Doctors advise patients to get a yearly checkup. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, regular health exams and tests can help 
find problems before they start. They also can help find problems early, when your chances for treatment and cure are better. The same goes for companies and organizations. A regularly scheduled examination of your operations is suggested. This means reviewing your processes, technology, and costs. In return you receive an accurate picture of your current business health as well as what needs to be addressed. This article walks you through the process and highlights the benefits of a yearly business checkup.
The Checkup – A full assessment of your organization, division, department, or team with a particular focus on processes, technology, and costs constitutes a checkup. It can be as extensive as you would like but at the very least it should analyze your most critical components and their associated support elements. Before any checkup is performed, it’s important to have senior leadership validate the exercise. This prioritizes the checkup and sends a signal to everyone else that their cooperation is mandatory. Without it, the checkup will fall short and possibly return a false reading.
Operations – A true understanding of all the bottlenecks, process breakdowns, redundancies, and other inefficiencies are the benefits of a checkup. Just as a medical checkup analyzes your vital signs, an operational checkup does the same thing for your business. The goal here is not to simply record operational measurements, but those measurements must be interpreted. This requires a proven team with the required skill set to make sense of the data points. Once this is completed, you are aware of where you stand and what needs to be improved and how quickly.
Strategy – Continuing my analogy, your strategy is similar to a wellness plan for your health. It spells out the things you are going to do to maintain or improve your health. Your business strategy sets the course for your operational health. It’s important to have a documented strategy in place. If you have one how long ago was it reviewed? Is it still relevant considering internal and external market changes? Armed with the data from the review of your operations, your strategy should take into account your current operational posture.
Technology – The current state of your technology is the deciding factor of a checkup. Similar to the condition of your heart, it determines if you receive a promising prognosis. Of course, this part of the checkup is relevant to your industry and its competitive landscape. You may be in an industry that doesn’t rely on technology. On the other hand, companies in your industry may leverage technology to outperform other firms. The point here is to assess your current technology stack, decide if it’s appropriate, and then decide what is needed.
Cost – A checkup should answer this one question, “how much does it cost us to operate”? Before you dismiss this question, I ask you to look at it from a different viewpoint. Do you truly understand the cost associated with each and every process within your organization? Are there financial measurements in place on all process levels that automatically capture cost? The answers to these questions are usually not what most executives expect.
Much like a physical checkup is key to a person’s long-term survival, so is a business checkup for a firm. Understanding where your company is susceptible to unwanted consequences improves your firms odds of longevity.
West Arlington Consulting Group focuses on helping businesses improve the customer experience and reduce business cost through process analysis and strategic realignment.