If something is annoying, frustrating or broken in your business, chances are you’ve got a systemisation challenge.  As the manager or owner, having to be involved in decisions that you know your team could make on your behalf, but don’t, is time consuming and frustrating.

The challenge with these scenarios is that it’s difficult to improve a business that operates like this. It’s like there is no base point from which to optimise and increase profits.

Another problem with this ad hoc approach to running a business is that it decreases the value of the business (which is important in terms of having a viable exit strategy). The businesses that sell for the most money are the ones where the owner does not have to be there.

So how would you fix a business that is not systemised?

The best place to start is with what’s not working. Look at those issues that are causing you, your team or your customer’s pain, and take steps to fix them.

So how do you do that?

Unlike what most people think, systemisation is much more than the creation of a procedure manual. The best place to start is to look at your business from above – in order to see how the various parts of your business fit together.

For example in the sales process you should have a process for client engagement, client acquisition and client fulfilment. And collectively, the processes should flow.

Is it something that can be done and forgotten?

No. Systemising your business is an on-going process; it’s a journey that constantly needs to be reviewed – because chances are, the systems that worked six months ago, no longer work today.

What’s my first step?

Below are five questions that I recommend you take a few minutes to answer. Your answers will point you to exactly where you should start systemising in order to increase your profits and business value.

  1. What are the areas in your business that never seem to be executed without mistakes?
  2. What processes in your business are not followed consistently?
  3. What activities or tasks are you not doing regularly, that if you did, would generate extra profits?
  4. What activities or tasks if you did them better would either give you more time, more freedom
    or more profits?
  5. What activities or tasks are you doing that frustrate you because you don’t enjoy them?

Call Gatti Consulting for an initial free discussion to see how we can help you with development of process and systems in order to improve your businesses performance and profitability.