In today’s business world, owners are constantly grappling with concerns and surmounting obstacles, the least of which is actually staying afloat financially in what can be an unforgiving economy.

However, the struggle to turn a profit pales in comparison to some of the harsher consequences of failing to comply with certain regulatory requirements.

Take HRIS broker Zenefits for example. Failure to comply with several licencing regulations issued by the California Department of Insurance landed them a $7million fine.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg; more severe penalties extend to include government bodies compelling you to dissolve your company, and ultimately the endangerment of the lives and well-being of individuals your organization is servicing.

“On a global scale, we are all being asked to do more with less—and for less. At some point soon, the current internal systems will not be able to hold back the deluge, and companies will be faced with a stark decision—consistently improve or perish” – Erik Myhrberg and Joseph Raciti, Practical Field Guide for ISO 13485

Often, these kinds of requirements take the form of the ISO 13485 standard for medical device manufacturers.

In this article, I’ll break down the ISO 13485 standard, from a basic introduction to suggestions and resources for implementing it in your business or organization.

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In my last post for Process Street (and the first after being hired as a full-time content writer!) I took a look at the Duct Tape Marketing System and published the Duct Tape Marketing System review previously, but today I’m bringing you the top five hacks from this innovative course by small business expert John Jantsch. These are points John made that resonated with me as a unique take on something that seems obsolete or a new angle on something too well-established to be changed.

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Note: This is a review of the Duct Tape Marketing System course and coaching program. If you are interested in a review of the book, check out the Amazon reviews here.

BONUS FREE STUFF – If you’re considering buying the Duct Tape Marketing System make sure to check out our exclusive bonus valued at $1,500 just for using this link. You can find all the details at the bottom of this post.

Why I’m writing this review

Recently I was hired by Vinay as the new content creator for Process Street. With a history of ghost-writing product descriptions and other mundane copy I was excited to get underway with something more personal and varied. Unlike in the past, this job needs me to research topics I don’t know much about. I hadn’t heard of more than two big marketing blogs and was lost for words when asked my opinions about them.

It’s scary having to talk about business and marketing when you’re a music technology graduate, but my first checklist was, coincidentally, relevant to my skills! Intentionally or not, my next project involved writing about a marketing course that is applicable to plenty of different people, teaching the basic theory of what seems to be a science of holding attention spans that have shrunk down massively since the introduction of all this easy-to-read content on the internet. Writing this review (and another upcoming post) gave me my first freedom to write as myself and expanded my marketing knowledge hugely.

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The following is a guest post by Billy Lucas. Billy is a passionate blogger sharing business tips on behalf of EngageBay. He writes primarily on SEO, email marketing, CRM, marketing automation and covers the entire gamut of marketing.

Every business wants to get the most out of its resources. Apart from making more profit, companies constantly strive towards reducing overall operational costs.

Technology has helped us in solving some of the most difficult problems where human power is just not enough, and for every big problem that is solved using technology, a number of other small problems are also solved.

Surviving in today’s competitive world requires businesses to efficiently utilize available resources and take appropriate strategic decisions. In order to prevent wastage of resources, many organizations are turning towards process automation solutions.

Business process automation has emerged as a way to carry out a number of tasks without the need for any manual input. IT departments in companies extensively use automation to efficiently provision technology resources, cut operational costs and optimize overall utilization.

The benefits of IT process automation are limitless. If you run a business or are thinking of setting one up, you should definitely consider incorporating process automation.

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Assigning team members to their tasks is a duty which is as vital as it is tedious.

Everyone pretty much knows what they should be doing, so there’s no need to directly assign them to everything when you could be spending time on more important tasks, right?

Wrong.

Human error (of which memory plays a huge part) affects 1/100 routine tasks where care is needed. This means that the people responsible either makes a mistake or forgets what they need to do (hence why documented processes are so important).

That’s why we here at Process Street have a role assignment feature in our checklists.

Role assignments let you dictate who each task in your process checklists needs to be assigned to without fail every time. All you need to do is set up the role which will have the task assigned, then Process Street does the rest.

