A Closer Look at Business Processes

A business process is a series of activities or tasks that lead to a specific completed service or defined product. These activities can also be bundled into a specific step within the process, with the process being made up of a series of steps or stages.

A business process can be thought of as something that serves a particular goal for a particular prospect, customer, or customers. The automation of processes keeps promises and tasks from falling between the cracks and helps to organize and systemize particular business best practices. The automation of processes also supports the effort of a corporation to standardize processes within certain groups of users.

One of the first excitements when initially purchasing Microsoft Dynamics CRM is the power of using the software to automate processes. The risk with this approach is that, if there is no understanding of items that are automatically created, then the world gets very noisy. E-mails get automatically created, and activities get automatically generated, and a to-do list gets overwhelmed or an inbox gets full without comprehension of where these items are coming from. Ultimately, the goal is to make any given process more efficient and less complex. Automating can create more complexity, more noise, and more data in more places. When you automate based on a practiced and well-loved process, you gain more success. Needless to say, manually mas....