Building Your Business Blueprint – Setting The Foundations For Success
in Insights - Last updated December 16th, 2021
Building a business is much like building a house. In order to achieve your end goal, you must have a blueprint for success.
Otherwise, how can you know what you’re aiming for? Or how to get there?
Imagine, on a slightly smaller scale, you’ve opened up a brand new piece of flat pack furniture. But instead of following the blueprint, you ignore the instructions and plough on regardless.
More often that not, the end result will not match the anticipated outcome.
Without mapping out, and diligently following, the steps that need to be taken to achieve your desired end result, you leave the outcome to chance.
“Having a great idea, brand, service, or product can only get you so far in today’s marketplace.
You must develop a plan and truly build out a blueprint for business success so that you can maximize your earning potential and create a product, brand or service that will leave a lasting impression.”
Medium
Translating this cavalier attitude over to your organisational operations is not conducive to long term success.
This is where a business blueprint is essential.
Much like an architect consults their plans, your business blueprint acts as the framework from which you can build your foundations for success.
Creating Your Business Blueprint
A process blueprint can be a highly effective tool for any business, capable of replicating desired workflows that are well defined, streamlined, and free of errors.
Introducing a business blueprint can also drive accountability by highlighting, alongside the action to be taken, the person responsible and the conditions for it’s completion.
“A business process blueprint gives you visibility into how each process is functioning, so that you can customise every process in your workflow.”
Decode
Every blueprint should be designed to optimise efficiencies, decrease costs and eradicate errors. But first, you need to create the framework itself.
Using an example of developing the best possible customer experience, here are 6 tips to get the ball rolling for your organisation:
1 – Curate A Customer Process Catalogue
This contains all off your business processes that are essential for customer facing actions.
Gathering these together allows for fast evaluation of relevance, identification of gaps and immediate prioritisation of improvements needing to be made.
2 – Establish Your Goals
Next, you need to know what you’re working towards.
“If you can predict the rate at which you create (or create and grow) qualified pipeline, and you know your average close rate(s), then you can start predicting your revenue”.
Aaron Ross
Define the parameters of each individual process by outlining the requisite steps and milestone of completion.
These goals, and the steps needed to hit them, will form the skeleton of your blueprint.
3 – Define Responsibility
A blueprint demands accountability. Allocate the roles and duties to each respective stage and set up access controls to support accurate, timely completion.
Communicate this throughout the team by assigning the department or individual responsible for each part of the process, and articulate at which stage they should act.
Harnessing technology is one common method for ensuring responsibilities are upheld and actions are taken.
4 – Select Your Metrics
A crucial aspect of choosing your goals is establishing the baseline measurements against which you will measure success.
“If you’re not benchmarking your performance, you’re just playing with yourself.”
10 ESSENTIAL SKILLS FOR PROCESS MANAGEMENT SUCCESS
Using live dashboards and controls helps to track progress against these metrics and monitor the impact of the business blueprint on a regular basis.
5 – Create A Single Source Of Truth
Potentially the most important facet of a successful business blueprint foundation; a reliable, accessible data source.
Without a central repository to store and document data, teams cannot collaborate, knowledge cannot be shared and information cannot be harnessed for maximum impact.
6 – Trial, Review, Improve
When you have everything else in place, and you’re ready to roll out your business blueprint, pause for a moment.
“Implementing a process of continuous improvement in an organisation should be standard practice.”
ACQ
Do a test run.
Before switching from the current operations model, get feedback on the process outlined in the blueprint and check for disconnected end points and operational inefficiencies.
In doing so, you validate the project whilst leaving the door open for future enhancements.
Foundations For Success
A well researched, considerately integrated business blueprint can make a ginormous difference to an organisation’s output.
It is, in fact, the reliable foundation for enhanced collaboration and sustainable success.
“Collaboration is a no-brainer for any business seeking to improve the customer experience.”
RINGCENTRAL
But don’t forget to keep checking back on it. A blueprint can evolve so undertake regular evaluations to ensure continued effectiveness.
Integrating flexibility, and accounting for changes in market conditions, is crucial to ensure your blueprint always works in your favour.
Rather than as a weight, tying you down and preventing you from continuing to enhance your offering.
Think of it as your operational manual, enabling you to visually map out success.
With technology like Anthill, we work alongside you to define, implement and scale your customer journey blueprint.
Combined with automation capabilities and third party collaborations, Anthill can streamline your operational capabilities and make your business blueprint become a reality.
Ready to explore how Anthill can help you build and implement your business blueprint? Schedule a demo today.
Intrigued to learn more? Check out our Insights Hub to keep your business at the cutting edge.
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- December 16th, 2021