Last Updated on October 30, 2024 by Owen McGab Enaohwo
Introduction
With over 2,000 different processes in his business operations, Adam Radulovic, CEO of XL.net, soon realized that being efficient in business was not about having too many processes. In the face of what he described as a “massive garage worth of processes,” it was difficult for employees to understand what was working and what was not working. Overwhelmed by it all, they could not even use most of the processes. The time, resources, and efforts spent in creating them were a waste. The need for an effective workflow management system was long overdue. Adam explains how the organization got rid of the clutter and streamlined their processes by using SweetProcess. Before we dive into it, let us have an overview of the organization.
About XL.net
XL.net is an IT company committed to helping businesses, especially small and medium-sized ones, succeed by leveraging technology.
An average organization understands the impact of technology in the modern business landscape, but it often lacks the technical know-how to make it happen. This is where XL.net comes in. With a team of expert IT personnel and years of experience under their belts, they create a practical approach in managing the technology needs of businesses from start to finish. Working closely with organizations, they investigate the problem, plan a resolution strategy, and maintain it through regular check-ins for optimal performance.
Based in the United States, the company currently has 30 full-time employees.
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The Moment of Truth
As a system-oriented tech company, XL.net had systems in its organization. In a bid to have a process for every task executed, they created 2,500 processes within their business. The result they expected from these were different from what they got. It was counterproductive. Rather than being efficient, employees were thrown into a state of confusion as they struggled to separate the useful processes from the fluff. Radulovic quickly realized they were in over their heads:
“For probably the last eight or nine years, we’ve been doing a decent job of documenting our processes, procedures which we called work instructions previously and policies. And over the years, we got to a point where we now have close to 2,500 different processes, procedures, and policies. And the management of them became extremely difficult.”
One thing was apparent: their goal of efficiency was futile. They had the motivation to do things right, but they lacked the right system to actualize it. They needed a system that could streamline their processes in the shortest way possible.
How a Client Introduced the Organization to SweetProcess
XL.net discovered SweetProcess in an unconventional way. Although they were aware of the operational gap in their business, they did not know of an effective system that could close it, until a client told them about SweetProcess.
“One of our clients showed it to us, and to date, we really haven’t seen anything that was effective for small-medium businesses. We saw a process management system intended for entrepreneurs with daunting time, money, and labor investments to get them operating and our client loved it… This would be an awesome way for us to handle our daily-growing stale processes.”
A good product sells itself. All they needed was a trial, and they got hooked on SweetProcess. In what ways exactly did SweetProcess impact the organization? Keep reading to find out.
How SweetProcess Changed Things for the Better in the Organization
A common goal among businesses is the need to improve customer satisfaction. Doing this expressly gives them an edge over the competition. Not meeting up to this need is a red flag with severe consequences. Adam explains their worries before using SweetProcess:
“There were a lot of negative results from the services that we provided, to being inefficient in how we do things, or requiring considerable more labor hours to manage it—those would be probably the most significant. To client satisfaction, I’d label it inefficiency.”
From Adam’s explanation, it is evident that resolving efficiency was a factor in their decision to adopt SweetProcess into their business. Did they get the efficiency they sought in SweetProcess? Yes, through the following ways:
1) Seamless documentation process
There is no standard number of business processes required in an organization. It differs according to the needs of each organization. Nonetheless, managing thousands of processes manually can be overwhelming. Mr. Radulovic and his team were understandably confused about what to do with so many processes on the ground.
“It was unclear what to do. Do we retire all the old processes, and then just bring them back one at a time? Just really unclear what to do,” Radulovic laments.
“We had processes that weren’t touched for years. We didn’t have a process of easily archiving old ones that were no longer relevant, so they became stale and made it challenging for our staff to know: which ones do I follow?”
All that chaos was resolved when they started using SweetProcess. They cleaned it all up by migrating the processes into SweetProcess which allowed them to streamline the processes in an easy-to-manage way.
2) Quality assurance maintenance
An organization earns a pat on the back for being efficient only when the quality of its products and/or services is good, consistently. Getting it right today and getting it wrong tomorrow does not cut it.
“We saw that when processes and policies are actually managed actively, it gets fantastic results…. We realized that if we could do this across the board or business, it’d be much more efficient—we’d get much more predictable results,” states Radulovic.
Quality assurance in business thrives on standard operating procedures. When strictly adhered to, the same result is guaranteed over and over again. With SweetProcess, their results were predictable and consistent, even after a long time:
“We had a number of recurring procedures that we did as the first step in piloting that is still used today exactly as they were written when we originally signed up with SweetProcess. And it’s been set and forgotten. You get the alerts to tell you it’s been completed and then the job was done the way that we all agreed to. That’s something that was really tough to manage in the past.”
3) Employee learning and empowerment
Achieving organizational goals is more feasible when the staff understands the goals and operates by the same blueprint, i.e., processes and procedures. Discrepancies in skillsets and experience create a knowledge gap among employees, making it difficult for everyone to move at the same pace.
Documenting processes and procedures in a centralized system and making them accessible to every employee closes the knowledge gap. Anyone who needs information on executing tasks can access the database, thereby avoiding any mistakes. When employees get into new positions or projects, they have access to all the information they need to be efficient.
“A lot of the meetings that we have, the results when resolving an issue is to update or author a new process. Culture is being engrained with the answer of – let’s get it done in SweetProcess.”
The organization empowers all of its employees and carries everyone along by constantly updating documents in the system. It has become its go-to place for any work-related information.
4) Simplified adaptability and operations
Preoccupied with your business operations, the last thing you need is to be stuck with a complex workflow management system. In the excitement of the buying process, an organization might forget a core feature to consider—simplicity.
In keeping with the idea of streamlining your business processes, you need a system that can be easily operated by anyone with basic computer skills; otherwise, it will be a steep learning curve. Adam compares SweetProcess to an Apple product due to its simplicity.
“We looked at probably four or five different solutions out there, and SweetProcess appeared to take the simplest approach. I’d probably compare it to an Apple product. It’s very controlled on how much functionality you have. So, you have much fewer ropes to hang yourself on.”
Migrating to SweetProcess Successfully
SweetProcess offers several options for migration to suit the unique nature of every business. With a large number of processes to move, Adam was skeptical about the migration process initially.
“When we got into it initially and realized that each one of our policies or procedures would take one or two hours to redo because a lot of them had gone stale, we saw it can take one or two hours. We were like, that’s coming at somewhere around three to four thousand hours to get this done. That’s a pretty big number for a company with 30 employees.”
But his perception changed when they got into it using methods that were suitable for their organization.
First, they chose a suitable phase delivery approach and then migrated their policies and procedures. This was followed by the training of employees on how to use the system and author their own procedures.
“Being able to train others and seeing after the first couple of people that were trained on it and easily able to create their own procedures is what made it feel from next to impossible to this is doable.”
The whole team did not start using the system at once. They started with the leadership team. Once they got the hang of it, each of them trained members of their departments.
“It started with the leadership team being trained in using it. And then each of the department heads training their staff one-on-one as procedures came up.”
Going Forward with SweetProcess
We were curious to know about the organization’s next big goals. Interestingly, leveraging SweetProcess is part of the plan.
“It’s to be a hundred percent in SweetProcess for all of our policies, procedures, and knowledge-base articles.”
Do you want to improve your business operations?
XL.net moved from having too many inactive processes to having processes that actually work. The watershed moment was adopting SweetProcess.
If you want to experience the same turnaround in your business, you should consider signing up for a 14-day free trial on SweetProcess.