Is your business under pressure to reduce operational costs?

Does your business face some or all of these issues:

• Are customers reporting problems with product or service delivery?
• Have you reduced personnel numbers, only to find that important tasks are falling through the cracks, or remaining staff are overloaded and burned out?
• Are you using outdated software that is not fit for purpose or is no longer supported?
• Do you have personnel experiencing burnout?
• Are your business processes and procedures undocumented, making it hard to train new personnel?
• Are you overly dependent on a few ‘gurus’ who carry too much corporate knowledge in their heads?
• Are there problems with communications and collaborations between business units?
• Do you sense that personnel are spending too much time on email or in unproductive meetings?

If you work in a small or medium enterprise (SME), Elkera can help you solve those problems. Elkera will help you to improve and automate business processes to drive increased productivity, reduce operational costs and enhance customer service.

The pressure to reduce costs

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are under constant pressure to find ways to reduce operational costs. Contributing factors include fierce competition, rapid technological change, supply chain disruption leading to increased input costs, wage pressures and reduced government support for many in the not for profit sector.

Often, the pressure to reduce costs leads management to quickly cut personnel with little or no analysis of how existing workloads will be effectively taken up by the remaining personnel. Cutting personnel in that way is rarely a sustainable way to cut costs. More likely, it will lead to staff burnout, loss of valuable expertise, broken workflows, compliance failures and dissatisfied customers.

Symptoms of sub-optimal business processes

The issues listed earlier are all signs that there may be fundamental problems within the business organisation and its workflows. Commonly, they point to poorly designed processes, inadequate systems and impaired productivity. Those problems are rarely amenable to a quick fix.

Business process improvement

Whichever of the above sources of business pain applies to your business, the solution always requires a structured approach to business process improvement.

Business process improvement begins with a thorough analysis of business functions and processes that will enable you to understand how the business works. Based on that analysis, you can identify waste, find opportunities to streamline or automate processes, clearly define personnel responsibilities, improve documentation and define software requirements for automation solutions. If a reduction in personnel is required, it should be a planned, rather than an arbitrary process.

Expert skills are required to effectively analyse business functions and processes, devise solutions, define software requirements and develop a business case for required expenditure. SMEs may be at a particular disadvantage in this area when they don’t have expert business analysts and project managers on staff.

Elkera’s capability

Elkera specialises in serving SMEs, particular those in knowledge based industries. Elkera’s consultant will fully understand your business and provide practical and creative assistance to set your business on the path to business process improvement that provides improved productivity and reduces costs.

Elkera will work with you to:

• understand your business, its problems and your goals
• consult with all stakeholders to assess your specific business needs
• plan a program of works based on your needs
• develop a business case for all required works
• identify and document all relevant business functions, processes and workflows
• identify wasteful processes and opportunities for business process improvement and automation
• develop an effective change plan
• determine and document software requirements for new software tools.

Elkera has more than 20 years of experience working with organisations to analyse business processes, plan business process improvements, and elicit and document software requirements for effective process automation.

Elkera is completely independent from product or other service providers. We do not promote specific products or technologies. We focus solely on your business success.

As specialists working with small and medium enterprises, we will carefully tailor our analytical approach to your specific business needs so that your investment in business process improvement will deliver real business value.

With Elkera’s expert help, you can sustainably improve the productivity of your business and reduce operating costs.

Please follow the links below to detailed service descriptions, or book an appointment for a free, introductory consultation.