8 Reasons to Redesign Your Workflow
Automation is changing the way businesses operate- faster customer response, smoother operations- but when it comes to integrating AI into today’s SMEs, what really makes a workflow worth redesigning?
Here are 8 ways to decide you should get started now:
The current workflow is losing you customers. A lot of SMEs respond slowly to customer enquiries, and sometimes not at all. Given that 70% of customers buy from the first company that responds to them, it’s important to be that company.
Too many worker hours are being spent on repetitive, manual processes. Can a task be done in a few seconds or minutes by an AI tool that used to take hours by a human? A smarter spreadsheet or a customer service responder can help you deploy your valuable humans on to higher level tasks.
Customers regularly complain about it. Have you seen common complaints from your customers? The problem could be bottlenecks and problems in your current workflow. Redesigning these could alleviate the problem and improve sentiment toward your company, influencing future customers as well as whether existing customers return.
It depends too heavily on specific employees. Do some tasks in your company live in the heads of only a few employees? If they go on vacation, does your company stop? These processes should be documented and shared in a knowledge bank so that other employees and new hires can learn what to do.
Errors are common. No company wants to make errors too often. Redesigning a workflow can integrate checks and balances into a process so that they get picked up and corrected before a client is affected.
It’s preventing you from scaling. Is your company ready to grow, but can’t seem to serve more customers? The constraints of your current workflow could be the problem. A redesign can open up processes so that more can be done by your team.
Inter-department processes are slow. Are your different teams working together well? For products or services that have to pass through different departments for creation or approval, where do they get stuck? If this can be made faster through clear processes, then it’s a good reason to redesign your workflow.
New business tools are being used by your competition, but not your team. If the business landscape has changed, but your company’s workflow hasn’t, this is a strong sign that you should review your current workflows, and update those that can make your business more efficient or productive.
The easiest way to determine whether you need to redesign workflows, or what to prioritise, is to list out where the bottlenecks are in your company, and which ones are causing the most costly problems. Try using this scorecard to figure out what to work on first:
If you would like to explore this in more depth, contact us. We can help you do a complete analysis of your current business, and spot opportunities for improvement.
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