Every 20 seconds, $1 million is wasted globally through poor investments that don’t align well with a given organization’s goals and strategy.

This is according to a 2018 Pulse of Profession (PMI) report. The report also indicated that organizations waste 9.9% for every dollar invested due to poor strategic goal delivery.

Yet, as a solution to these business woes, 89% of executives say BizOps could significantly improve strategic decision-making by improving collaboration between IT and business teams.

The startup bizOps buzz is reimagining older, already pioneered bizOp practices used by the likes of Yahoo, Google, and LinkedIn. Startups are using bizOps (otherwise knowns as business operations) in a more generalist role demanding rapid execution and a larger scope of responsibilities.

Tech startups such as Slack, Dropbox, Ziprecruiter, and (of course) Process Street, are recruiting for and building out their Bizop teams.

But what exactly do we mean by bizOps in this modern world, and how has the concept been reimagined for the startup culture and mentality?

In this article, you’ll learn what bizOps is, from the day-to-day operations to the core activities. We’ll then discuss the importance of bizOps, using real-world examples to display the role in action. Find out how to apply BizOps as a startup or as a large enterprise to significantly improve strategic decision-making in your business.

Sound good?

Click on the relevant subheader below to jump to your section of choice, alternatively scroll down to read all we have to say:

• What is bizOps?
• Key concepts in bizOps
• BizOps activities: Maximizing profit, performance, and growth (with free templates)
• The importance of bizOps (+ business operations examples)

Let’s jump straight to it!
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I’m writing a post about Airbnb, from an Airbnb.

Ironic yes, but not unlikely.

In 2019, Airbnb hosted 272 million bookings globally. And, in 2020, despite a global pandemic restricting travel, Airbnb suffered relatively minimal losses of only 22%.

2020 was also the year Airbnb decided to go IPO, despite the global pandemic, a significant drop in revenue, and global travel restrictions.

How did they manage it? A growth strategy like no other, that’s how.

This Process Street blog post takes a deep dive into Airbnb’s growth strategy, how they got where they are today, and where they could be going. To skip to a specific section of the post click the appropriate link below:

• The history of Airbnb: From Obama O’s to turning over $3.4B in revenue
• Airbnb’s growth startegy: Product breakdown
• Airbnb’s growth strategy: Overcoming “stranger equals danger”
• Airbnb’s growth strategy: The sharing economy
• Airbnb’s growth strategy: Promise & deliver on value for everyone
• The future of Airbnb

Let’s start with where it all began, with 3 air beds.🛌
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Joseph Juran, the Architect of Quality, paved the way for the active pursuit of quality in Business.

The Juran Trilogy redefined quality management; reducing chronic defects and the costs associated below a 20% industry expectation.

The Juran Trilogy has been shown to give benefits across multiple parameters, increasing productivity, reducing cycle-times, improving human safety, and reducing product failure rates – with a 80% reduction in some cases.

For us as Process Street, the Juran Trilogy is one of our favorite tools for improving business operations. It’s a straightforward methodology that brings results.

Learn how to apply the Juran Trilogy for your business, and improve the quality of operations. Click on the relevant subheader below to jump to your section of choice, alternatively scroll down to read all we have to say:

• What is the Juran Trilogy?
• Using the Juran Trilogy for quality control: Quality planning, control and improvement
• Implementing the Juran Trilogy using Process Street
• Juran Trilogy examples: Quality improvement in the real world

Let’s get started!
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Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth…
– Mike Tyson

Which, let’s face it, happens to most start-ups and entrepreneurs. Around 75% in fact.

You have the best idea. You spend days, weeks, and months perfecting a 40-page business plan filled with five-year forecasts, 18-month roadmaps, and in-depth marketing strategies. You confidently pitch it to stakeholders and investors.

And then?

Then you get punched in the mouth.

Potential investors go quiet or “haven’t had time to read it” and you’re left with an expensive, wasted deliverable and a chunk of time that you’ll never get back. Worse still, your product isn’t any nearer launching and you haven’t secured any buy-in or investment.

