When we think of transforming how we do business, we might often think about huge undertakings that are costly and disruptive.

However, transforming business processes needn’t be something that’s drastic or requires a massive amount of time, money or energy.

In fact, there are many process-driven changes that can be very simple but very effective to implement.

We’ve chosen 5 ways to help you identify where changes may be needed and offer up simple ways to overcome and improve.

Dare to own your moments of truth?

“We have 50,000 moments of truth every day.” This was said at the start of the First Wave seminars to turn SAS around in 1982 and referring to every time an employee of the company came into contact with a customer. [Source: Wikipedia]

Scandinavian Airlines, came up with the term ‘Moments of Truth’ and it saved the business. It’s a useful case study to know about, and in it’s most simplest explanation is a method of identifying every single touchpoint that a customer comes into contact with your business.

For property management companies, the major touchpoint could be the owner’s building – everything that’s the responsibility of the property management company. When you think about touch points, or ‘moments of truth’ in this way, we start to see just how important it is to be on top of the management of a building.

Property management companies take owner touchpoints to this level and seek to introduce processes that add real value and turn these ‘moments of truth’ into an opportunity to delight.

Dare to try tech interventions?

We all make mistakes, it’s only human. But often, many mistakes could have been avoided.

Let’s take the example of something as simple as email circulation.

Emails are a fairly human-centric task. Yes, they might cut out the need to rely on postmen and women to deliver the information, however, when an email arrives in a generic ‘info@’ or ‘admin@’ or any other generic inbox, it has to be managed.

This could mean reading the email and then forwarding it to the relevant person or department. Whilst this sounds like an easy task, it is time-consuming and there is a lot of room for error – whether it’s not knowing exactly who it should go to and potentially slowing down the response time, or sending it to the wrong person, or not forwarding it on at all. This is a task that can be carried out automatically with the use of technology.

Savvy businesses will dare to identify tasks that are carried out by human beings and replace them with tech to automate.

Dare to say goodbye to the weakest links…

This isn’t necessarily people. There may be areas in the business where there are blockers that prevent progress or movement. There may be pockets of the business where information gets stuck. Or there could be departments or indeed people who are consistently not getting things right for whatever reason.

This isn’t about blame or pointing the finger, this is an exercise in identifying processes and areas within the business that are causing problems.

Using the email example again, this could be an example of a weak link, that’s causing hold-ups, causing complaints, and causing delays. Once you have identified weak links you can take the steps necessary to strengthen or omit them.

Dare to open up a feedback loop?

If you aren’t already doing so, having an ‘open door’ policy to encourage feedback about business processes could prove invaluable. This requires a level of maturity and willingness to take anything and everything that may be brought through the door.

However, it gives employees a safe platform to air concerns, to share experiences, and provide valuable feedback from the frontline.

Dare to have integrated communication channels?

Following on from the encouraging feedback, whether it’s the team, management, owners/tenants or suppliers, the way in which everyone communicates has to be joined up.

When communication channels are accessible, integrated, and easy to use, it reduces risk and contributes hugely to smoother processes.

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