Would you agree to fly on a plane knowing that the crew was simply ‘told’ what to do but didn’t use clear guidelines and instructions?

Probably not.

Sadly, that is how many organizations operate today – without realizing that it may result in a wide range of negative consequences, from employee inefficiency to lost customers and profits.

Telling employees what to do is not nearly as effective as having a set of written step-by-step instructions they can follow, explaining how exactly routine operations should be performed. That’s where standard operating procedures, or SOPs, come in.

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Cutthroat. Ruthless. Dog-eat-dog.

No, I’m not introducing this year’s hottest action movie – I’m talking about the world of business.

Nowadays, it’s quicker and easier than ever to get a business up and running. Hell, with the emergence of low code and no-code platforms, it’s not just quick and easy but downright simple.

But only 3 out of 4 companies featured in the S&P 500 list will still be relevant – and even exist – in 2027.

With this stark realization, how do startup hopefuls and the Fortune 500 alike know if they’ve got the resources and capabilities to not only stay in the game for the long-haul, but have an overall competitive advantage?

VRIO.

I last discussed VRIO in my post What is VRIO? The 4-Step Framework for Continuous Business Success, where I laid the foundation for understanding what VRIO is, where it came from, and how to navigate the framework.

However, in this post, I’ll be taking things one step further.

I’ll recap what VRIO is (handy for those who don’t already know!), discuss the specific benefits of VRIO analysis, and even provide you with a free VRIO analysis checklist – made by us here at Process Street!

Just read through the following sections to get started:

• What is the VRIO definition?
• The benefits of using the VRIO model for business analysis
• Using Process Street’s VRIO analysis checklist
• Tips for undergoing VRIO analysis with our checklist
• Additional resources for a sustained competitive advantage

The clock’s ticking, so let’s jump in! ⏱

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This post is a collaboration between our Process Street Team and Corey Fradin, Founder of QuickBooost. Exploring topics like productivity, time management, and goal setting, QuickBooost helps you better utilize and take control of your time.

The pursuit of productivity is often simplified to a hero’s fable involving the conquest of willpower; the reality might be more about the systems we build around our work, and the clever things we do to make work easier.

You only have 24 hours in a day. You can reduce the problem of productivity to: How many tasks can I get done in that 24 hour period?

What you choose to do with your time – which tasks you prioritize, which you choose to delegate, which you choose to automate, all of these factors are directly the result of the productivity system you build around your work.

You already have a productivity system, you just might not realize. Even if you don’t feel productive, you can still look at what you’re currently doing and understand it in terms of some kind of system.

What that means is, you can break the situation into parts, like your goals, objectives, strategies, and tactics; how all of these things work together amounts to your productivity system.

Take for example David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology. The GTD method is basically the idea of achieving mental focus by writing down your main tasks, and figuring out how you can break them down into smaller, more immediately actionable tasks.

This is a type of productivity system.

So, in this article, we’ll be looking at:

• What a productivity system actually is
• Why productivity systems are important
• How to build a simple productivity system
• Best practice tips on how to be productive
• Continuously improving your productivity system
• Extra productivity resources

In essence a productivity system is a lot like a straightforward process that helps you break down your workload into smaller, more manageable chunks, and ultimately do more work, more efficiently.

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One of the key parts of driving your business forward is being able to identify and tackle muda.

Is a process taking too long? Is it creating a bottleneck? Are your workers struggling to be productive?

In this Process Street article, we look again at what managers can learn from the Toyota Production System about how to improve your business processes.

The specific concept we’re tackling is muda. Muda translates roughly as waste, and refers to the inefficiencies within processes which you can seek to reduce or eliminate entirely.

As Rene T. Domingo outlines in his paper Identifying and Eliminating The Seven Wastes or Muda for the Asian Institute of Management:

The elimination of waste is the primary goal of any lean system. In effect, lean declares war on waste – any waste. Waste or muda is anything that does not have value or does not add value. Waste is something the customer will not pay for.

We’ll look at the core 7 types of waste Toyota see within processes and production systems and consider the claims for the addition of an eighth.

