Control Your Product
The three critical “P’s” of any successful business are Product, People and Process. Your product must provide a service or solution to an industry or people. If you have been in business for any length of time, your product is serving its purpose. As fast as progress is moving, this can change as we have all seen… We all know about the tale of the buggy whip industry – more recently, Blockbuster Video. Industries come and go. So we have our Product, now we need People.
Control Your People
We need people to manage our operation and to work the business. They need to be motivated and qualified to do the work that is required from their position. People can make or break our business and developing hiring practices that focus our resources on those types of employees is critical. I don’t want to get ahead of myself here because those “practices” are a critical component in the Process part of this article. People will make or break our business and we all know this intrinsically. Picking the right people to manage the rest of the people is what we can and must control.
Control Your Process
Finally, there is the process part of the successful business model. Here is where most companies fail to complete the puzzle. Process is what will allow us the control how we structure the business of producing the product or service we supply – the very life’s blood of our company’s potential profit. At the heart of this Process is the hiring and firing practices we establish within our Human Resource Departments. Human Resource professionals are crucial to recruiting, hiring and retaining top talent. Additionally, these professionals have purchasing authority for products and services to help companies realize the best return from their human capital investments from benefits programs to training resources.
People and Process Related Failures
One of the true victims of this economic slowdown we have been experiencing for 10 years now is this critical department. It used to be that we had full time HR managers who specialized in this crazy world of laws, rules, regulations, feelings and emotions. One person was in charge of making sure we were dotting our “I’s” and crossing our “T’s” in this process. The same is true in most cases with the Safety & Loss Prevention Coordinator. In most cases, with profits down and companies forced to watch every penny, these two vital pieces of the Process puzzle have been relegated to an Office Manager with far too much already on their plate. I have great respect for these over-worked and under-appreciated professionals trying their best to keep the company running. Unfortunately, this is where our company becomes vulnerable to expenses that drive the cost of doing business beyond our ability to control. Process related failures can reduce and even eliminate profit from any company’s bottom line!
Ultimately, we must do everything we can do WITHIN OUR CONTROL to make sure our processes are the best they can be – this is how we truly provide insurance to protect the most important product our business provides… PROFIT!
Protecting Your Business is within Your Control
What is critical for every business owner to visualize is that the real insurance protections for their business are within their control – they are built into the very processes that we create within our Human Resource Departments coordinating with the Safety & Loss Prevention systems we construct. The insurance premiums you pay and the amount of the premiums you are charged are in direct proportion to pay for failures within these two departments. The more claims you have, the more premiums you pay… The opposite effect is true for fewer claims.
In order to insure the company’s viability i.e. profitability, you must take control of the control-ables. The question is, how can we afford to maintain these processes with the limited funds available to pay for them? If you would like to learn more about my team and how we can help you solve these difficult issues, please contact us online for a free consultation. I look forward to working with you!
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