Are terrible processes at work ruining your success?

This is a very hard question to ask because usually when processes are ruining success, it's because companies aren't aware that there is a problem until it is too late! We tell you the key factors you should address that could be deteriorating your business performance and revenue.

Do you have good operational visibility and insights?

The phrase ignorance is bliss is certainly NOT true when you work in operations. Without a complete overview of all operations and processes within your business, how are you supposed to evolve and improve? When you lack clear visibility you lack the ability to find problems before they are problems and gain insight to constantly improve your operations. It means you are working reactively rather than proactively which we all know is a recipe for disaster! When you have good visibility you can see common patterns occurring which allow you to fix any problems that could occur in the future.

For example, without good operational visibility, you may not be able to see that there is a pattern in the number of times your staff aren't tidying the stock room, because they are not tidying the stock room your sales are slowing down. This is because your staff can't find the items they need, resulting in your customers going elsewhere to make their purchase. Initially, you may notice that sales are slowing down but you would never think it would link to the tidiness of the stock room, it's only when you start to see a pattern that you can begin to solve the puzzle. Oplift Review allows you to eliminate 'operational fog' in your business, its visual analytics allow you to discover trends and problems across your business as a whole, or drill down the detail to look at a specific store, location or person. Discover insights to help you make smarter decisions and strengthen your business operations. It’s a birds-eye view of your entire business – start catching issues before they happen.

Is paper slowing you down?

This is a factor which companies ignore because they have never taken the time to measure it or compare it to digital ways of doing things. This means they don't know that there is a problem with paper and productivity, however, we have found that paper is a huge drain on efficiency. In fact, Virgin Media found that when they moved from paper to Oplift digital checklists they reduced the time it took to do them by a HUGE 80%, you can imagine the positive effect this has had on their operations. Below are the common ways paper can really zap time during work hours:

• Folders filled with paper manuals, employees have to dig through these to get help or source information, this wastes a lot of time.

• Paper checklists, reporting and assessments as mentioned above, carrying these out then having to upload them to your database and then manually input the data, then share it is a massive waste of time.

• Paper product updates, if you're like most companies today your products are probably changing all the time! Printing your products and sticking them up in stores is a waste of time and a waste of paper.

By moving to digital from paper you can dramatically increase your operational efficiency, along with better tracking and accuracy of tasks.

Are you working with fragmented systems?

We see it all too often, businesses try to create their own process systems by using existing platforms and spreadsheets. They do this to save time and money, however, what they don't realise is that in the long run, this is going to costs them LOTS of time and money. By using lots of different platforms for your data needs you end up isolating information meaning you make it incredibly difficult to 'join the dots'. This is risky as it means you can end up with different sets of the same data, manipulated data circulating through the business, outdated versions of data, people working with wrong sets of data. Along with all of this, you always have the time-consuming problem of having to upload data from lots of different sources to try and get any insight, the process is just too long and not reliable enough.

TIP: To solve this problem you need a system which integrates all of your operational data, this means you'll have one version of the data available throughout your business and everyone will be able to see when it was last updated, who by and at what time. Integrating data with one platform means you can see insight and reports at the tap of a button rather than having to dig through multiple platforms. This means you can spend more time uncovering insights rather than analysing huge amounts of information.