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Education

StreetSmarts SM

Want to scale?

Think processes, procedures and systems

By Marc Beauchamp
Bankcard Life

lite organizations have invested the time neces-
sary to develop their processes, procedures and
systems. Every business function can be seg-
E mented into a process and/or sub process. Once
you discover what processes drive a particular activity, it
can be quantified, measured and improved upon.

A process occurs in every area of business, whether it's
marketing, appointment setting, sales calls, deployment,
inventory management, risk management, data
compliance, underwriting, technical support, customer
service, training, recruiting, hiring or firing.

The Deming Cycle

American scholar, engineer and teacher W. Edwards Start with improving your most important or core
Deming, who was instrumental in helping Japan processes, the ones that will have the most impact on
become an industrial powerhouse after World War II, your business if they are enhanced. This is the blocking
developed what's called the Deming Cycle, which is, a and tackling part of any business. It's not glamorous or
continuous quality improvement model consisting of a exciting, but if you want to be able to scale or have the
logical sequence of four repetitive steps for continuous business operate independently, you need to develop
improvement and learning: documentable processes, procedures and systems.
1. Plan: Design or revise business process components
to improve results. Incremental improvements
2. Do: Implement the plan and measure its performance. Start with the low hanging fruit, as follows:
3. Check: Assess the measurements and study the 1. Marketing (includes lead generation)
results. 2. Sales process
4. Act: Take action to standardize or improve the 3. Merchant boarding and activation
process.
4. Customer retention
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