For many years, I have been analysing how a large number of companies operate, and I often find myself asking: «How are they still staying afloat with such low efficiency and this approach to running things?» Remarkably, not only do they survive — they’re often genuinely profitable. How is that possible? The reason is that the vast majority of competing companies are operating at a similarly low level, if not lower. Efficiency doesn’t look low when there’s no benchmark to compare it against. Very few businesses are willing to measure their own level of organisation against the most successful public companies in the industry — the gap could turn out to be far too uncomfortable. And finding genuinely reliable industry-average data is, in practice, close to impossible. So we see, time and again, that efficiency simply doesn’t worry most people — until profitability starts to slide.
Competition is intensifying today, and that’s forcing companies to run their business more efficiently. Especially given the growing momentum of automation and digitalisation, which opens up the possibility of either significantly cutting headcount, or — more interestingly — multiplying productivity instead. In practice, supplier prices are roughly the same across the board, and end prices on manufactured goods sit at a similar level too — there’s nothing to be won there. A genuine competitive advantage will go to whoever builds the most efficient internal processes, giving their clients the most they possibly can.
Example: There are plenty of companies on the market manufacturing PVC windows. The differences in pricing between them are minor. But if one company shows up promptly on site, quickly quotes the order, manufactures it, and installs it on time — all within 1.5 to 2 weeks — the client is satisfied and will recommend that company to people they know. And the manufacturer hasn’t burned any resources on waste. At the same time, you’ll find a completely different way of running things elsewhere. Say the surveyor turns up on site within a week. Then it turns out they didn’t measure everything correctly (and you’re lucky if that’s discovered before the order even reaches production). Someone has to go back out. Production timelines aren’t impressive either, and the whole process drags on. The installation crew might show up to the site over several days, working a couple of hours at a time, occasionally forgetting to bring the tools they actually need. Watching a process like that, you start wondering just how much margin must be built in for the business to stay profitable despite all that wasted efficiency. And, conversely, what kind of profit becomes possible if that efficiency is fixed and the waste eliminated. And how many new clients could be won simply by raising satisfaction among the ones you already have. All of which, in the end, would deliver a genuinely serious edge over competitors.
But why do these efficiency losses happen inside companies in the first place? Clearly, it’s not just about how diligent individual employees happen to be — what’s needed is a genuinely systematic approach. If a company actually wants a stable, reliable outcome, it shouldn’t be counting on individual specialists feeling responsible, or simply understanding on their own how best to do a given task. What’s needed is a properly designed system — one that covers how information gets gathered (taking orders, for instance), along with the procedures that work best both for clients and for the business itself. And that’s exactly what mapping and optimising business processes lets you achieve. This, incidentally, is also the foundation for automation — because one of the least efficient things you can possibly do is automate processes that are themselves unclear and inefficient. So what does this technique actually solve? What do you get out of it?
- You bring order to the company, making the business transparent and manageable. Once processes are mapped, every employee understands exactly what they need to do, by when, which documents to prepare, in what format information should be passed along, who’s responsible for which process, and what to do in case something unexpected happens. What matters here is that the leader gains the ability to check in on the process at any stage they choose — rather than only finding out once there’s already a problem to fix.
- You reduce the cost of processes, shorten how long they take, and improve quality — in some cases, achieving all three at once.
- You gain the ability to build an effective organisational structure, once your business processes are properly mapped and built out.
- You can replicate the business, launching new sites or similar structures much faster.
- You reduce dependency on specific people: if the procedures are written out clearly and in detail, bringing a new specialist into the system becomes far easier.
- You save leaders’ time, freeing them from having to make dozens of small decisions every day — the procedures exist, and people simply follow them.
The example above shows that any process is really a sequence of specific points, and at each one, a decision needs to be made about where to go next. Without a written description of what to do, employees keep coming to their manager with questions, the manager keeps getting pulled away from their own work, and the process ends up taking longer overall. But when clear instructions exist for every single point, far fewer mistakes happen, and the process moves faster.
Process logic is exactly what sets the discipline of mapping and optimising business processes apart from simply describing functional activity. As management thinkers Michael Hammer and James Champy once put it, a business process combines several activities, where specific resources go in, and what comes out is a product that has genuine value for the consumer. And that consumer isn’t only external — it can just as easily be internal, someone inside the organisation itself. In a production process, for example, that internal consumer might be the logistics or sales department.
In this way, a process-based approach makes it possible to implement change faster, using methods that are more flexible and genuinely simple. And, most importantly, there are specific people who are accountable for the results.
