Systems and Processes: Paving the Way for Small Business Success

Operations & Tech

August 13, 2024

The right systems and processes can literally be life changing for a business owner. The more a business grows, the more work you’ll have to do, and while hiring employees is a great way to build your team and reduce your workload, new hires are expensive. Building out new, more effective systems and better, more efficient processes can significantly reduce the amount of time and effort you spend working on repetitive manual tasks without costing you a full-time salary. But even with all of the social media content and business gurus handing out advice, setting up systems and processes can still feel like an extremely daunting task. So, let’s try to break it down:

Understanding the Difference: Systems vs Processes

First, let’s be clear on which is which: a business process is a set of ordered tasks that result in a service or product. A system is a series of connected and/or concurrent processes that achieve a certain goal. They don’t have to include technology, but in this day and age automated systems are a huge asset (or at least mostly automated). So, for example, a business offering consulting will likely have a process for clients to schedule appointments online, a process to pay for the booking online, and a process to alert the consultant that they have a new appointment through their calendar or email. All of those processes together would form an online booking system. 

If you’re someone who prefers more visual examples, these can be looked at like plumbing: there’s a process that pulls water from a fresh source, a process that purifies the water, a process that sends it from the treatment plant to your house, then a process that sends dirty water out of your home to a sanitation plant, a sanitation process, and a process to recycle the treated water back into the environment (whew!). All together those processes form the freshwater supply system and the wastewater management system of your city! 

Understanding the difference between the two can be helpful in establishing efficient systems— if you’re connecting 5-6 different processes, you need to make sure they’re as efficient as possible. Otherwise everything will take longer than it needs to, and if you’re automating these processes, but they aren’t efficient and streamlined, it will take up more data and more time when you need to complete updates to be able to scale your systems in the future. So to review:

  • Process: a series of sequential tasks to accomplish 1 small goal. They can be automated or manual and are typically within one software (unless your tech guy is an overachiever) or 1 department of your business
  • System: a series of sequential and/or concurrent processes to accomplish multiple small goals adding up to one larger, overarching goal. They can be automated, manual, or a mixture of both and can be within one or multiple softwares or departments

Role of Systems and Processes in Business Operations

Now that we’ve covered basic definitions, there’s a decent chance you’re thinking about the systems and processes you already had in place without realizing it. In fact, it would be virtually impossible to run a consistent business without having some sort of system in place for things like client management, quality management, and more! But there’s a better way to handle your systems and processes than manually entering all or most of the relevant data and organizing it piece by piece. 

If you haven’t incorporated automations into your processes before, it can be intimidating. The first step is to take a deep breath. The second is to do a little research to see if you can learn enough to manage it on your own or if you need to hire someone to support your transition to a new system. This will often include taking a look at each step in your processes to determine if they are as efficient as they can be already and if so, if you can handle the tech knowledge needed to automate each step and connect them to form the overall system. 

Here’s the bright side: all that work is extremely beneficial to your business long term, especially if you build your systems to scaleable in the future. Think about businesses like Etsy— so many of their processes and systems are automated that it’s easy not only for them to run their business, but for other people to run their businesses off of the Etsy platform too. 

People: The Crucial Component of Systems and Processes

Here’s the thing: a great system won’t work if your team doesn’t know how to use it or refuses to use it. It’s important to have the right people in the right roles, and to take their feedback into account when optimizing your systems and processes. Your inventory person says the inventory management system is too complicated to work with? Then your system is probably too complicated and needs to be simplified. 

Have employees that can be honest with you and help you refine your systems and processes for the best results— especially if they’re the ones who have to use it! No matter how automated you get, there will always be a human element to your systems. They need to be user-friendly and efficient. Not to mention, the people handling the on-the-ground work for your systems will be able to tell you what features will be helpful in making your business better. Remember, when you make your employees’ jobs better, you typically make your entire business better!

Automating Systems to Replace Manual Tasks

Okay, so now that we know what systems and processes are, why we need them, and who to involve in their development, what can we actually automate to take some work off of everyone’s plate? The answer is probably more than you’d think. Most people start with things like email lists or shop payments, but you can also automate social media posts, payroll, inventory management, etc. to help take some of those annoying business housekeeping tasks off your plate. Instead of spending hours sifting through your Google Drive to find the right spreadsheet to do payroll calculations and entering all of that data piece by piece — eating up most of your day — you can find the right software and set up a system to do all that for you. Some business system softwares even make use of AI to do things like keep track of your inventory and remind you when to order new supplies, or track key performance indicators on your marketing strategies to make suggestions for future campaigns. And if you build them well, a good set of systems and processes can grow with your business, so that you don’t find yourself overwhelmed by busywork as your business expands. If nothing else, automating your systems saves you the headache of doing all that paperwork yourself.

How to Implement New Systems and Processes in Your Business

Types of Systems and Processes

We’ve covered quite a bit of information about systems and processes, but the thought of actually figuring it all out is probably still pretty overwhelming. Fear not, for we have recommendations to (hopefully) make your life easier!

First, let’s cover the different types of systems you might need. The list below are the most common four systems we’ve helped to create for our clients and are ones that almost every business will need. 

  • Client Management: to handle scheduling, payments, orders, and other client related tasks
  • Project Management: to handle project objectives, including the delegation and due dates of those tasks, and other project related tasks 
  • Team Management/ HR: to handle payroll, taxes, employee benefits, and other team related tasks
  • Database Management: to handle data inputs, access to data, data interpretation, and other database related tasks

If it sounds like you need one of the above (and you don’t want to build out a bunch of code purely from scratch), then check out these software options below. 

These are some tools that are user-friendly for employees and relatively easy to learn and set-up for tech-savvy business owners! Some of these tools overlap in areas of capability. For example, SmartSuite can be a great tool for both database management and for project management. However, I fully recommend choosing the one that will work best for you, not the one that can “check the most boxes”. 

Choosing the Right System and Processes for Your Business

Now that you have some options for business softwares to use in creating your systems, you’re facing a pretty important question: How should you decide which software works best for your business? Every software has their own pros and cons, so be sure to look for the specific features that will be most helpful to you. Regardless of the specifics, though, here are four things you should always consider:

  1. Price: How much will it cost you per month? If you grow your team, how will adding new members affect cost?
  2. Customization: Do you need a lot of customization capabilities? Will this software actually do what you need it to in order to fill the needs of your business? If you need to customize, will the platform allow it?
  3. Sharing & Permissions: Will everything on the platform be visible to all employees? Can you set specific roles and sharing permissions to your team members? Can you have pages and projects only visible to you?
  4. Integration: Can this software integrate with your other systems? How complicated is the integration set up?

Pretty much every business owner will need to take these factors into account, no matter the software or the type of business. 

Final Thoughts

It’s fair to say that systems and processes are like the backbone of a business. They support everything you do, and if they’re hurting, everything is hurting. It’s important to be intentional with your systems and processes set up to ensure everything is optimized and following a logical progression. As you consider different softwares, be sure to take your business’ unique needs and methods into account. 

Even with all the above information, choosing the right system, setting it up, and integrating it into your tech stack can feel overwhelming. Luckily, Upwell can help! Check out our business audit for more information on how to build scalable systems and optimize your processes so you can BUILDwell to SCALEwell!

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