What are some examples of business processes?

All businesses must acquire customers. Therefore, there is a customer acquisition process. This might include how you market your business to potential customers, how you track your customers’ response to your marketing efforts etc. Another business process is how you order the goods that become your inventory. Inventory management is important because often a business must pay for the inventory before it sells that inventory to its customers. Often there are financial incentives to pay for inventory in a timely manner. Early payment or “terms” have advantages in lowering the cost of inventory, however, paying early to take advantage of terms requires the buyer to have cash or access to cash. Other processes include packaging and shipping, accounting and banking, recruiting and training, payroll, manufacturing, public relations, and others. Essentially everything a business does is a process, and the owner should think through how each of those processes operate and strive to make them more efficient. The key questions the owner must ask are “How do we do this function? And, is this the best way to do it?”