Efficient Process is Important for Startup Growth

Processes in companies and business define discipline, integrity and foster a productive work culture. Now, all these attributes are critical for companies to thrive, grow and evolve into brands and businesses. Processes work at grass root and psychological levels. As much stern as they appear to be, processes are one of the most crucial factors to drive business growth – regardless of departments.

When you have a startup, you cannot afford to follow a work-as-it-comes framework because it is the root of all the chaos you would face when you are growing and don’t even realize it. A simple example of why processes matter in any industry for that matter is when you’re standing at a popular chain of restaurants in Bengaluru waiting to order masala dosa and a coffee.

The ‘process’ or let’s call it procedure to get your order prepared is that you need to first head to the cash counter to place your order, where a person is appointed just to give you the counterfoil of your order. Next, you take the order to another cashier where you pay for the food you’ve ordered. Finally, you take the token to the kitchen, where they take their own sweet time in preparing your food.

Now if you notice, this is flawed at multiple levels. From a management or business perspective, I am having two people to execute one single task of getting the order and the payment from a customer. From a customer perspective, I feel unjust and uncomfortable because I have to go through three steps to get my food. What’s more annoying is that every step in the procedure is cluttered and attracts crowd.

If you go to the ordering counter, you are surrounded by people who hardly understand the concept of queue. The same happens when you are about to pay for your food. When you give your token to the kitchen, you feel unjust again as the one who ordered after you gets his or her food first. Since this is an everyday affair and passes off as insignificant, we don’t tend to take it too seriously. But if they wanted, they can make our dining experience very comforting and less chaotic.

Visualize the same concept for your startup and you would realize where you’re fumbling. Imagine if you’re a web design company. You get too many orders for designs. You accept all of them without taking into consideration the timeframe for each work and the availability of resources to pull them off.

Now, you forward the orders to your team members and hire additional freelancers for the project and due to the lack of a process in place, you don’t have a word with your customer to understand the brief for the designs. Your teammates complete the order blindly and you forward without having a second look. Every work that was sent out comes back as iterations and with tighter deadlines. Are you in a soup now?

The solution is simple, have a process at every level of your work. Considering the same example as above, call your customers up to have a detailed discussion about the project to know details - apart from the ones shared with you on the brief. This will help you understand the resources you need to allocate (the right ones) and set the timeframe for completion. Besides, working on iterations would be seamless this way and you would also take up projects considering the availability of your teammates.

Also, you would have a mock-up or a design brief session in place that you can get pre-approval from your customers. When you follow the basic process, you can track the progress of your teammates, your productivity time, your delivery schedules and anticipate future delivery of your designs better. This will also give you insights on where your flaws in operations are for further fixes.

This was a simple use case of why processes are inevitable in running a business and why you should implement a process right from day one to ensure a good workflow. If you need any assistance in setting up one, you can always get in touch with us.