Business Processes Unawareness: Can It Kill Your Business?

WARNING! All situations described in the article are based on real stories. If these situations seem familiar, you might need to review the last part of the article several times before you close it.

Meet John!

John is a successful Sales Manager at a product company that is advertising its CRM system. The company is desperately searching for new customers. John thought that widening his network might help him acquire some new leads and thus get his monthly bonus. With this thought on his mind, he sees this pop-up ad that says: “This year biggest IT conference in your city! Join or lose!”

There he is! Fancy suit and shoes. John is ready to sell the CRM system to even those who don’t need it. In one of the conversations he made that evening, he realizes that he is talking to an extremely successful entrepreneur, Ben, who seems to be interested in buying the product. Ben’s top priority for the CRM to have a Sales Forecasting feature. A lucky break! John offers to develop the feature as an extension. The only condition, Ben wants it ASAP!

Monday. John is in high spirits, he’s got a big client, and he longs to close the deal as fast as he can. He comes to the office but passes his table through and heads straight to the CTO’s. Rick, the CTO, is a highly experienced specialist who is always there to help John with some advice.

— Hi Rick!

— Wassup?

— Hey, how much time do you need to develop a new feature for our CRM?

— What exactly are you asking about, John?

— Sales Prediction, to be precise. I have a client who wants our CRM with an additional feature.

— Hmm. We could do it in two weeks. Yeah…two weeks seems like precisely the time we need for it.

— Thanks a lot, man! — says John already thinking about what he is going to write in the email to Ben.

He comes to his table and seals the deal with Ben.

Only one small problem: the Project Manager, who John contacted to get the team to start the development, says two weeks is an impossible deadline for new feature delivery. The developers are loaded, there ain’t no time for the feature development in the next two weeks. Is it a dead end?

Where did it all go wrong? Was it the conference that John shouldn’t have gone to? Or was it the client? Maybe, this is just an unprofessional Project Manager who can’t manage time wisely? No. Nothing of the above. It’s the BUSINESS PROCESSES in John’s company that made Ben leave to another provider.

What Went Wrong?

Everyone in the company structure is a screw that helps the system function. If the front wheel on a bicycle started functioning as a back one, you would fly over the steering wheel when hitting the breaks, wouldn’t you? Exactly. CTOs do not give time estimates for the tasks. They are there to develop technical solutions that would benefit the company and clients.

When seeking for the time estimates, Sales Managers should address Project Managers who in their turn evaluate their team’s load and estimate how much time they would spend on certain feature development. Nobody but PMs can do it precisely.

Have You Met Sam?

Sam has built a wonderful career starting from a Content Manager when he was 22. Now, he is a CMO at a pretty successful startup. They have different products, but Sam is working particularly with Gaming projects. He is also getting along well with Dave, the CEO. They are like friends, even at work.

So, recently, Dave has been on vacation to the USA, their targeted market. No surprise he talked to the natives a lot and asked them about the things that would benefit his business here in Europe. What he found out was that Americans are willing to pay for content. Mostly, they aren’t even trying to find ways to not pay.

When Dave came back to the office, he had already been thinking to release more exclusive features as premium content. So, when they were chilling with Sam at their super cool break room, Dave said it would be nice if they can issue more paid features for gamers in the US because “…why not? They are ready to pay; we can give it to them!”

What do you think Sam did after? Sure! He started executing the idea that he had for a long time — a software for the games that would copy the appearance of a gamer, so they could play as if it were their real body. First, estimates! He went to the CTO and PMO to estimate the time needed to develop the feature. It turned out it wasn’t that easy to first — make it real, second — allocate a team for that. But at the end of the day, they got the very first estimate — six months.

Next day, Sam is making a huge announcement on social media! It gathers thousands of likes and shares. Of course, it’s an excellent idea.

What Went Wrong?

What do you think Sam missed and why the company never launched the feature? The idea was brilliant, it could bring a lot of money, and moreover, it’s possible to implement. One thing only, he went over the Product Manager and СFO. The problem was that only the Product Manager in collaboration with Project Managers can give correct estimations and develop the right strategy in collaboration with CTO. Because of the business processes violation, the estimated time wasn’t correct and eventually was extended to one and a half years. During this time, their competitors had already developed their version of the software and launched it to the market. Nothing but the proper execution can make a brilliant idea even better!

Jackson, just let people do their job!

So, meet Jackson. He is the CEO of a product company; they are developing an instant messaging app that, as Jackson says,” will rock your mind!” This was his idea, and all he had to do is to hire a “Product Manager who won’t spoil the idea with unnecessary features.” Jackson plays a significant role in the development part and is getting ready for the big launch, which is planned for April.

However, Jackson sincerely couldn’t understand why engineers come and go so fast and often. He is renting a comfortable office and covers all the salaries on time, what’s wrong? “Anyway, the release is coming soon; maybe, this is just an interim period that turned unstable. It should change after the release!”

April. The big release. Jackson has invited all the potential investors, friends of his, and IT CEOs. All went great, except for the fact that nobody was willing to invest in the “mind-blowing instant messaging app.”

