How To Increase Return On Investment By Systemising and Automating Your Business

Have you ever wondered how certain businesses could expand from a small start-up in their garage into a large company?

Business systemisation and automation are the primary strategies for increasing an organisation's Return On Investment (ROI) and leveraging your time and money. Most successful organisations scale up their operations by systematising and automating their processes. This article will show you how to accomplish the same.

What Does Return On Investment (ROI) Mean?

Return on Investment (ROI) is a performance statistic used to evaluate the efficiency or profitability of an investment or compare the efficiency of various investments.

ROI aims to measure the return on a particular investment compared to its cost. ROI gets calculated by dividing an investment's benefit (or return) by its cost. The result is shown as a percentage or as a ratio. The ROI formula is below:

ROI = (Current Value of Investment – Investment Cost) / Investment Cost

Assume Mary purchased $5,000 worth of shares in ABCD Limited in December 2020 and sold it for $5,500 in December 2021. Divide her $500 Net Profit ($5,500 - $5,000 = $500) by her $5,000 initial investment cost to get a ROI of $500/$5,000 = 0.10, or 10%. As a result, Mary earned a 10% return on her initial $5,000 investment.

What Is Business Automation and Why Is It Important?

Business automation is applying technology to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of an organisation's processes. You will save time and effort by automating business operations, allowing you to focus on more essential activities, which will result in higher profits.

Automation can involve the following:

• It relates to using software applications, interconnected systems, and procedures to carry out specified tasks or processes that would otherwise necessitate human intervention.
• It could be utilising accessible technologies for the organisation to run more effectively and efficiently while using best practice business operations management.

Advantages of Business Automation

Automation can help you achieve optimum ROI as follow:

• It can assist in reducing costs, increasing productivity, and improving customer service by ensuring the company keeps ahead of the competition and making its processes more efficient.
• It can increase the speed and accuracy of operations by improving communication and collaboration between different parts of the organisation.
• It can assist in processing vast amounts of data more quickly and easily, resulting in better decision-making and higher productivity levels.
• It can minimise the possibility of human error, resulting in better customer service.

Process automation increases productivity levels and reduces time spent on non-core activities, allowing you to maximise your ROI.

What Is Business Systemisation and Why Is It Important?

Business systemisation is the process of organising a company's operations to better manage it by doing the following:

• You can design specialised structures, procedures, and systems to assist in the management and tracking of information, decision-making, and goal achievement.
• Standardised procedures can improve efficiency, communication, and overall operational and financial performance.
• Policies and procedures governing employee performance can get established.
• You could successfully scale your business by utilising numerous interconnected systems.

For example, by successfully implementing procedures to create more leads, you can better manage the expansion of your customer base when you systemise your organisational processes.

Business systemisation can assist in ensuring that an organisation functions effectively and efficiently by lowering operational expenses while enhancing the company's performance and productivity levels to remain competitive in the market.

Advantages of Business Systemisation

One of the essential stages toward maximising ROI is to systemise your organisation. By establishing systems and standardising and automating procedures, you will be able to optimise your operations and obtain better outcomes faster. There are various advantages to running a systemised organisation as follows:

1. Increase Productivity

A well-organised business can run more efficiently, resulting in lower costs and more profits. Having a systemised business reduces frustration in the organisation, making it a better place to work. As a result, you can find more committed employees that are receptive to being more creative and have a great deal of excitement for their job.

There are various strategies to boost your company's efficiency. For example, you can improve the flow of information and processes within your organisation to help you achieve your goals faster with less effort.

2. Cut costs

There are numerous ways to cut costs by systemising your organisation. Here are some strategies:

• Create an expense tracking system to assist in understanding where you're spending money and whether the costs are essential.
• Create a strategy for ordering supplies and making purchases to avoid overspending and saving money on unnecessary products.
• Monitor your staff's productivity, allowing you to identify areas where employees are wasting time and resources and make changes as needed.

By following these strategies, you can cut costs while still ensuring that your company meets its objectives.

3. Improve Customer Service

A systemised business can provide superior customer service by coordinating efforts among staff. It ensures that customers have a constant level of service. Customers, for example, can be consistently treated well and obtain the assistance they require promptly and efficiently.

4. Increase Profits

Profits can increase by cutting expenses, streamlining operations, and increasing efficiency in a systemised business. Hence, allowing a company to remain competitive and grow profitably.

For example, implementing a business systemisation process can boost financial results by improving customer service delivery through higher staff productivity. As a result, you will get payments from customers much more quickly.

