Improve and Automate Business Processes
Is your business a small and medium enterprise (SME) that needs to reduce operational costs or is affected by any of the issues described on the Elkera home page?
All too often, business restructuring takes place without really understanding the real sources of excess costs and the actual steps required to sustainably reduce them. The solution requires a structured approach to business process improvement.
Elkera helps small and medium enterprises (SMEs) improve and automate business processes to drive increased productivity, reduce operational costs and enhance customer service.
This page describes why it is necessary to take an expert driven, structured approach to business process improvement and why Elkera is the expert to assist your business.
Effective business processes improvement requires expert guidance
Why you need a structured approach to support business process improvement
As a business grows and becomes more complex, there is an increase in business functions and personnel. Over time, senior managers may lose sight of the detail involved in performing many business functions, particularly in areas for which they are not directly responsible. Often, there comes a time when no one person really knows how the business, or important parts of it, work. Managers of one work area may seriously underestimate the issues faced by personnel with whom they must collaborate in other areas.
If an attempt is made to restructure the business or make changes without a thorough analysis and understanding of the issues, the results may not be as expected. Meaningful and sustainable cost reductions may not be achieved. Worse, steps may be taken that actually damage the business and waste scarce capital.
The problems with not using a structured approach to business process improvement
Restructuring a business without undertaking a thorough business process improvement process is likely to lead to many problems, including:
- Reducing personnel through redundancies or other means, only to find that many of the former roles were needed after all and there has been a serious loss of knowledge, expertise and business efficiency.
- Loading up existing personnel with more and more tasks without proper regard to their sustainable capacities.
- Creating or persisting with sub-optimal organisational structures that do not facilitate effective workflows.
- Acquiring or attempting to acquire software systems without really understanding the business and stakeholder needs, or the actual value that the software will provide.
Problems 1, 2 and 3 may lead to degraded service and loss of customers. Also, the re-allocation of business functions to remaining personnel in an environment of frustrations and disillusionment, may be a major contributor to staff burnout. Staff burnout is recognised as a serious occupational phenomenon (See: WHO item Burn-out an “occupational phenomenon”: International Classification of Diseases). In the US it is estimated by Gallup that at least 28% of employees feel burned out at work, as at August 2024 (See: How to Prevent Employee Burnout). It is likely that similar figures will apply in Australia.
Problem 4 often leads to financial waste and widespread disillusionment among staff. It is widely accepted that 50% or more of software projects fall significantly short of their expectations and many fail completely (See evidence gathered by the Standish Group and summarised in an article by Jorge Domingues at ProjectSmart UK: The Curious Case of the CHAOS Report 2009).