Ready to assign your tasks without fail, fuss or tedious fiddling? Then let’s dive right in.

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Offboarding a team member is never easy.

Relationships aside, the logistics of making sure that the ex-employee isn’t a security risk, their old tasks are accounted for and covered, and that there will be someone to take their place (with the appropriate training) is a tall order to meet.

That’s why this post will show you everything you need to know about offboarding an employee, including:

• Why offboarding is important
• How to effectively (and safely) offboard an employee
• How to make opportunities out of them leaving

I’ll even throw in some free templates you can follow to make sure that your offboarding goes right every time.

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Deepwater Horizon – arguably one of the most catastrophic industrial disasters of human history, and the estimated largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry.

It also happens to be one of the most abysmal failures of quality management by any company, period.

On an otherwise unsuspecting evening of April, 2010, approximately 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico, the first in a chain of quality management related failures became glaringly apparent as the emergency response protocols were enforced after an oil leak in the drilling well was discovered.

The oversights were as follows:

• Lack of proper quality assessment resulted in weak, potentially contaminated cement or “drilling mud” used in the initial failsafe failing to properly block the leak.
• Fluid pressure tests were not properly carried out and clear warnings were ignored.
• Rising oil and gas levels were not properly monitored.
• The final failsafe on the ocean floor, designed to close the leaking pipe shut, failed to close due to the conditions of the drill pipe.

The aftermath of this chain of negligence left 11 people dead, caused over 130 million gallons of oil to leak into the Atlantic Ocean, and cost over $62 billion in damages.

Not one point of failure, but four. Clearly not an anomaly, this disaster was the result of a series of systematic failures that uncover a dark truth about the reality of cost-cutting and disregard for quality control.

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It’s no secret that documenting and analyzing your business processes is vital to creating a healthy business.

Yet, despite the benefits of bpm software and business process mapping being readily talked about, value stream mapping doesn’t get the same share of attention.

This is a mistake.

Value stream mapping is just as, if not more, important to reducing waste and increasing your business’ efficiency than standard process mapping.

That’s why I’ll be showing you how to make a value stream map from start to finish, with no wasted time and no needlessly confusing terms.

Let’s go.

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SWOT: Whether or not the acronym conjures images of riot gear and armored vehicles for you, we are of course talking about a business methodology for evaluating the internal and external factors governing the performance of your business.

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. A SWOT analysis is a way of evaluating a part of (or even a whole) business, based on the criteria of each of the words in the acronym.

If you just want to dive right in and skip the details, here’s the template, as promised:

When you actually run it, conditional logic will show only the tasks relevant to you, to save you a whole lot of manual work and messing around in the long run.

If you’re interested in learning how to use the template, plus some best practice SWOT principles, real-world use cases and some post-SWOT advice, read on.

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There is a need for digital transformation in property management

There is no easy way to summarize the role of a property manager in a way that really captures the wide range of responsibilities they have.

In essence, it’s all about communication. Interactions with property owners, tenants, and employees all need to be coordinated with efficiency and professionalism in order to keep all parties satisfied, establish a loyal customer base and enable future growth in a tough market.

Basically, managing properties isn’t just about real estate — it’s just as much about relationships.

You have to track conversations and deal statuses across multiple landlords, tenants, and applicants in addition to managing the properties themselves. It’s high-touch, high-urgency, and high-stress work.

“Communication can easily become chaos if not handled correctly. Between phone calls, text messages, emails, and walk-in traffic, it can be hard to keep tenants, owners, and staff on the same page. Documentation is very important to avoid miscommunication.” – Nick D’Agnillo, CEO & Founder of Nexus Property Management

The extent of human interaction that is integral to property management creates a large margin for human error. Poor lead management, documentation of calls/emails, inspection coordination, tenant screening, and maintenance work orders are just a few examples of tasks/processes that are difficult to execute consistently without the assistance of workflow software running in the background.

As a result, property management firms are beginning to place a greater focus on improving business efficiency by formally documenting their processes and integrating workflow software, because it enables them to deliver their clients a superior service, while also providing employees with the tools they need to perform at their best.

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