I get chance to speak with many small business owners like you through mediums such as phone, skype, hangout and sometimes face to face. Every time when they speak about the internal business management software, the topic of workflow comes along the way.
Being small business owner, you may have mindset that business process management system (BPMS) is for big organizations and it’s too complex for small teams. You may be partially right. This blog will throw some light on business process management system for small team.
You are at the center of your small team
If you are running a business with small team having around 10-30 people, then no matter what, you would be at the center of your small team. Every information flows through you. If the team is spread across the geographical this becomes even more complex. Most of your time is spent communicating between your employees.
If this is you, then you are reading the right blog. I know you don’t need a full functional business process management system. But what you need is a component of BPM- that is workflow management system.
Workflow management system is better than task management system
You may have figured out a simple solution to bring your team together. You would have been using some task management system or a project management system to do that. However what is not found in task management system like asana, producteev is the ability to get a work done by your team in a particular flow.
In other sense, you don’t get to see progress of the team in very easily way. This is where you may need to adapt a workflow in your business.
Not all business activity has proper flow
Yes, it’s true. You can’t predefine a flow for all your business activity. The task under the business activity will change or get added based on the circumstances. This is very common in practice. This is the reason I suggest to use adaptive workflow management system.
Adaptive workflow management system allows you to add or remove tasks whenever needed for a particular instance of the workflow. This keeps your standard workflow template intact and can use for next time.
The key take away
Use adaptive workflow management system which helps to change the task and flow as required. These systems will notify the employees about their turn in the process. You can also make few tasks to go in parallel between the teams. This way you will gradually drift from being center of your team.
Think of it! Does this kind of setup suits your organization? Please comment your thoughts.