What is Business Infrastructure and How Can it Help My Business Scale?

In the last issue you learned more about Lean Six Sigma and how being customer-centric and having streamlined processes are critical components of this quality improvement framework.?But if you don't know your what your processes are, you're left in a conundrum when trying to apply Lean Six Sigma.

That's where business infrastructure can come in handy.

What is Business Infrastructure?

Before defining what business infrastructure is, it's worth pointing out what it isn't. In my experiences lecturing, giving presentations, and working with clients, I've found that when many people hear the word "infrastructure" they assume we're about to have a conversation about transportation or something I.T.-related.

Transportation infrastructure connects roads, bridges, airplanes, ships, vehicles, and trains so that people and goods can move about as seamlessly as possible.

Just as transportation infrastructure connects different modes of transportation, so does business infrastructure connect different modes or elements of operations.

To be more precise, business infrastructure is an operational system that links your organization's goals with the people, processes, and tools necessary to support those goals in a profitable, scalable, and sustainable manner.

Why Business Infrastructure Matters

We all know the importance of marketing and growing your business, but what happens when you realize an ROI on the dollars you’ve invested in marketing and now you have more business than you can handle ?

It’s a perfect time to start looking at the operations of your business and making sure you have a business infrastructure in place to support that growing demand.

Business infrastructure provides a solid foundation to support your organization through chaotic growth spurts. It's akin to taking jumbled pieces (the people, processes, and tools that power your organization) of a puzzle and strategically putting them together until they form a complete picture (your daily operations) that can be documented, shared, and replicated multiple times with minimal investment in additional resources. This is how you scale!

Being able to articulate your business in a way that makes sense assures not only your customers but also your team that you know what you are doing and that you have an organized, effective, and efficient way of doing it . This translates into positive customer experiences resulting in increased sales. And increased sales triggers the need for more employees, larger/additional offices, and/or franchising opportunities.

Final Thoughts

You can also think of business infrastructure like your organization's Rubik's Cube.

Once you've stitched together all of the elements, you are able to understand the impact that just one change or movement on one side of the cube has on all of the other sides of the cube.

Although every business’ growth looks different, the necessary elements to ensure sustainable, manageable growth are always the same.

Those elements include:

• Job descriptions,
• An organizational chart,
• Records management systems,
• Workspace layout, and
• Business processes.

Ah yes, business processes! You'll discover how to identify and document them so that you can improve them via Lean Six Sigma.

Over the next several articles, we'll take a deep dive into each of these elements of business infrastructure.

Make sure you subscribe so that you’ll receive a notification when the next newsletter arrives!

You may also enjoy this videocast (audio only) where I explain more about what business infrastructure is and how I became one of the few people in the world who specializes in designing it:

______________________________

Alicia Butler Pierre is the Founder & CEO of Equilibria, Inc. – an operations management firm specializing in business infrastructure for fast-growing small businesses. She’s the author of the two-time Amazon bestseller Behind the Fa?ade and host of the top 2% Business Infrastructure podcast . Alicia’s also an adjunct instructor at Purdue University and Nichols College . A chemical engineer turned entrepreneur, she’s advised, designed, and optimized processes for companies including Shell Oil, Coca-Cola, and The Home Depot.