What. A. Waste. Of. Time.

Traditional business plans are of little use to start-ups, and of no real interest to investors.

But what’s the alternative?

A one-page business plan inspired by Eric Ries’s Lean Start-Up methodology and specifically designed for emerging entrepreneurs: The Lean Canvas.

The Lean Canvas is a living framework that allows you to quickly capture your idea or concept, thoroughly validate it, and then continuously share, improve, and most importantly move on it.

Ok, I know what you’re thinking:

• How can a one-page Lean Canvas possibly replace a 40-page business plan?
• How can I tell the entire story of my business on one-page?
• Is a Lean Canvas really enough to help me secure investment or buy-in?

I have the answers to all these questions and more in this Process Street post.

Ready to dodge some punches?
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A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is the way in which a company brings a product or service to market.

No matter how good your idea is, you need a go-to-market strategy.

Why?

Because statistically speaking, your business is more likely to fail than succeed.

In fact, if you’re a startup, your chance of failure is a dreary 90%. That’s not to say that your idea isn’t a brilliant one, or that you haven’t got what it takes to bring it to market.

Startups fail for different reasons. Perhaps the market is already awash with companies offering the same solution as yours, or the market isn’t mature enough to welcome your product. Or, maybe the cost of developing and launching your product is so steep that it’s unprofitable.

If successful, a go-to-market strategy will be your salvation and prevent you from failure. The question is, how do you develop a winning strategy? Which factors should you consider?

I asked our VP of Marketing Bryan Sise these very questions. Through the course of his career at companies like Twilio, SendGrid, Twitter, Dynamic Signal, and now Process Street, Bryan has noticed what contributes to GTM success.

In this post I’ll share with you what he has to say. I’ll cover what a go-to-market strategy is, types of go-to-market strategies, the key steps to building a successful go-to-market strategy, and what GTM strategies we use here at Process Street.

• What is a go-to-market strategy?
• 6 factors to consider when building a go-to-market strategy
• Types of go-to-market strategies
• Key steps to building a successful go-to-market strategy
• Go-to-market strategies at Process Street

Let’s get strategizing. 🚀
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The other day, my household experienced one of the great tragedies of the home delivery era: our grocery delivery was canceled.

You know what that means. I had to go to the grocery store. Like, physically, in person, go inside the grocery store.

I survived, but phew. Let’s just say there were a few close calls.

All in all, though, it was a successful trip. I picked up a couple of prescriptions, had an eye exam, switched the pet insurance, got some advice about first-time homeownership, and even remembered to get dinner fixins. I would’ve gotten my oil changed and tires rotated, too, but I don’t have a car so… Yeah. I didn’t do that.

This is what economies of scope look like. Economies of scope are when it’s more cost-effective to produce related items together than it is to produce them individually. In the 21st century economy, it’s also an increasingly familiar model as brands continue to expand their offerings to consumers.

As a consumer, this model is great. We don’t have to run around all over the place to take care of all our responsibilities. For companies, it’s not a bad model, either.

Economies of scope – offering all of these services under one roof – companies are actually spending less by offering more.

But wait – how does that work?

Well, I’ll tell you:

• What do we mean by economies of scope?
• Economies of scope: Pros and cons
• Economies of scope vs economies of scale
• Economies of scope in action
• If all your friends jumped off a bridge…

Welcome to Process Street! 👋 Right this way, please.
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We’re an ambitious bunch here at Process Street.

In terms of numbers, we’ve published over 1,000 onsite blog posts, over 300 offsite blog posts, penned 5 huge ebooks, attended many an external webinar, and created many a podcast, too. And this is only our content marketing team’s efforts. If I were to discuss the phenomenal accomplishments of our other departments — from engineering to sales, product to customer success — we’d be here all day.

Despite our company-wide accomplishments, we knew in 2020 that we could push ourselves further (especially considering our $12m cash injection from Accel, Salesforce, and others). Naturally, we turned the ambitious goals and objectives we’d set ourselves up a notch.