Processes are a lot more interesting than you’d first think. That isn’t some kind of joke — they’re interesting, I swear. But what is a process?

Although they’re defined as “a collection of interrelated work tasks initiated in response to an event that achieves a specific result”, there’s a bit of a backstory that helps us cut through the corporate tranquilizers and understand what a process is, and why processes matter.

First, a few examples of processes:

• Cleaning the store
• Finding an email address
• Deploying software
• Customer profiling
• Onboarding a new employee
• Planning a wedding

But why are those processes? Why aren’t they just jobs to be done? The point is that when you formalize a process, you think about the workflow with productivity in mind and it makes it easier to execute and optimize.

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69% of Millennials would rather make $50k a year at a job they love than $75k a year in a boring job.

On top of that, the cost to the US economy of a disengaged, dissatisfied employee can be up to $500 billion a year.

So how do you make sure that you provide a role that both addresses the needs of your employee and aligns with company goals?

The answer? Adopting these HR best practices.

At Process Street, we recognize the delicate balance between your business and your employees that’s maintained primarily by your HR department. The best practices in this post will ensure that balance stays in place.

You don’t have to take just our word for it, though. We’ll also look at how Adobe, Google, Accenture, and Salesforce implement them in their own companies.

In this article, we will discuss the following:

• The benefits of HR best practices
• Implementing your HR best practices
• HR best practice maintenance for the long-term

Ready to get started?
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Creating workflows with Process Street is as quick and easy as 1-2-3. To prove it here are five tips to help you create your first workflow:

• Pages: The peanut butter to your workflows
• Pick a simple, repeatable workflow
• Complete your task list first
• Use form fields to capture information
• Assign your team members
• Connect your favorite apps in one place

Let’s get started!
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No process is perfect; there’s always room to improve. Unfortunately, many teams have no way to identify, test, and deploy the changes they make, meaning each tweak is a roll of the dice.

The savings can be massive, but you need a continuous improvement program to make sure that the changes you make won’t make your operations a whole lot harder.

“1 in 10 improvements save money… [each saving, on average,] $31,043 in its first year of implementation.
1 in 4 improvements save time… [each saving, on average,] 270 hours in its first year of implementation.”
– KaiNexus, The ROI of Continuous Improvement

Most successful changes will also make your employees’ jobs easier (and more enjoyable) to perform. You’ll be saving time and money, but you’ll also be getting far better value out of your current efforts and operations.

However, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start from the top.

• What is continuous improvement?
• Incremental vs. breakthrough improvements
• The benefits of continuous improvement
• How to deploy continuous improvement
• Improvement resources to dive deeper

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This article is based on a segment from Process Street‘s Highway 2021 virtual event, where Anne Perry, Process Street’s resident process design expert, shares with us how we’ve built processes for hundreds of teams to help make work fun, fast, and faultless.

Process Design Masterclass: What I’ve Learned Building Processes for Hundreds of Teams was the eighth segment in Process Street’s Highway event.

You can check out our playlist of the full Highway event here, and don’t forget to sign up for free with Process Street!

Here’s the Process Design Masterclass with Anne Perry segment in full:

• Anne Perry: Process Street’s resident process design expert
• Four Ws and an H
• Why: Why does this workflow exist?
• What: What needs to be done?
• How: How do I do it?
• Who: Who does what?
• When: When are things supposed to be done?

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At Process Street, we serve over 450,000 registered users including the likes of Salesforce, Spotify, and Airbnb. We work with our users to help them get the best out of our software. With this goal in mind, we bring you this article detailing the top 5 secret hacks and tricks in Process Street.

We found out how the Process Street team uses our nifty workflow documentation software in their day-to-day activities. We gathered the responses given from every department and narrowed them down to present 5 top hacks and tricks you can incorporate into your Process Street experience today.

• Trick #1: Document your daily schedule as a checklist
• Trick #2: Automate date form fields to pre-fill
• Trick #3: Use saved views to summarize workflow data
• Trick #4: Order Conditional Logic instructions and use hidden admin tasks
• Trick #5: Embed webpages inside Process Street’s workflows

With that said, let’s jump straight to it!
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