Business Management Review

Tips And Methods Of Organizational Development For SMEs

Business Management Review | Friday, May 13, 2022

If a large number of repetitive tasks are performed, then the implementation of a workflow system is assured to deliver major results: cost savings, efficiency gains, and more profit.

FREMONT, CA: Here are a few tips and organizational development methods.

ORGANIZATION AND DESIGN

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A regular mistake in the life of an SME is the lack or low level of work organization compared to large enterprises. The reason for this, on the one hand, is that training is not available - even in HR and relevant programs, students are more ready for a multi-environment, while in other professions there is minimum or zero training in this subject - Contrarily, the owner is normally a professional, who began a business for some reason.

Consequently, adequate management knowledge may be missing. Moreover, there is generally no specialist team with this knowledge. Just a small part of the SME sector can form and finance such a management team. Most owners look for answers, and solutions to a particular problem and, better or worse, solve the challenges.

Consequently, there is no such kind of - organizational - innovation, but the company starts to operate in this ad-hoc way. Workflow systems provide a solution to these problems. If a system that already contains certain processes, examples, and working solutions is implemented, the organization's performance will noticeably improve immediately after the implementation.

These solutions can even be best practices according to the operations of large companies; xFLOWer offers this to our customers, so with the introduction of the system, smaller companies can gain access to the already proven methods of the "big ones."

Even better, these are also implemented in the business processes. Thus, it is impossible that the new procedure, methods, and knowledge will be avoided for any reason during the day-to-day operations.

ADMINISTRATION AND AUTOMATION

In general, SMEs do not have a multinational corporation's resources. Hence, automation and rational design are even more significant in the business processes of SMEs, as they have less room for manoeuvre.

Simultaneously, achievable progress does not entail disproportionate costs, so managing and automation of processes thus remain affordable. This implies that methods that work on a large scale can also be economical and affordable for a small business.

Importantly, the workflow system and the processes are scalable and adapt to growth. And let's not forget that many SMEs are captured in a "growth trap" where, because of underfunding or lack of other resources, they cannot take on more work, even though the market provides opportunities. In this case, workflow management - especially automation - can be interpreted as a cost-cutting and productivity-enhancing tool to help a business overcome these constraints.

HABITS AND PARADIGMS

An organization development project, particularly if it focuses on process management, can bring a major paradigm shift in the organization's life. In the case of one of our clients, it was explicitly stated by the owner that with the introduction of the system, they would work quite diversely as no rules, exact tasks, responsibilities, documents, etc. had been established so far - this all modified for the better with the implementation.

Therefore, this is a big job, but it only needs to be done once. It is still likely to implement the system incrementally - as opposed to, e.g., ERP implementations - that is, workflows can be executed one at a time - there is no need to "shake" a company into an entire operational transformation in a short time.

I would also quote literally from the client referred above, "If we initiate this, will there be no fake excuses anymore, right?" Exactly, no made-up excuses anymore. Everyone's activities turn transparent after implementation and enable an objective judgment of performance.

An evident definition of tasks and responsibilities is important for optimal organizational functioning. In the case of an SME, it is often impossible to define the specific areas precisely and to differentiate the tasks of the different fields.

Still, at the same time, it is advisable to strive for the distribution, planning, and rationalization of the functions and tasks. An important part of this is task assignment, which xFLOWer can do automatically. The point is that well-defined processes, task types, and groups should be assigned to a position or area.

Then, according to the business logic, the system can distribute tasks to employees automatically and follow up on their execution. Equally crucial is the consistent management of the consequent data in a single system: customer, invoice, contract, certificate of completion, and so on should conciliate. So should tasks and activities be traceable? Thus, who did what, when, and even why will be clear.

IS IT WORTH IT FOR SMALL COMPANIES?

Of course, however, the larger an organization must be, the more profitable it is to implement a workflow system. Still, there are special areas, like labour brokerage, where companies with only 2-3 to 5 employees use the system but manage thousands of pages of documents per month in their processes.

So, suppose a large number of repetitive tasks are carried out. In that case, the execution of a workflow system is guaranteed to deliver important results: cost savings, efficiency gains, and more profit.

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