When was the last time you sat back and had a look at the processes in your business or community organisation and evaluated if efficiencies could be gained? Just recently, I’ve completed an Admin Systems assignment as part of my Diploma in Business. One of the reasons I’m studying this course is to provide the discipline to work on the business rather than in the business and look at business issues which may otherwise be put to one side and not addressed. We were encouraged to take a birds eye view and assess if each of the processes in the business were meeting the criteria for good operational systems. Those criteria are:-
- Supports achievement of business goals
- Integrated
- Efficient
- Effective
- Not particular person dependent
- Self-supporting
- Interdependent
- Easy to use
- Cost effective
- Accessible
- Includes contingencies/back up
It was helpful to see where improvements could be made to our administrative systems, even if in some cases it might just be tweaking around the edges or perhaps writing a formal procedure for a process rather than relying on emails. In the craziness of our business lives, perhaps it is a good discipline to run a different system through this criteria each week and make improvements where necessary or celebrate when it is working well. This could be applied in business or not for profit or perhaps to the systems used for volunteering as a treasurer. What improvements could you bring to your administrative systems?
Here’s to volunteer treasurer software..
