Operations 101

Processes, SOPs, workflows, procurement, inventory, quality, productivity and business continuity: the machinery that makes a business repeatable.

Run your business efficiently and consistently.

  • Business process management – How to see your business as a set of repeatable processes, map the ones that matter, measure them, and improve them one at a time so results stop depending on who turned up that day.
  • Standard operating procedures (SOPs) – What an SOP is, when a task deserves one, how to write one people will actually follow, and how to keep a small library of procedures current without drowning in documents.
  • Workflow management – How work moves between people, systems and approvals in your business, where it gets stuck, and how to design workflows so tasks arrive with the right person, at the right time, with everything they need.
  • Supply chain and procurement – How to buy well as a small business: choosing and managing suppliers, understanding where your supply chain is fragile, negotiating sensibly, and keeping the goods and services you depend on arriving on time and on budget.
  • Inventory management – How much stock to hold, when to reorder, and how to tell whether your inventory is working for you or quietly tying up your cash: reorder points, safety stock, turnover and ABC analysis in plain English.
  • Quality management – How to deliver consistently what you promised, catch problems before customers do, and make fixing root causes a routine rather than a crisis: the plan-do-check-act cycle, the cost of quality and practical quality control for SMBs.
  • Productivity improvement – Getting more valuable output from the hours your business already pays for: how to measure productivity simply, find where time leaks, and pick the improvements that pay off without burning out the team.
  • Business continuity – How to keep trading, or get back to trading fast, when something serious goes wrong: identifying what your business cannot do without, planning for the likeliest disruptions, and testing the plan before you need it.