INTRODUCTION:

Core processes are the processes that rely on the unique knowledge and skills of the owner and that contribute to the owner's competitive advantage. Contrast with subsidiary business processes. Core process is a process with a set of related and interdependent activities that transform an input to a system to an output with added value to a customer. It is the transformation of people, money, materials or information that is the value-added work of the organization. The core processes are those processes by which the organization creates its most value-added and essential transformations for the customers.

CORE PROCESS:5D
Core processes are designed activities that assist you in accomplishing very specific goals. These are the drivers for your company and touch every area from vision and strategy to delivery of products and services. At the foundation of each of these processes, is the need to focus on customer satisfaction, retention and acquisition. It is important to note that innovation and quick response time are key drivers in the successful rollout and maintenance of each of the 5 core business processes. The processes are very action oriented, as evidenced by the key words that are found in them. To help you remember them, focus on a few keys words that include develop, deploy,deliver and design. Let's focus on five critical processes that should be in your organization: 1. Develop and Deploy Vision and Strategy 2. Business Development 3. Deliver and Produce Services & Products 4. Market and Sell Products and Services 5. Design and Deploy New Products and Services

Develop and Deploy Vision and Strategy In the first process, the focus is on developing a company plan and alignment. The process ensures everyone involved in establishing and deploying vision and strategy is heard. A critical component of this process, and in many of those that follow, is that it under constant review and analysis. As conditions change within and outside the organization, a rapid response is critical. Business Development This process requires constant innovation and market understanding. The ability to deliver new products to existing customers, existing products and services to new customers, and new products and new services to new customers helps you realize marketplace opportunities. This process is critical in filling your pipeline, and driving continuous revenue streams and cash flow to sustain your operation. Deliver and Produce Services & Products The third business process encompasses everything from supply chain, to manufacturing, to quality assurance, to service. It's critical to understand your current manufacturing capabilities along with key suppliers' to ensure uninterrupted production runs. Don't focus on trying to produce all the components internally, as you won't be able to do it. Stick to what you know best and do well without exception.

Market and Sell Products and Services At the core of this process, is understanding what drives purchasing decisions, and the special needs of market segments and individual customers. By using tools that include customer visits, distributor meetings, focus groups, and input from your sales team, you can gather information on markets and customers. Remember, put yourself in your customer's shoes. Look at things from their perspective. Your goal is to understand what your customer wants, not to push your preferences on them.

Design and Deploy New Products and Services Focus on improving the cycle time of the development process. Simplified product designs, common manufacturing platforms, and reduced part counts are just a few of the elements required to minimize the time and costs associated with this process.

HOW CAN YOU IDENTIFY A GAP IN ONE OF YOUR COMPANYS CORE PROCESSES?
Define Your Business Model. The following question might sound very basic, but you should first ask yourself: what business am I in? Youll ask this because you want to follow the money trail: to identify how exactly you earn revenue and from where that revenue comes. And this also defines your business model, which sets how you make money. By examining your business model (including mission and vision statements), you see not only how you can make money but also how you should make money. In other words, what should be happening in your business to increase revenue but isnt and why? Create a Process Map. Once youve looked at your business model, continue to follow the money trail and identify your companys core processes in the cash to cash cycle. By doing this you can see which processes are most critical to the overall success of your business. Next, connect the core processes in a process map. Link suppliers, inputs, outputs and customers together to see the overall cash conversion cycle. Lets examine a high level process map. Here we have the complete business cycle of a typical company using the SIPOC method, which connects Suppliers to Inputs to Processes to Outputs to Customers. To illustrate, a typical process map flows like the following from left to right: a Supplier connects the input purchasing with the Process of inventory and to the Output sales, which is then connected to the Customer. From there, the cycle also flows back from right to left: the Customer connects the Output accounts receivable to the Process of manufacturing to the Input accounts payable and finally to the Supplier. With this you can see the departments through which cash flows. And once you identify and break down your companys core processes, you are closer to answering the question: which process do I start to improve?

Examine Financial Statements. Now continue along the money trail by looking at your financial statements, including the balance sheet, income statement and cash flow statement. Your financial statements indicate where your money is piling up, sort of like a snap shot of what your velocity is currently. For example, In a manufacturing company, you can determine if there are long wait times between sales or long delivery times both of which are evident in inventory. And inventory (as seen in your financial statements) also show the effects of time and whether your process velocity (i.e. a slow process in the conversion cycle that causes long lead and wait times) is causing a pile up in your financial statements. Ask yourself: "are my processes fast enough to make my customers happy?" Set Velocity. Velocity is the speed at which your system is operating currently e.g. goods delivered on time and responsiveness to orders. To design an effective process, you will need to know the set velocity that the organization needs to maintain good customer satisfaction. If your inventory process has a long cycle time, beginning with raw materials and ending with the customer, then this could be an indication of a low velocity. Customers set the pace, and they will tell you if the velocity of product turnaround is sufficient. And so companies need to calculate what that pace is to make customers happy. Determine Leverage. The last element in following the money trail is to review leverage which process improvement will create the strongest return on investment (ROI)? Keep in mind both time and money, and determine what process inefficiency is consuming all of your cash. Why is that process eating away your money, and should it be? But keep in mind, too, the element of risk: what will happen if I make a change, and what will happen if I make no change?

