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Identify Core Business Process
By Admin | May 14, 2008 -->281 views
And Leave the rest to your Virtual Assistant
Mediocrity is not the success mantra, it is excellence that pushes one (or) one’s business ahead of competitors. To stay ahead of your competitors, you need to be best at what you do. That is to say, to identify your niche, core process, genre, what ever name you may choose to call this. As a business owner (or) Manager, identifying your core process is directly proportional to the success of the business you are in.
Answering these four questions will shed the light directly on the core process of your business
- What is the end product (or) Service delivered by my company?
- Who receives the product (or ) Service from my company ?
- How many of my staff members are working exclusively to achieve results for the above questions?
- Roughly how many man-hours are spent on associated business needs per day ? ( this will give you the revenue spent on all those associated business needs)
If it is possible to give yourself a clear and definite response to the above questions, then you have effectively identified the core process of your business. Now it is only matter of time to list out the associated business needs that can be outsourced and effectively delegate them to achieve the best results
Lets say, you are leading an organisation that is into the legal business and provide consultations and recommend course of action and strategy to your corporate and individual clients. It is evident that you specialise in legal activities. So it makes sense that you hire law graduates (or) law-students to cover the ground work like… make preliminary enquires with a client , effectively organising the legal documents, keeping the required legal documents in order for an upcoming meeting, etc etc. So, effective and streamlined execution of these activities help you be on time and abreast with the needs of the client. After all, you will be spending your time representing your client and you would not want to feel as if you have wasted your time.
But the above lists of activities alone do not constitute your actual business. You need someone to take care of the payroll, make calls (or) emails (or) Fax on your behalf so that your business reaches a wider audience, Remind clients of their appointments, Follow up on documents that need to be submitted , Manage your accounts , Advertise your firm in print and electronic media .. etc etc.
If your in-house staff is going to juggle the above mentioned tasks in addition to the core process of your business, ie to say the timely execution of tasks that directly affect your business, then you will be redirecting a major portion of man-hours away from the core process of your business. This is not a productive approach (see here for Best Practices in Productivity). You can provide instructions to your virtual assistant (s) on all such tasks by effective delegation and channel the in-house staff’s skill expertise towards augmenting your business
Using the services of Virtual Assistants is not an exclusive privilege for large businesses only. Small business owners can also benefit from this. The trick is to identify the tasks which some one can do it better for you in the most economical way. Lets say, As a small business owner, you might have just started up your own personal business. This could mean that your budget do not allow you to rent a posh space and set up expensive equipments. It could also be that you operate from home and cannot afford to have other people ( say your employees) moving around the house everyday, much to the disturbance of your family. At times such as these, Virtual Assistants form your back end support system.
Hiring an employee would require you to provide them with a proper work environment ( read desk , Computer , in addition to the rent on office room / building , etc etc), train them ( in specific areas so that they can effectively perform) , retain them (In addition to the monthly / weekly salary, provide incentives , bonus , perks etc etc). Where as, with Virtual Assistants, you will be looking at candidates, having expertise in specific areas only. For Eg, There is more chance that your logo will be more appealing when designed by a graphic designer, rather than by your programmer. A person who is more adept at using Quickbooks will deliver better results and within the time of delivery, compared to someone “who knows accounts”.
Here are some pointers on how Virtual Assistants can assist you towards a more stress free life, on and off the work.
- Research and identify your competitors
- Research and identify your target audience
- Make an extensive research on your prospective customers and prepare custom list of contact details that can be used for sending out bulk mails and company’s newsletters.
- Write for your company’s blog. (Blogging is a great way to reach your customers informally. Readers tend to remember the information in the blog compared to what is presented in the company site).
- Develop and maintain your company’s website so that recent happening are conveyed to the readers
- Students can get assistance from experts with their lessons, projects, thesis using Web-Cam and Voice chat , white board offered by instant messengers,. This will give a one –to-one interaction, and guarantees personalised attention.
- Students who wish to study aboard may not find time to do extensive search on various colleges and scholarship programmes, as they might be tied up with exams and other stuff. So parents can delegate this task to an efficient virtual assistant, who will be providing you with a complete list of names, contact details, grants and scholarships etc.
Everyone cannot do everything. That is when you acquire the services of a skilled person or a team of skilled professionals. You remain best in your business only when you can devote time and energy towards the core process of your business. Similarly Virtual Assistants are also best in their area of expertise. So, it’s a smart move to identify and use the services of a skilled virtual assistant. We, at OutSorcerer.com, guide you towards locating one (or) team of skilled professionals for you, so that you can concentrate on the core process of your business.
Other Readings:-
How To Simplify Your Business
Identifying Core Processes
5 Steps to Identify Core Processes
Topics: Outsourcing- Best Practices |
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May 28th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
[...] ensure that outsourcing actually helps an entrepreneur to leverage profits and facilitates focus on core business, consider the [...]
June 22nd, 2008 at 4:19 am
I read similar article also named y Core Business Process |, and it was completely different. Personally, I agree with you more, because this article makes a little bit more sense for me
June 23rd, 2008 at 8:57 am
Hi Daniel,
Welcome here.
Thanks for the appreciation. could you plase share the link of the article you are refering to. Perhaps we can gain some insight into what the author is trying to convey.
Regards