5. Improve Accuracy

Systemising your company can increase the accuracy of information by providing a structure for organising and documenting data, tracking progress, and communicating with stakeholders. By systematically monitoring data, you can spot trends and patterns that may go unnoticed when looking at individual transactions or pieces of information.

You can ensure that information is consistently collected and analysed using standardised processes. As a result, it's easier to make informed decisions regarding allocating resources and enhancing overall performance. It can, in turn, minimise resource wastage, increase efficiency, boost profitability, and improve ROI.

6. Avoid Making Expensive Mistakes

Systemising your organisation might assist you in avoiding costly mistakes. Assume you have a sales process split across multiple departments. In that instance, a well-organised process will ensure that all procedures get carried out appropriately.

As a result, it will reduce errors and boost your chances of success. A systematic strategy can also help you optimise your resources and streamline your operations. By performing these systemised procedures, you can maximise your ROI and boost your chances of meeting your business objectives.

7. Enhance Operational Performance

There are various approaches to increase operational effectiveness by systemising your business. For starters, standardising processes and procedures allows you to verify that all areas of your business operations are consistent and accurate. It will assist in producing better results and making your task more manageable.

It can reduce the time required to do repetitive activities while also lowering the likelihood of errors. Furthermore, by setting clearly defined goals and objectives for each department, you can ensure that all activities contribute to achieving a particular company's goals.

It will help maximise revenues and keep your organisation competitive in the market. You could dramatically increase your company's productivity level and profitability by applying these strategies.

8. Minimise Risks

A well-organised business reduces the likelihood of failing to meet its goals. By implementing appropriate systems which are fit for purpose, companies can track their success and improve their operations. It assists in making the most use of its resources and achieving its organisational objectives.

There are numerous strategies you can implement to reduce the risks in your company by systemising processes. For example, developing a production schedule and tracking each process step could be advantageous if you own a manufacturing company. It will assist you in identifying and correcting problems before they create substantial delays or harm to your product.

By creating a system for tracking progress, you will be able to make the necessary adjustments to maintain optimal performance and maximise the ROI for your organisation.

Assume you also own a restaurant. In that instance, consistent menus and price structures can assist in anticipating what each customer will expect. Hence, you can prevent over-serving or under-charging customers, which will result in lost revenue and lower profitability.

Implementing these strategies and putting sound governance processes in place will help safeguard your organisation from fraud and other unethical behaviour. Hence, you can keep your company as secure and efficient as possible while increasing its growth potential.

9. Minimise Knowledge Losses

There will be staff you recruit who will develop innovative approaches to accomplish their desired objectives. The team may create a new idea based on an existing process as an example of innovation.

Perhaps an employee implements a new strategy for carrying out a task in your organisation that must get documented so that the process is not lost when the staff decides to leave the company.

How Can You Systemise Your Business?

A business can get systemised in a variety of ways. Here are some tips on how to use the most common strategies to systemise your business:

Tip 1. Creating Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

SOPs are procedures that all employees must follow to run business operations smoothly. It ensures that all processes are carried out consistently and reduces the possibility of misunderstanding or error.

Tip 2. Use Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or Business Management Software

An ERP or business management software package is crucial for handling a company's finances, inventory, and other operational data. A variety of software tools can assist you in systemising your organisation. Some of these applications let you keep track of your expenses.

Others, on the other hand, such as all-in-one business management software, can help you better manage your contacts and clients. By incorporating one or more of these applications into your organisation, you will be able to boost your ROI and increase efficiency.

Systemise Your Business In Five Simple Steps

Small businesses frequently struggle to systemise their operations. By implementing the five steps below, business owners can begin systemising their organisations to maximise ROI.

Step 1: Create A System Tasks List

The first step is to compile a list of all of your company's functions for a particular area of your business workflow. Don't worry about documenting these processes at this initial phase.

The first stage determines the project's scope by identifying the various systems requiring development. Determine how you will gain new clients, for example. The following steps may be involved in the client acquisition process:

1. Obtain word-of-mouth referrals regularly.
2. Distribute direct mail once a week.
3. Issue a monthly newsletter.
4. Make cold calling daily.
5. Schedule a meeting with a prospect to build a relationship and assess their needs.
6. Prepare a cost estimate for a qualified prospect.
7. Make an appointment to present a proposal to the prospective client.
8. Close the deal or proceed with the follow-up process.

You can determine the existence of the following systems in the organisation by outlining the client acquisition process:

1. A referral system for customers.
2. A system for direct mail.
3. A newsletter management system.
4. A system for telemarketing.
5. A system for making appointments.
6. A system for assessing client needs.
7. A system for developing customer proposals.
8. A presentation system for delivering customer proposals.
9. A system for generating a contract for customers.
10. A follow-up system for prospects.

