Want your message to be interpreted in the same way by each one of your team members?
Want your message to be loud and clear for each one of your customers?
Want to learn how to ensure that each one of your company’s team members delivers the same, outstanding bit of service?

You need to have a system in place, a system that sets your business up for success.

How can such success come, however, if nobody is on the same page?

Yeah, that sounds like a recipe for disaster.

For instance, say you’re carrying out a project that’s new to your team.

Would you let your team run with it without first consulting each other with a clear vision of what it’s supposed to look like in the end?

Hopefully not!

Odds are that you’d want your team to be trained in whatever area of expertise they need to be trained in, in order to carry out said project.

They need to be in-sync.

How can you, as the manager or owner of your company, achieve such a thing?

Let’s take a second and learn how to implement systems into your business that work.

Shall we begin?

Want to know how to seamlessly introduce new systems to your business? You can easily learn how with five steps. Click To Tweet

Why Systems Are Important

If you’re running a business or thinking of running one, it’s important to have some systems in place.

If you’re running a business and trying to expand or scale it, VARIOUS systems NEED to be in place.

Here are a few reasons why such systems are important to the congruity and fluidity of your company’s work environment.

Systems Enhance Fluidity, Productivity, and Work Quality Throughout Your Staff: When you’re on your own, it’s impossible to work more hours than the 24 we each have in a day.

And, it’s extremely inefficient to try and manage all of the different aspects of your business by yourself, right?

So, what’s the prudent thing to do if you’re the head of a company?

Most definitely, it’s to pass some of the work off to another team member!

When you’re in control of a business, it’s important to have the same, high-quality work you’re used to coursing through your company.

Therefore, you need to empower others to grow and achieve the same standards you would strive to achieve if you were in their position.

This is the primary difference between being a freelancer and being in charge of running a business.

In a freelance setup, you know your own work and it’s easy to trust the quality of the work that you produce.

In a business setting, however, you have a team of producers to lead.

You need your standards to be reproducible throughout your team.

Having a system in place that your team knows quite well will ensure that your standards are reproducible and understandable to all.

Systems ARE Necessary For The Growth Of Your Company: Can we press the point any further?

To grow, you also need to be working on the business components that will, eventually, contribute to your company’s expansion.

What are these components?

Components such as sales, marketing, and business strategy.

Sales drive up the revenue your company earns, right?

Well, they also allow your company to invest back into itself, purchasing additional tools, materials, resources, etc. that can further its advantage within its niche(s).

Marketing efforts, another avenue that also requires some investing, increase the likelihood of leads being converted into actual sales.

Finally, business strategies are the foundation of your company’s plans to expand and search for things like new profit drivers and new niches.

What do all of these things have in common?

They require a working system in place in order for them to be efficiently carried out by your team.

Related: Five Ways to Boost Your Business’s Ability to Stay Competitive

With all of this taken into consideration, it’s easy to see why you need a system in place.

Your purpose can’t be carried out without a plan, or some form of project management.

Putting a system in place that your employees carry out makes their results better for the customers of your company, and more like the work you’re accustomed to.

Everyone will be on the same page.

What does this mean for your business if you’re looking into scaling or expanding it?

Simply put, it’ll scale and expand successfully and profitably. Such things can’t happen if you don’t have a system in place.

Related: Maintaining Margins as You Grow – Why It’s Important and How to Do It

One more time for luck: systems are important for scaling!

Okay, you’ve got it now.

We’ve been throwing around the word “system” all along.

Are you wondering what, in the context of this article, “system” means?

More on that next.

Scaling isn't done overnight, but if you properly systemize your business it's easier than you'd think. Click To Tweet

What Is a System?

Finally, we’ll unveil the mysterious meaning behind the term that is so important to your business’s success.

Fortunately, however, there isn’t anything too complex to unveil!

A system is an alignment of people following a set of steps, a process, or procedures.

More often than not the system involves various individuals using similar tools or software programs.

In a more relatable sense, however, a system is also such a thing as an assembly line in a factory, where (sometimes) humans operate the machinery which, in turn, cranks out various parts and items in response to your operation.

There are plenty of other examples as well. A popular system that’s easily integrated into a business, for instance, is the 3PM method.

3PM stands for people, process, platforms, and measurements.

Imagine this system as a triangle composed of the three Ps on each of its points with the “M” (measurements) in the center.

The system doesn’t work unless your company has the right people, processes, and platforms in place.

For example, imagine if your company had proper funding for software programs (platforms) but lacked the project management or the motivated personnel to operate them to your business’s benefit.

The platforms wouldn’t be of much use, would they?

The same goes for motivated individuals with a lack of process or procedural knowledge; they have the ability to accomplish what you need to have accomplished but they lack the direction and clarity needed to ensure the system is fluid.

