If you want your business to be successful, you need to follow clear, repeatable processes to execute your products and services, keep your business running, and even handle administrative tasks. Unfortunately, many of these processes are wildly complicated, and at the upper echelons of complication, these processes can bog your business down.
Processes are generally a good thing for your business, as they give you a clear road map for how to achieve your desired results. But when they become too complex, their effectiveness can start to wane, and they might even have a detrimental effect.
How can you make complex processes easier and more manageable in your business?
The Burdens of Complex Processes
There are several burdens associated with complex processes, which is why we want to reduce their complexity. Some of the most notorious offenses exist with respect to:
- Time. If your process is too complex, it’s going to take more time than necessary. There are two important repercussions of this. First, your people are going to spend more time on the process in total, costing your business more money and preventing those people from working on more important matters. Second, the processes themselves are going to take more time to complete, delaying your business and potentially even causing it to miss important opportunities.
- Money. Complex processes also cost more money. Not only do they cost more money in terms of labor output, but they cost more money in terms of expensive mistakes, lost opportunities, and general upkeep.
- Room for error. With a simple process, there’s less room for error. Conversely, complex processes are much more error prone. Very few people mess up making toast in the morning, but most people wouldn’t be able to step into the role of an air traffic controller even with extensive training. The more complex the process is, the more vulnerable it’s going to be, and the riskier is going to be for your business.
- Additional labor bloat. There’s certainly nothing wrong with growing your business organically and hiring more people to support it, but if your processes are too complex, you might end up hiring more people without really needing them. On some level, the additional hiring only supports mechanics of processes that aren’t truly necessary.
- Bureaucratic trappings. Complex processes also lend themselves to increasing bureaucracy, which can slow your business down tremendously. Bureaucracy isn’t an inherently bad thing, but it typically becomes counterproductive when It becomes too large or when it’s out of place and in an otherwise agile business.
Modern Technology
Fortunately, modern technology has the power to make innumerable complex processes simpler and easier. With the right tools, you can document and analyze your processes, manually restructure them, and execute them in more streamlined, seamless ways. You can also use tools to intelligently design some of these processes on your behalf, or even automate those processes.
For example, some companies struggle with the complexities and time requirements of creating special purpose vehicles (SPVs). Creating an SPV for a business is sometimes necessary, whether it’s to launch a new product, isolate risk, or secure financing in a specific way. But creating an SPV is itself a somewhat complex process.
With the help of an SPV creation engine, businesses can streamline and expedite the process. This type of tool makes it much easier, enabling businesses to create a multitude of vehicles in short order, without worrying about the trappings of complex manual processes.
When looking for new tools to add to your arsenal, be mindful of the following:
- Features. First, you should feel confident that this piece of technology offers all of the features you need to fix some objective problem with your complex processes. That could mean organizing, standardizing, documenting, increasing modularity, automating, or something else entirely. Don’t believe that a tool is going to help you just because it has flashy branding.
- Reliability. You also need a tool that can reliably do what it claims to do. It’s not worth investing in technology if it only solves part of a problem, or only solves a problem temporarily.
- Objective benefits. Further, you need to be able to evaluate the objective benefits of using such a tool. Be as precise as possible in your calculations here. How much time are you likely to save by using this tool? What costs are you going to avoid? These types of questions are going to be indispensable in helping you determine the potential return on investment (ROI) for this resource.
- Roadmap. It’s also helpful to look at a road map for the future, proposed by developers of this technology. What updates are coming in the future? Does it seem like the team is planning to support this tool in the long run?
- Support. If you experience any technical hiccups with this technology, is there someone who can help you resolve them? What people and resources are available to you to smooth out the experience?
- Prices. Naturally, you’ll also want to consider pricing. Some technologies are very impressive, but are priced at a level that makes it hard to justify using them in your business. Others may not have every feature you were hoping for, but may be priced so reasonably that you’d be foolish not to incorporate them.
Methods of Complexity Reduction
Beyond simply using a tool to simplify your complex processes, there are many methods you can use to reduce complexity in your business.
- Standardization. The first step is always standardization. You’re not going to be able to reduce a complex process unless you understand how that process flows. If you have different teams of people following different practices, or if there’s no consistency in how you execute a given process, you’re not going to be able to effectively reduce it.
- Automation. Automation is uncontroversial as a net benefit in most applications. If you can automate even a handful of steps in your complex process, you can streamline its execution and make it much more digestible for any humans interfacing with it.
- Step elimination. Another option is to eliminate some steps entirely, especially if those steps aren’t necessary for your end goals. As a simple example, do you really need three different committee approvals at three different steps of the process? Are there any steps that you could afford to lose while still achieving your goals?
- Modularization. Some businesses approach complex process reduction by breaking the process into individual modules. Instead of having a single, inordinately complex process, you might be able to break it down into three or four distinct, isolated processes. This is especially useful if these processes can be handled by different departments or different teams, as no individual or group will be exposed to the full range of complications.
- Consolidation. As an inverse, some complex processes can be made simpler through the art of consolidation. Instead of combining processes, this is a method of eliminating the overlap between existing processes. By streamlining and combining separate components, you can ultimately make your organization run more efficiently.
- Elimination of unnecessary considerations. Some complexities emerge unnecessarily, and they can be eliminated without any pain. For example, you might have alternative steps to follow for a long list of different conditions, when a single universal step could suffice. Eliminating these unnecessary conditionals and variables can make things much simpler.
Restructuring of Processes
One of the most straightforward ways to reduce a complex process is to restructure that process. To do so, start by taking a look at:
- Core objectives. What is this process trying to accomplish? How does it impact your business? And how can you maintain achieving those high-level objectives while still modifying the process itself?
- Necessary steps. Which steps and sub processes of this process are truly necessary? And which ones can be eliminated without any significant impact on the process or the business as a whole?
- Options and variables. Processes tend to get more complex when you introduce more options, variables, and other branching paths. Can any of these be streamlined or consolidated?
Outside Authorities
Hiring an outside authority, like a consultant, might be exactly what you need if you’re struggling to find ways to reduce your complex processes. Experts in your industry, or in the specific problem you’re trying to solve, can look at your existing processes with fresh eyes and provide you with the insights necessary to make favorable changes in the long run.
Restructuring of Responsibilities
Sometimes, the solution is restructuring responsibilities. This is especially important for bureaucratically complex businesses, or for processes that have historically unfolded across multiple teams and departments. Sometimes, having fewer people involved can make the process simpler. Other times, delegating certain steps of the process can make the entire thing unfold more seamlessly.
Complex processes are, in some ways, an inevitable byproduct of growing a business of any sufficient sophistication. However, if you want to remain as lean and efficient as possible, it’s important to apply a critical eye to these complex processes and actively reduce them to be less of a headache.
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