For gauging your ROI needs, examine the five parts weve discussed so far: your business model, process map, your financial statements, velocity and the leverage to make your customers happy. Create a Gap Analysis. And so with this example, we can now answer our original question: where do you start? As we've discussed, follow the money trail through the five key steps: define your business model, create a process map, examine financial statements, set velocity and determine leverage. But what pulls it all together? We pull all of this together with a Gap Analysis. An operations assessment (also called an audit) results in a Gap Analysis and this report of gaps, or inefficiencies, found in the system shows you where to start to achieve your target. A Gap Analysis helps you identify your core processes and performance metrics in order for you to achieve your objectives.

STRATEGIES TO REDESIGN CORE PROCESS:

Theres a strong undercurrent of change reverberating through all businesses today. The lessons from the last recession and over reliance on technologies versus processes have served as a much needed wake up call to the approaches to sourcing, producing and servicing products. The message is clear that core business processes must be at the center of go-to-market strategies and the direction companies take in managing their growth going forward. For any company to attain its revenue objectives, it must pay attention to these process areas. Lasting change for your business takes a series of gradual steps to accomplish, especially when it comes to fundamentally changing how manufacturing companies realign business processes for greater profitability. The following steps can deliver the most value over time in redesigning the core processes in your company: Re-evaluate processes as they are today and set reasonable benchmarks. This is a critical first step, since you need to have a baseline measurement of performance that accurately defines where you are today, so that improvements can be measured from both the automation of tasks and the selective application of technology. Define a set of core metrics that best represent your sales, operational needs, and service needs. Its critical not to set too many metrics of performance, as the task of capturing and reporting them will start to outweigh your ability to do anything with the data. Instead, create a streamlined scorecard that you can use for monitoring the improvement in quoteto-order, cash conversion cycle and assemble-to-order, build-toorder, and engineer-to-order strategies. Consider the following often-used metrics for your scorecard.

 Accuracy of orders Companies have found that when orders have dropped below 60 percent accuracy, there is something systemically wrong with the order capture, fulfillment and service aspects. Monitoring this metric on a monthly basis gives you a very clear insight into whats happening with your customer-facing order processes or more plainly put, how you are serving your channels and customers with order capture.
 Cost per configured customer order

Although this isnt a commonly reported statistic, its critical to do the hard work to get this figure and track it monthly. The reason the extra effort is worth it: you get a great measure of beforeand-after profitability in your order workflows when you define a process to capture the cost per configured order. Even manually redefining this process creates greater value, and with this metric, the cost per configured customer order should drop with your efforts.  Order cycle time for standard versus configure-to-order products This is a telling statistic that will have a major impact on inventory turns for pick/pack/ship versus semi-customized products, versus the engineer-to-order products custom-built to a customers exact specifications. Cycle times will even show improvement before any software is used to automate quoteto-order processes.

 Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) This is the average number of days your customers take to pay their invoices. Many companies will break this out for both standardized and customized, or to-order products. The reason companies will do this is that often DSOs for the to-order products are longer than for standardized ones. Often the bigger the gap, the greater the potential for improvement. DSOs for configured products can be significantly improved through the use of quote-to-order systems. Start redesigning your proposal, quote-to-order, pricing, and other process workflows that regularly impact your channels and customers. Even small improvements in customer-facing processes can yield big results. Getting these initial results first will validate that your selection of strategies is on track, and when software is selectively applied to these problems, typically deliver progressively improving results. Build a business including an ROI analysis for selectively applying software to quoting, proposals, and pricing. By this time, youre starting to build a track record of results from redefining these customer-facing processes. The next step is to take a hard look at the software investment and its potential impact on the processes that are showing initial positive results. The bottom line on this point is that the larger the number of symptoms of broken processes, the higher the return on investment (ROI). Select a vendor who can deliver. The sales configuration marketplace is populated with both best-of-breed and ERP vendors, yet neither category completely dominates the market.

CONCLUSION:
In any organization there exists a common set of core business processes that must exist for the organization to function properly.

Every organization needs a sales and marketing function. Even non profits, governments and hospitals must identify their customers, manage the relationship, and deliver a good or service in exchange for funds. Once you have cash coming in you must account for that cash and complete your tax return, which means you need accounting. Accounting operates on technology so in a small company technology often time is part of accounting (unless you are a technology company and then it is part of product development).

Next comes your product or service delivery that you collected money for. You have to deliver it and deliver it well, with quality, or else you wont get more money from your customers in the future. A small business must hire employees, manage the operation, and finance the ups and downs. And lastly, you have to have product development to design products for your customers.