Process Standardisation and Optimisation
Process standardisation is writing down how work actually gets done and improving it, so the method survives the person who invented it.
Service within Execution OS
In Growth Strategy: Replicate the Engine
How we help with Process Standardisation and Optimisation
A process that lives in one person's head is a single point of failure with a notice period.
Write down how the work actually happens
The real process, including the workarounds, rather than the one in the handbook. The gap between them is usually the finding.
Find where time and errors accumulate
Handoffs, rework and waiting, measured rather than guessed. The bottleneck is rarely where the team believes it is.
Standardise before automating
A process that varies by who is doing it cannot be automated. Agreeing one way of doing it is the work; the tooling is the easy part.
Make it survive its author
Documented, owned and reviewed, so the method does not leave when the person who invented it does.
More services within Execution OS
HR Business PartneringStrategic people operations that align org design and hiring with what the business is actually trying to do.
Performance ManagementThe numbers a leadership team actually runs on, and the cadence that makes them act.
ERP ImplementationChoosing and landing the system the business will actually use, and the process work that has to happen first.
A process that lives in one person's head is a single point of failure with a notice period.
FAQ
Questions founders ask about Process Standardisation and Optimisation
Why document processes at all?
Because a process that lives in one person's head is a single point of failure with a notice period. Documentation is what lets a company hire, delegate and scale without quality falling.
Is this not just bureaucracy?
It becomes bureaucracy when the process outlives its purpose or is written for a company several times larger. Standardisation that fits the current size removes decisions people should not have to make twice.
Where should a company start?
With the process that touches cash or the customer and currently depends on one person. That is where the risk and the return are both highest.
How does this connect to ERP?
Directly. An ERP laid over a broken process automates the breakage and makes it harder to see. Process work comes first, and skipping it is the single most common reason implementations disappoint.
What our research says about Process Standardisation and Optimisation
Process knowledge sits in individual heads rather than in documented procedures, so any team change creates risk.
Governance needs an artifact, or it becomes personality-dependent and dies when the person who cared about it goes on leave.
The fix is not more accountants. Hiring more people to a broken process scales the chaos.
Further reading
Article · Srikar KedarisettyAccounting Is Not ControllershipRead
Article · Sriram ChidambaramRevenue governance: the cadence that makes a plan realRead
Article · Srikar KedarisettyWhy Growing Companies Lose Trust in Their Own NumbersRead
Article · Sriram ChidambaramWhy Startups Don't Fail to Scale Because of the Market. They Fail Because of the Process.Read
The people behind Process Standardisation and Optimisation
Process Standardisation and Optimisation is run by the studio team: one multidisciplinary team whose pods work in tandem, matched to the sector and the stage the company is in.
Strategy Consulting / Labs pod
Led by Karthik Beknal
Lead - Strategy Consulting & FP&A. Defines direction and drives it through focused sprints.
See the pod structure
What usually runs alongside this
Business TransformationChanging how a business runs, not just what it reports, with the sequencing that keeps it trading throughout.- ERP ImplementationChoosing and landing the system the business will actually use, and the process work that has to happen first.
- Performance ManagementThe numbers a leadership team actually runs on, and the cadence that makes them act.