List all of your organisation's current systems in this phase. The goal of this stage is to establish your company's systems structure by identifying and naming all of your organisational systems so that you can assess the project's scope.

Step 2: Prioritisation of System Tasks List

In this stage, you should have a list of your company's system framework. You can then establish the project's scope for process documentation and which tasks should get prioritised.

You can categorise the activities as A, B, and C. All business-critical systems are assigned an "A". Those systems with minimal commercial impact get classified as "C". Then, categorise the remaining tasks with a "B."

You can prioritise the tasks list in several ways. For example, you may need to hire a new salesperson. If you don't have your sales procedures written, start documenting them immediately to make training the new salesperson much easier.

By providing the essential training processes and proper procedures on their first day with your company, the new salesperson will be onboarded and learn much faster. As a result, the new staff can begin generating sales for the organisation sooner.

Furthermore, perhaps you are devoting too much time to administrative activities. Once you document administrative processes, you can outsource them. As a result, you can allocate more of your time and energy to higher-value activities such as increasing sales for the organisation.

In this case, you should prioritise documenting administrative activities so that you can easily delegate them to someone else on your team or outsource them to a virtual assistant.

Step 3: Management of System Documentation

Begin documenting the process using the prioritised list at this stage, and then oversee the document development process. Obtain the assistance of others to assist you in writing the documentation needed for the various business processes.

Obtain the participation of the relevant employees to document specific systems and jobs that they undertake. Then, follow up with them to check that it gets completed and review the information they've included in the documentation.

Step 4: Implementation of the Process and Staff Training

Implement the documented procedure by putting it into action as soon as possible. When you've finished developing a system, immediately put it to use. When your team uses the new processes, they will see how valuable it is. They'll start thinking in a systemise manner, which will result in more documented systems performed by your employees.

Training staff on the new processes is critical to ensure that all business areas operate smoothly to maximise organisational efficiencies. As a result, productivity levels will rise, and ROI will increase.

There are several ways to train employees on the new processes, which are as follows:

• You can provide them with detailed instructions using procedural manuals or resources online.
• You can conduct training sessions in person or virtually online.

It is critical to ensure that staff get informed of the process changes and how to use the new systems that are getting implemented.

Step 5: System Monitoring and Usage Assessment

It is critical to track and monitor the performance results of employees who utilise the system documentation. In general, this stage is a managerial function. However, depending on the organisation's size, the business owner may be in charge of all functional areas. Hence, the business owner must assess how well their employees' documentation gets utilised.

Monitoring the systems and how well staff use the documentation is an important step. While this phase isn't a challenging task, many business owners overlook it. They believe that once the systems and documentation are in place, it's all they need to do.

However, the business owner should ideally be constantly assessing the results of utilising the systems and process documentation with the person performing the relevant activities. The process documentation must be kept up to date and accurate so that you can use it to conduct employee performance reviews.

The process documentation for their job description will assist in keeping your employees accountable as you can measure their progress against their key performance indicators. Ensure that processes and operational performance get regularly modified to achieve the required business growth through ongoing process improvements.

How Can Continuous Process Improvements Be Implemented?

As the company grows and changes, it's critical to regularly analyse and update various systems and procedures. Keeping track of the company's performance by continuously enhancing its existing processes ensures that the organisation effectively runs smoothly to achieve its goals.

By reflecting on how you're company is progressing towards systemising and automating its operations periodically, you can determine what to do better in the future. Follow these four strategies to maximise ROI by continuously systemising and automating your organisation:

1. Assess your organisational goals and available resources.
2. Evaluate how well you are progressing towards your company's objectives.
3. Make necessary changes to the systemised plan.
4. Participate in continuous business improvement activities.

Determine if you're progressing closer to your target results by regularly examining your business objectives in line with your company's vision. Furthermore, by delegating activities to employees and tracking progress and results regularly, you can establish the effectiveness of your business systemisation process. As a result, if any process changes are required, they can get implemented quickly without causing substantial disruptions to essential business activities.

Conclusion

Systemising your company is a gradual process. It takes time and effort to implement as business systemisation is an ongoing activity that changes as the organisation evolves and grows. The company's procedures require continuous review and optimisation to maximise ROI.

It involves regularly examining your processes and systems to ensure its effective, efficient, and in line with your organisation's overall goals and vision. It contributes to the smooth operation of your company and increases its chances of success.

It is simple, but it is not easy to systemise your business. However, it is a worthwhile undertaking as it has the potential to maximise your ROI. By following the five steps as a guide, you will be well on your way to improving your ROI and increasing your chances of effectively growing a profitable business.

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