As much as the financial and banking sectors as a whole have particularities in its management, there are departments and tasks that follow the same specificities of any type of business. One such aspect is process standardization.
Many managers believe that organizing activities, automating sectors, and documenting everything that is done are measures that only impact the company’s planning and organization.
However, process standardization goes beyond, as it enables the increase of the corporation’s results by maximizing profitability and reducing unnecessary costs. If the company you are in is stuck in time and is lacking in indicators, see how standardization can help.
Understand what process standardization is and why deploy it
Process standardization is the task of unifying a company’s procedures, so as to create patterns and scripts about the most varied activities of a company. To do so, everyone involved in running the business should follow these guidelines.
The main purpose of this method is to ensure that all tasks and documents are handled in the same way, even if performed by different people and departments. This way, any employee can understand what was done, how, where and when.
Standardizing and unifying processes is a strategy that ensures the quality standard of your company, without flexibility and without fluctuations, regardless of the sector or person responsible for the activity, especially when the business has branches.
In fact, it is very common for companies to lose customers and money, because the service was well done in one branch, but in another, the relationship was inferior.
This also happens in administration, as the information should be treated in an integrated and systemic way; when this is not done, everything begins to misalign.
Check out how to deploy process standardization
Process standardization is not a strategy that will be put into practice overnight, as staff and internal procedures need to be prepared. Understand how this should be done.
Make a process mapping
Process mapping is a tool used to describe and identify the entire workflow of a company. With this, everyone involved understands the necessary steps of each task, including other sectors and senior management.
This should be your first step in deploying standards in procedures, as during mapping, bottlenecks can be identified and new ways of working defined.
To this end, you can use:
- Basic flowcharts: allows the visualization of the steps of a process;
- Detailed maps: show detailed views of a process and sub-processes;
- Multifunctional flowcharts: in addition to the steps, they provide information on related tasks, teams, and departments.
Engage all teams
Much is said about finding employees who are engaged and “fly the company’s flag”, but in practice, managers know this is a challenge. Much of the motivation and proactivity of employees is the result of a good work environment.
In order to engage and keep employees involved with the organization and process standardization, the leaders need to be clear and transparent in their responsibilities.
This way, they can set realistic, team-motivating goals, find ways to connect their staff members, and be able to invest and act on both the qualification of employees and the improvement of their skills and abilities.
In addition, it is imperative that all the corporation’s teams are aligned, as any disruption affects its standardization, tasks and, consequently, results.
Document processes
The documentation of processes is the record and description of all steps of a project, procedure or task. This should be done on a continuous basis in order to identify, correct and prevent failures, bottlenecks and errors in the company’s activities, reduce costs, and improve the quality of procedures.
Depending on the complexity of your company – or as it grows -, the difficulty in dealing with this aspect also increases. There are more steps, people, and resources involved to make everything work efficiently.
In this sense, the habit of documenting processes is an indispensable part of process standardization, as it will act as a roadmap for any type of task.
To do so, prefer storage in the cloud and develop a standard model that should be adhered to in all processes and by all teams.
Train employees
It is common for employees to have difficulties and deficiencies in their skills. Another scenario is the change of processes in the company. Both situations can be resolved with qualification and refresher trainings.
This will be important to level your teams, aligning them with the goals of process standardization and the organization as a whole. Training can be provided by someone in charge of senior management or by hiring specialized consultants.
Perform constant analyses and monitoring
Process standardization, like any change in management model or strategy, must be constantly monitored. To this end, it is essential to define indicators to make assessments and analyses, so that failures are identified and improvements are applied. After all, many processes must be adapted to fit the routine of your company and department.
The need of software
The cost reduction achieved by process standardization is a consequence of reduced waste, failures, bottleneck identification, increased productivity across all sectors, and greater transparency of information.
These results enable the company’s growth, management maturity, and procedures that are more in line with business and market needs. However, in order to achieve this performance, the implementation of software aimed at cost and profitability management, performance management and strategic analysis is inevitable.
Only through up-to-date, intuitive and efficient technological tools you will have the information and data to work in the development of your sector and your company as a whole.
Process standardization goes beyond just defining a model of procedures and management. This is a tool that ensures the level of quality of tasks, even if performed by different employees and teams. That way, various growth blocks, such as waste and unnecessary costs, are eliminated.
If your company’s system is not providing results, or has many manual processes, contact us and talk to one of our consultants to identify the best solution.