How old is your business? How much revenue do you collect annually? How many employees do you have? Can your business run without you? If your business is 3-5 years old, with an annual revenue of less than 20 million USD, less than 80 employees, or cannot operate without your control, you are considered a start-up. 

Every year 305M start-up businesses are started globally. Interestingly 244M reach their first birthday, 122M survive five years, while only 36.6M will last ten years.

Why do 70% of start-ups fail within their first ten years? 

Some fail due to a poor understanding of the market, changes in market conditions, cash flow challenges, failure to attract the right talent pool, bad partnerships, and unforeseen crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. Fortunately, even as 99% of these challenges are related to process, putting in the right processes, at the right time is the solution. 

What is a business process?

A business process is the sequence of repeatable steps taken by the business to achieve the desired outcome. Every scalable and sustainable business is grounded in reliable, relatable and repeatable processes. We believe several business processes are critical to start-up scalability.

Core Processes

Core processes are those that are fundamental to business operations and growth. What processes directly add value to your customers? Production of goods and services is one of them. Production is a core process because it is the reason the business exists. Final goods and services need to meet customers’ requirements. For clarity of customer requirements at production, the production process must be written down and reviewed often because tastes and preferences change over time. Customer service is also a core process because it serves customers directly. A positive experience makes customers happy and increases the retention rate. Everyone in the business is responsible for making customers happy.

Enabling processes

Enabling processes govern the use and core business resources for business success.

Do you know which services provide core business resources? What business processes support the core processes to achieve start-up goals and objectives? A start-up may not need human resource personnel on site but may seek human resource support like policies. Besides, sales and marketing are necessary processes for start-ups. As the business scale, there is a need to have a digital presence for brand visibility. Financial resources are an enabler for a start-up to achieve goals and objectives. Processes around financial management should be easy to implement.

Guiding processes

Guiding processes are those that help manage and strengthen the long-term business focus.

What processes govern your business in the long term? How do you plan and control the start-up in the short run? In the long run, strategy processes are critical. It must be clear what needs to be worked on to achieve long-term growth and development of the start-up. What are the plans around product development and innovation? In the short term, establish processes around monitoring and evaluating the entire business system, analyzing findings, and coming up with reports that show a picture of the business performance. This assessment helps identify gaps and highlight opportunities for improvement.

It is good to know what to do and how to do it. Today’s achievement is a result of yesterday’s input. ‘’If you begin to focus on processes, the way you do your work and what you accomplish will change fast.’’ Reece Robertson.

#Processmanagement #Growth #Businessgrowth #Processes #TopTier 

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Lucy Moragwa is a Business Process Analyst with dynamic experience spanning several industries including construction, technology, retail, media, advertising, and branding. She is specialised in helping organisations develop operational efficiency and increase revenue, business process improvement and using root cause analysis to identify issues and develop process improvements. The heart of her work is to help organisations achieve cost savings through exceptional planning and implementation of business processes.