Futile attempts of the Sales Managers were not enough to cover all the company’s expenses, and Jackson eventually went broke.

So, why didn’t it work? What wasn’t right for the company? Here we should split the reason to two factors: the CEO taking part in the development, and CEO not letting a Product Manager “spoil his idea.”

A lot of company owners think that they need to decide for everyone and all the time. It is a widespread misconception. As soon as you occupy a CEO’s seat, you start managing the company, not developing the product, not controlling the engineers, not ordering coffee and tea for the office — only managing the decision making processes.

A huge human resources turnover could be easily avoided if the CEO didn’t control engineers so tightly. They wouldn’t feel like they are watched every second at work and wouldn’t quit so often.

What Was Jackson’s Mistake?

The “spoil my idea” thing is even worse. Even if the CEO comes from engineering and can develop a worthy product, how does he know somebody would buy it. It is the Product Manager’s job to know. When a PM offers a feature or its change, he knows precisely what the potential customers want and need; this is where the suggestions come from. This is why nobody wanted to invest in Jackson’s “mind-blowing app” because it didn’t meet the market needs.

So, if you see yourself in Jackson, think about letting your employees do their job, they will most definitely do it better than you.

Welcome on board, Nina!

Nina has studied psychology for six years at the university and started her practice when she was 25. After a sequence of failures, she realized that self-management is hard for her and decided to take some rest from it. She clearly understood that making the money she was worth could be possible only if she enters a thriving and buzzy industry. At the time, it was IT.

So, she started monitoring jobs in IT startups. Nina had not even finished her CV when a friend of her offered a position of an HR in the crypto startup. The guys were developing their cryptocurrency and were enthusiastic about their success.

However, as she was the first person in the Human Resources Department, she had to recruit new employees and hire them. This turned out to be the hardest part of the job for her.

Jeff, the CEO, kept telling that their main priority was to hire skillful and reliable engineers, but whoever was hired by Nina, quit in a month or was dismissed due to inconsistency with the requirements.

As a result, after five months of failing to find good fits, Jeff sacked Nina for not coping with her job. To hire another HR he spent a double equivalent of her salary. However, the issue remained.

What is it? A curse?

Apparently, Jeff didn’t realize that HR managers are not there for recruiting people. HR manager’s job is to coordinate and supervise the work of specialists and staff. Simply saying, it is the person who builds and fosters efficient business processes.

Although Jeff advertised a job post with HR responsibilities, he asked Nina to cover another employee’s expertise. The one Jeff needed was a recruiter.

So, is this Nina who didn’t cope with her job?

Each to his Own Thing

One simple thing to remember to avoid all those mistakes is to know your responsibilities. Simply saying, the things you should do, and the things you shouldn’t do. Here is a brief on the expertise of the leading positions in IT product companies!

Product Manager

A Product Manager is a representative of customers needs and interests in the company. They develop an idea from scratch, adding all necessary features to the product, so it finds its niche on the market and eventually sells out. Here are the main points:

• Strategy. They should clearly communicate the business value to the team, so they understand where they are moving. Roadmap and prioritizing is a huge part of PM’s expertise. They are in the full control of the product success on the market.
• Releases. PM’s job is to deliver not only the idea but also a clear timeline for Project Managers to comply with. They are aligning all teams required (sales, marketing, support managers) on the way to release.
• Features. PMs are responsible for prioritizing the features based on what value they bring to the customers. They work closely with engineering teams to ensure they have all the information required to meet the expectations of potential customers.

Project Manager

When a Product Manager has agreed on features with CTO and a CEO, worked on the tech way of their development with CTO, provided a timeline, and decomposed the high-level tasks, it’s the Project Manager’s job to allocate engineers for the development and manage the deadlines and execution process.

A project Manager is a guardian of engineers before the Product Managers. Because if a team doesn’t meet the deadline, it’s Project Manager who will have to explain to the Product Manager why it happened.

CMO

The thing is that CMO doesn’t have to develop an idea for the product, meet investors, and advertise or interfere with Project Managers to speed up the development process. They all work with the finished product. Their responsibility is to set marketing goals and objectives, communicate them to the team, and manage their execution. In a nutshell, they supervise marketing strategy and keep an eye on marketing budgets.

CTO

In product companies, a CTO is usually the most experienced engineer, who takes part in developing technical solutions for a product. They set up a vision of how technologies are used in the company; they ensure that the technological resources meet the company’s short and long-term needs. And god forbid you ask a CTO to set up a deadline for a feature delivery — it has to be done by a Project Manager in collaboration with a Team Lead.

CEO

And the cherry on top — what is a CEO there for? For sure, the CEO has the last word in whatever decision it is, whether it’s hiring a new employee or approving a new feature. Although, is it the CEO who decides all those things? Definitely, not.

CEO’s primary responsibility is to make sure that decisions made do not harm the company’s success. The real decisions are made by the employees, as they are the only ones who know the situation clearly.

What do you think? I would like to know your thoughts!