Map & Document
Just like data, garbage in, garbage out. The same can be said for capturing processes. Any shortcuts taken on mapping out a processes will have negative impacts later down the line.
- Involve all stakeholders in the documentation step. They engage with the process and have ideas on how to make it better.
- Clearly communicate the value the team will realize as more processes get documented and operationalized.
- Capture documentation in a consistent manner in one source of truth.
Execute & Automate
Plan your work, work your plan. Start executing against your processes to start building the habits to accelerate adoption.
- Enable your stakeholders. One more time, ENABLE your stakeholders. "Bad processes" are usually bad enablement.
- Support your processes with project management software which acts as the backbone for your processes and documentation.
- Automate…where it makes sense. Do not jump in and start automating everything as this will lead to automating a lot of bad stuff. Take small steps and iterate.
Optimize
Very few processes are super efficient from day one. Plus, business dynamics change all the time, therefore processes need to be continually updated.
- Solicit feedback from stakeholders to identify opportunities for efficiency.
- Review project management software to understand if steps are being missed, and how long it takes to complete a process.
- Pilot with AI and other technologies to iterate and drive improvements.
Focussing On Process Excellence Enabled The Team To Scale Capacity
Vision
Support the ambitious growth targets by enabling marketers to focus on marketing, not operations.
40%
In Additional Ops Capacity
Without increasing headcount
Context
Nintex, a process and workflow SaaS company was growing and had ambitious targets to accelerate this growth. Marketing and sales were expanding their footprint to support these goals. Therefore, I had to scale how we put more marketing programs into market without any additional headcount. Why not use the opportunity to also showcase our technology!
Steps To Scale With Process Excellence
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Step 1: Mapped & Documented Processes
There were some basic, ill defined processes in place. I decided to start with a clean "whiteboard", and partnered with the marketing team to map out the desired processes for getting campaigns into market. Even during this exercise we found ways to optimize the processes while we were defining them. Amazing what happens when you visualize your processes!
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Step 2: Operationalized The Processes
Based on the agreed, now documented processes, we operationalized the processes, leveraging Asana as the project management backbone. We had Asana templates for every program type to make it super simple for marketers to know what to do, and take the next steps. This was all supported with lots of enablement.
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Step 3: Optimized And Automated
After executing the processes manually (heavily template driven), we identified several areas that could be improved, AND several steps that could be automated. Therefore, we leveraged Nintex's technology to automate several steps in the process. Each improvement along the way reduced marketers overhead and ops interventions.
