What is a Business Process? 7 Practical Examples | Quixy

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Tim owns a company that develops websites. After winning a major upcoming contract, he must determine if adding a team member would benefit him. Most of his time is spent double-checking mistakes and missing details in his project management system. If he assigned these tasks to a new team member, he and his designers would be able to take on more significant contracts.

There is a simple website design project under contract at the moment. Tim could save time, decrease frustration, and cross-train his employees if he could organize his business processes so everyone had an organized set of instructions.

Tim is losing time and money because he does not have formal documentation for his business processes. How much does it cost you?

What is a Business Process?

A Business Process is a set of related, structured activities and steps performed by individuals or equipment within an organization to achieve the organization’s basic objectives like profit maximization and customer satisfaction.

Business processes can be repeated at all organizational levels and may or may not be visible to customers.

Several related ideas about Business Process Management (BPM), Process Optimization, Process Mapping, Process Simulation, and Process Automation are often viewed as flow charts or workflows of logical steps.

A business process is similar to a race, intending to get from the starting line (the beginning) to the end. Depending on what’s vital for success in a particular business, different parts of the process may need more attention than others.

Let us take an example from the employee offboarding process to get a better understanding:

Recognizing resignations/terminations
Negotiating the retention of the employee
Procedures for notice and final settlement
Project planning and task assignment
Handover and knowledge transfer of project details and company information
Interviews at exit

An employee offboarding process typically involves these activities. By acknowledging and negotiating with the employee, the business attempts to retain him or her. Following the resignation, the employee and company can clarify the terms of their contract through the notice period and final settlement procedures. As a result of the project planning and handover activities, the business can prevent employee resignation from affecting daily processes. Additionally, the exit interview gives the company a chance to improve its policies and operations through detailed feedback.

Your operations depend on business processes, so improving them is strategically important.

Also read: 10 Key Business Processes you can Accelerate with Document Generation Software

Basic Steps of Business Process Implementation

1. Setting goals

Identify and explain the process’ purpose. Describe how success can be measured. What are the benefits of this process for our overall business goals?

2. Process mapping

Outline the process. Flowcharts can be created by hand or with software. Each task along the way is outlined in this blueprint.

3. Assign process tasks

Is anyone involved in this assignment? You can minimize manual effort by allocating your team members based on their abilities and/or designing the system in an automated way.

4. Test

Test the process before rolling it out across the company or department to ensure you get the results you want.

5. Process implementation

After testing the process, if you are satisfied with the results, it is time to run it globally. You will need to communicate properly with all those who will handle the tasks and train them so that they can achieve better results.

6. Analyze the results

Consider ways of mitigating the risk by reviewing the process and looking for threats it may later pose.

7. Repetition

Once the process has achieved its goals, replicate it and keep track of its effectiveness.

Also Read: Business Process Mapping: Definition, Steps and Tips

7 Examples of Business Process

Businesses practice different processes according to their type, industry, location, etc., but there are a few that are practiced across all segments of businesses worldwide. Using examples, we will make this easier to understand.

1. Onboarding process for clients

Professionalism, courtesy, and expertise are essential when onboarding new clients. When you acquire a big client, the last thing you want is your team sitting there wondering, “Okay, so what next?

Onboarding will be a thing of the past if you have a clear, defined process. As an example, let’s take a marketing agency.

Set up an initial meeting. Become familiar with the client’s business, the industry, the competition, etc.
Assess the goals and assets of the company. Make sure you know what your clients want from you, and how you can utilize their strengths to accomplish those goals
Establish KPIs. To ensure that you’re bringing in results, the client will want to measure your progress
Make an action plan. Your team’s plan for the week, month, year, etc.

Client pitch. Assess whether the proposed strategy is acceptable to them. Start over if necessary. All the tasks should be assigned to the appropriate team members.

2. The Sales process

The process of making a sale is fundamental across all industries, offerings, and segments. In most businesses, the following steps are followed:

Proposal sharing
Quotation sending
The negotiation process
Ordering products/services
Maintaining sales records
Product or service delivery
The billing process
The payment process

There are repetitive steps in this process, and the workflow and structure can be modified to meet the business’s needs. Does your sales team not perform to its full potential?

Also Read: Top Business Process Management Stats to help you add efficiency in 2022

3. Process of procurement

To purchase the materials you need for your business, you follow these steps:

Identifying a product’s need.
Contact the purchasing department with a purchase requisition.
Procurement requests are reviewed by the purchasing department.
A budget approval request is sent to the financial department with all financial details.
When a quotation request is approved, the purchasing department sends it out to suppliers and they submit their bids.
The vendor is then selected and a contract is signed.
Upon receiving the goods, the purchasers inspect the quality of delivery.
Orders and invoice slips must match for invoice payment to be approved.

4. Providing customer service

In global business operations, customer service is also an important process. The process involves the following steps:

Using CRM, receive customer complaints and issues.
Recognize the customer’s concern.
CRM login information for the issue.
Solve the problem.
Inform the customer of the status.
Process of recruitment.
Process of invoicing.
Processing of orders.
The onboarding process for new customers.
Keep track of your accounts.
Process of conducting market research.
Development of a product.

Read eBook: 11 Steps to Fix a Broken Process

5. Process of content marketing

Unless you organize your content marketing into clear business processes, it can be a very hectic mess. If you don’t work on this, you’ll end up with 20 articles still in the works, confused designers, and confused followers, waiting desperately for their weekly articles.

You can establish content marketing workflows in a variety of ways depending on your strategy.

Let’s take a look at a very basic publishing process as an example…

A content writer begins drafting an article and finishes it. Please include a description of any custom images you intend to use.
As soon as the article is completed, the marketer gathers influencer contact information for advertising and marketing.
A proofreader points out errors in grammar, style, spelling, etc.
The designer creates custom images and sends them to the content writer.
Comments are taken into consideration, mistakes are corrected, and images are added.
In addition to ensuring that the article meets best practices for SEO, the SEO expert also publishes it.
To make sure that the article is read, the marketer uses a combination of advertising and email outreach.

6. The Management process

Business decisions are made using management processes. Among them are setting goals, budgeting, and forecasting future sales.

The following are examples of managing business processes:

Plan your strategy.
Allocating resources.
A marketing campaign.

7. Delivery management systems

To manage the delivery system, businesses need a business process. To ensure timely delivery of products, the delivery management system needs to be streamlined. Route optimization, automated dispatch, vehicle tracking, proof of delivery, and safe delivery of products are all part of the delivery management process. With delivery management software, companies can get insightful business analytics, improve customer communication, and enhance customer satisfaction.

Types of Systems For Business Process

Processes in business come in different sizes and shapes based on their intended purposes. Considering processes within their categories can be helpful when approaching, designing, and optimizing them.

Also Read: Top 10 Business Process Management Tools for your Business

The operational process

An operational process (core business process) provides direct value to a company’s customers and employees. Revenue is directly generated by these processes. Among the examples are product manufacturing, the order-to-cash process, and the delivery of products to customers.

Process support

Your company’s processes make money and are essential to delivering its end product. These processes include production, marketing, and sales.

HR departments don’t directly affect your clients, but without them, you can’t assemble a successful team. It is impossible to do well in production, marketing, and sales without a skilled team.

Processes at the core

These are the processes that make your business money and deliver your end product to your customers. Production, marketing, and sales are examples of such processes.

Conclusion

Increasing efficiency and productivity at work is a key benefit of business process automation. Additionally, they facilitate orderly and prompt customer service at all levels.

Every organization has its business processes. Value is delivered to customers and revenue is generated by business processes.