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To be the best at your level is a unique achievement requiring above average commitment and performance.  A business that stands alone at the top of its market earns above average profits, making it something of value and worth the extra effort needed to become a “Peerless Competitor.” 

Competing at the top requires more that simply pumping additional money into an organization.  A solid base like the “Peerless Pyramid” is quite simply the starting point, and while organization will not guarantee business success, a poorly organized structure will guarantee business failure.  To perform at the top of your market requires going beyond a solid structure, but requires connecting that structure together by implementing business processes.

The seven steps involved provide the framework needed to move your company into the top tier of your market, starting with process recognition then to formalizing, i.e. writing down, every step in the process, (see previous article: Be the Best I).  The order entry process for a coffee company may seem intuitive. Customers place their order, pay their money and get their coffee.  How simple can it get right?  Ray Kroc of McDonald’s Corporation was referred to as “the service sector’s equivalent of Henry Ford” by the Harvard Business School.  Kroc recognized that the order entry for serving and selling hamburgers was a process that should be written down and evaluated.  The same can be said of the order entry for serving and selling coffee. 

The hard work in process development is recognizing and documenting what is actually taking place.  The fun part is reviewing what is taking place and clearly understanding and evaluating every step, looking for ways to combine and/or eliminate steps, simplifying the process.  The original reason and goal for the process may change during the simplification process.  In the order entry example notice that a sales opportunity exists, your employee is face-to-face with your customer - what an opportunity!  The goal should not be simply product or service delivery but ensuring that this face-to-face encounter becomes an opportunity to increase sales. 

This is the ultimate in simplification: your business can increase sales without incurring a single cent of expense.  My daughter had a job working at a bakery/coffee shop while attending college.  One day she told me that she recognized that when greeting a customer if she smiled and offered them an additional item, up-sold them, that more often they would increase their purchase, resulting in her getting a bigger tip.  Her goal was to earn more money, and she figured out how to change the order entry process. Her discover resulted in a more profitable transaction for not only herself but for the shop owner.  Successful companies recognize that process simplification is a critical part to their success and increasing profits. 

In 1776, noted economist Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations observed that a single pin-maker could complete the eighteen steps needed to make a single pin in one day.  By dividing labor, assigning a single worker to complete a single step in the pin-making process, ten men could make “upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a single day.”   Simplification does not necessarily mean fewer steps. It really means clearly understand the process from beginning to the end. In Smith’s pin-making process there were eighteen steps to successfully make a pin.  A clearly defined, written process, reviewed for simplification can be put into a logical order then repeated every time. 

Henry Ford studied the car making process and utilizing the concepts of Adam Smith, developed a simplified repeatable process for assembling cars.  Ray Kroc applied these same principles to the seemingly simple process of making hamburgers, resulting in a repeatable process that delivers the same quality product to billions of customers in thousands of locations worldwide.

Let me know if you have any comments, questions, or suggestions.
Write David W. Weatherholt at david@bnewsviews.com

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