Optimization of business processes – a way to increase efficiency in the company

Why do companies optimize business processes?

The costs of running a business are steadily rising — more expensive labour costs, higher prices for energy, external services and technology are making it increasingly challenging to maintain profitability. This is particularly felt by companies in the SME sector, which often do not have large financial reserves or extensive operational teams. As a result, the daily operation of the company consumes more and more resources, and the margin of the development budget begins to shrink.

Faced with this situation, many entrepreneurs are faced with a key choice: either increase revenues by investing in the development of sales of products or services and realistically start generating more profit, or stay at a similar level of income, while looking for ways to reduce the costs of running a business. This is where the topic of business process optimization is increasingly emerging as a viable, scalable alternative to costly and risky investments for rapid growth.

What is business process optimization?

Simply put, business process optimization is looking for ways to improve the day-to-day functioning of the enterprise in such a way as to reduce the fixed costs that the company generates. In practice, this means a conscious look at how the organization works on a daily basis, what activities are carried out, by whom and in what order. The basis here is the analysis of the company's business processes, which allows you to understand how individual elements of the organization affect each other and where inefficiencies arise.

Optimization of processes in an enterprise does not consist in individual changes, but in a holistic view of the company as a system of related activities. Thanks to this, it is possible not only to improve the daily work of teams, but also to create a solid foundation for further scaling of the organization and the implementation of automation.

Process mapping as a base of optimization

A key element of optimization is process mapping, i.e. detailed breakdown of all activities performed in the company and communication flows between departments, teams and tools used. Most often, it takes the form of graphic maps or diagrams (graphs) that show how a given work actually goes - from the moment the process begins until its completion.

This approach allows us to identify process bottlenecks, repetitive or redundant actions, as well as places where delays, errors or unnecessary employee involvement occur. Only on the basis of a well-carried out mapping is it possible to plan real improvements and make an informed decision on further optimization steps.

What costs does business process optimization reduce?

Well-carried out optimization of business processes allows you to look at the company as a coherent system of activities, and not a set of detached tasks carried out independently by individual teams. This gives the organization greater transparency of processes, better control over costs and a solid basis for further improvements. In practice, the analysis of business processes most often leads to cost reductions in three key areas, which we will describe in the following paragraphs.

Employment costs

When mapping and analyzing the business processes of a company, it is very common to find that some of the activities are carried out in parallel by several employees, others are carried out despite the lack of real value for the organization, and still others occupy a significant part of the time of people who could focus on more crucial processes. Optimization of costs in this area consists in the systematization of the company's activities, a better distribution of responsibilities and the elimination of unnecessary activities. As a result, the company can make better use of existing resources, increase the efficiency of teams and adapt the structure of the organization to real operational needs, without the need to constantly increase employment to handle inefficient processes.

Costs of company tools and programs

Another area that is revealed when mapping business processes is technological costs. The analysis often shows that the company pays for subscriptions for tools that are not used, or uses several solutions that carry out very similar actions. It also happens that an expensive tool is used by only one person, even though the same process could be done on a simpler or free solution. Optimizing business processes in this area allows you to organize tools, reduce unnecessary operating costs and better align technologies with real processes occurring in the organization.

A good example of the fact that companies are not always aware of the possibility of optimizing the costs of the tools they use is the fact that very often it is only during our work that we identify such areas in our clients companies. In one of the enterprises from the e-commerce industry with which we worked, a popular tool for automating an online store was implemented. Only after analyzing the business processes, it turned out that the real needs of the company included only a part of the available functionalities, and the annual subscription cost of PLN 72 000 was disproportionate to the value obtained. In accordance with the basic principle of process optimization, instead of using a ready-made solution, we designed dedicated integrations that fully met the needs of the organization, reducing the cost of implementation to PLN 28,000 and allowing the company to save 61% of the originally planned budget already in the first year.

Costs of manual processes — digitization and automation

The greatest potential for savings and improvements is usually found in manual processes. Once the company has processes mapped out, unnecessary activities removed, and workflows clearly defined, the next step is to digitize and automate them. For example, if a finance employee spends about 80 hours a month manually invoicing, the process can be automated: invoices can generated automatically and the role of the accountant would be limited to checking and approving them, which can take a maximum of a few hours. Such improvements not only reduce costs, but also increase the scalability of the organization and reduce the risk of operational errors.

If you are interested in how much exactly you can save on improving business processes and automation, read our article: https://www.sagiton.pl/en/blog/company-savings-with-automation

How to optimize the company? 3 basic processes that you can improve

If you are wondering how to optimize processes in a company in practice, it is worth starting with those areas that occur in almost every business and bring tangible results the fastest. You already know that as part of the basic principle of process optimization, you should review all activities in the company and eliminate those that are repetitive or unnecessary. Now we will move on to more advanced changes such as introduction of digitalization and automation. Below we present the three processes that we most often improve for clients during optimization implementations — regardless of industry or scale of organization.

1. Customer service process

It is one of the most sensitive processes in the company — it directly affects the image of the company and at the same time generates large operating costs. What you can implement to optimize this area:

• Chatbots and voicebots — automated conversational tools that handle repetitive queries 24/7 without team involvement.
• Automated ticket management – systems that automatically categorize, prioritize, and assign submissions to appropriate individuals or departments.‍
• Automatic SMS and notifications — automatic messages informing the customer about the status of the application, the implementation of the service or the next steps.

As you can see, there are many methods to optimize processes in customer service that will help you reduce response time, reduce team load and improve communication consistency.

2. Sales and offer processes

In many companies, the sales process is based on manual actions, sheets and inconsistent procedures, which makes salespeople spend too much time on administrative tasks instead of working with the customer. How you can change it:

• Automation of lead handling in CRM system — this sales optimization will help salespeople register, qualify and communicate with leads.
• Automated Sales Dashboards – eliminate the manual transfer of information between different systems.
• Automation of bidding — offers can be generated automatically based on customer data and established trading conditions.

Good business optimization will not do without improving sales processes — as we wrote in the previous paragraphs, increasing profits that can result from this is half the success for a well-functioning enterprise.

3. Financial and operational processes

Processes related to finance, billing or reporting are crucial for business stability, but often burdened with a large number of manual activities. For our clients, we usually improve processes:

• Reporting — data can be automatically collected, processed and presented in readable reports without manual preparation of statements, which directly affects the efficiency of enterprises.
• Data processing — data from different systems can be integrated with each other, for automatic transmission and preparation for further use.

Automation of financial and operational processes not only frees up team time for tasks of greater business value, but above all reduces the risk of errors.

Optimizing processes in the company — a necessity or a choice?

At the moment, the issues that we wrote about in the article are still of interest to some of the companies. However, the more organizations begin to consciously implement the improvement of business processes, the sooner they will notice a real decrease in operating costs. And this directly translates into larger budgets for development, investment and business scaling. Companies that do not decide to do anything in this area will simply be left behind over time — less flexible, less efficient and less competitive.

Even if today it seems to you that your processes are already well organized, it is worth verifying it. The lack of regular identification of problems, reliable data analysis and evaluation of the effectiveness of processes often leads to financial “leaks” that are invisible at first glance in the company. At Sagiton, we conduct business process audits, during which we identify bottlenecks and propose specific improvements tailored to the real needs of the organization.