The 3PM method is more of a system template than anything; it’s the framework for your company to successfully implement a system using its current resources.

Or, it can be a way of knowing which areas (people, processes, platforms) you need to improve on in order to implement a system.

Once you have all three angles of the triangle in place, the central portion, or the measurable portion, is used to discern success or failure.

This, in turn, can be used to measure whether or not it’s time to scale your business.

Remember, if you don’t have a system in place that works it can be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to scale your company.

For the most part, our definition of system is probably similar to the one you already had in mind.

The only difference is that it’s specifically tailored to demonstrate how any business (your business!) can scale and grow.

We’ve well established the importance of having support systems in your business. It’s now crucial to learn how to implement these systems successfully. Simply having them as part of your business isn’t sufficient – job’s not over yet!.

How can you, as the leader of your company, easily and successfully implement a working system?

Systemizing aspects of your business can be fruitful in the long run. Learn the five steps to systemizing successfully, here. Click To Tweet

How to Implement Systems That Work Anywhere

Where/How to Start – Choosing what you want to systemise first within your company is quite an important step to take.

In fact, we’ve written an entire guide just on that here.

Generally, you want to have your administrative activities in order first, such as ordering supplies and handling finances.

Next, focus on things like marketing and product sales.

Once you’ve defined where you want to implement your system you need to understand what you want to measure with the system you plan on using.

What Are The Measurements? – Remember the triangle and the 3PM method we talked about earlier?

You have to know what you’re going to be measuring in order to ascertain whether or not you have a successful system.

Define what metrics and measurements are the best indicators of the success (or failure) of your system.

Things like hours-to-delivery, conversion rates, and leads generated are all handy metrics to keep track of during this step of the process.

The best part about this step: Based on the type of business that you run, there will most likely be many different metrics you could track to help you hone your business system.

What Is The Process? – Knowing what the process is, in its exactness, is an important part of establishing and implementing a system into your company.

Outline all the steps in detail so that every member of your team knows what steps need to be taken in order to achieve the end result.

There are plenty of ways to do such a thing.

You can physically draw out process maps or visual representations of the flow of your ideas.

Or, you can digitally represent them with tools like LucidChartfrom Google.

If you want to go truly old-school simply use post-it notes on a whiteboard or chalkboard.

Regardless of the means, the steps need to be outlined so that whoever reads them understands the process leading up to what needs to be accomplished.

Who Will Do It – It’s important to present members of your team with their clear-cut, defined roles in the system in order for the system to be successful.

Going back, again, to our 3PM method from earlier, what happens when team members don’t know their role?

Madness, for one thing!

But, most importantly, things are done inefficiently.

There’s a lot of backtracking and question-asking.

It all translates to one thing: a much less efficient system that makes no productive steps forward.

It’s also important to consider who will be overseeing the processes and procedures of the system.

Will it be you, another manager, a project supervisor, or a team member?

How Will It Get Accomplished – How will your system be carried out and what will you and your team need to carry it out successfully?

What software or other digital platform will you and your team use to experience success?

How will you and your team communicate whilst carrying out the system in your business?

Identifying the answers to all of these questions is the last crucial component for learning how to implement systems into your business, successfully.

As you can see, all five of the steps we’ve mentioned are essentially a means of foolproofing a system you want to integrate into your business.

Follow all five of the steps before trying out a new system.

From there, it’ll be a simple matter of course-correcting.

The System Overview

We hopefully gave you a pretty good idea of the value of systems, systemization, and why they’re important to your business (especially if you want to scale).

Here’s a quick rundown of everything we discussed, to give you a concise step-by-step guide of where to begin.

  1. Having a system or multiple systems in place is an important part of a fluid, productive work environment.
  2. If you want to scale your company, the efficiency and effectiveness of your system or systems will largely determine your success.
  3. The definition of a system is an alignment of individuals all following the same set of rules and procedures in order to accomplish a specific goal.
  4. Systems ensure that everyone (on the outside and the inside of your company) is on the same page.
  5. It’s easy to implement a system into your company; do the five things below:
  • Identify what you want to systemize.
  • Determine how you want to measure the success of the system you’re planning on implementing.
  • Outline the process in its entirety.
  • Identify who will be in charge of delivering and overseeing the systemized product.
  • Identify how the systemization will be carried out.

Systemization is important.

If you’re looking to successfully and profitably scale or expand your business, it’s the first step in doing so.

Don’t overlook systemizing your business; it will make the difference between successful, long-standing business growth and the all-too-common business growth plateau!

Looking for more ways to successfully scale your empire? Check out The Perfect Tech Stack today!