This meant that, rather than only working with KPIs, we threw OKRs into the mix as well.

Not to toot our own horn too much, but I can say with confidence that the choice to do so went in our favor. In fact, we’ve had some of the best months ever since deploying OKRs!

This is why, in this post, I’m going to tell you everything that we learned from internally deploying OKRs at Process Street. Specifically, I’ll give you a quick recap on what OKRs are, go over our method for implementing OKRs in detail, recount my experience of getting used to (and then loving) OKRs, on top of providing 5 tried-and-tested tips for deploying OKRs at your company.

Just read the following sections to get completely clued-up:

• OKRs: A quick breakdown
• How we deployed OKRs at Process Street
• Deploying OKRs: How do they impact the rest of the company?
• 5 tips and tricks for deploying OKRs at your company

It’s time for you to pivot to OKRs and hit challenging targets like a pro, too.

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This is a guest post by Brayn Wills, the current Knowledge Management Specialist at ProProfs knowledge base. He is responsible for creating unique and relevant content on the knowledge base and keeping track of the latest developments in the realm of knowledge management. In his free time, he is either reading a new book or exploring offbeat destinations.

When a crisis strikes, it brings along daunting challenges that require businesses to reevaluate their strategies. One such significant challenge is customer churn. It can impact a business drastically if left unchecked.

Statistics show that, on average, most companies experience a monthly churn rate of 7.5%. If left unchecked, this can be catastrophic for a company’s bottom line.

A rapidly shrinking customer base means reduced profits that can have a severe impact on an organization, especially during a crisis. What’s more, crisis situations tend to exacerbate the root causes of churn, meaning businesses need to be extra responsive and attentive to their customers during these times.

While you cannot prevent all customers from leaving your company, you certainly can take concrete steps to keep customer churn in control.

In this post for Process Street, I will cover:

• What is customer attrition?
• Customer expectations and mindset during a crisis
• 6 Effective ways to reduce customer attrition
• How to provide extra value to customers during a crisis
• Move beyond promotion to meet customer expectations
• Customer retention solutions with Process Street

Read on to uncover the pragmatic ways to reduce customer churn during a crisis by understanding and providing value to your customers.
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Imagine you knew absolutely everything there was to know about the company you buy from. I’m talking about their goals, values … even the challenges they face. It would be pretty radical right?

Or rather, the company in question would be radically transparent.

Radical transparency is a phenomenon that’s gaining traction, and this post is here to tell you why. I’ll be taking a look at what radical transparency means and how the approach is put into practice at Gitlab, a DevOps platform founded upon an open-source ethos.

To jump to a specific section of the post click the appropriate link below:

• What is radical transparency?
• A brief introduction to GitLab
• What does radical transparency look like at Gitlab?
• A look into GitLab’s employee handbook
• What does radical transparency look like in practice?
• Radical Transparency: Concluding thoughts 🧠

Let’s get started 🚀
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Everyone knows that unicorns don’t exist.

Or do they?

The latest findings have reported that there are now over 600 unicorns thriving in the wild. Experts in the field often cite unicorns’ unique capacity for managing hyper growth that’s allowed them to experience such a surge of success.

However, unicorns still face a perilous existence: two-thirds of unicorns never reach full maturity. This is partly due to a lack of sustainable resources in their environment, but with valuations of $1 billion or more, they are also highly coveted by collectors.

Say you want to raise a gangly young foal into a noble specimen of unicorn-ness. Where do you start? How do you make sure your prospective unicorn makes it into that elite one-third of successful hopefuls?

Fortunately for you, Process Street knows a thing or two about unicorn rearing and maintenance, and this post will cover the basic strategies of managing hyper growth for the best possible outcome: a fully matured unicorn.

Peruse the following chapters for the best advice we have to give:

• What makes a unicorn a unicorn?
• What is hyper growth?
• The 3 stages of hyper growth
• 4 strategies for managing hyper growth well

Giddy-up! (Last horse reference, I promise.)
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