You are a business owner. You have the people, you have the tools and you know your targets. However, the clutter is endless and every process takes longer than it is supposed to be. Business enablement helps you to align your people, strategies, tools, processes, and practices. It enables an environment where employees are able to do their best work, leading to improved business outcomes, higher customer satisfaction, and a sustainable competitive advantage.
brings all these together (and more) to help you streamline your processes and adapt to changes quickly. Business enablement ensures information is not in silos and people can access it efficiently to create a leaner, faster process.
Sales enablement and business enablement are often confused. Sales enablement focuses on the sales team and processes, equipping them with tools, training, and content to sell more effectively. In contrast, business enablement involves the entire organization, aiming to streamline technology, people, and processes to improve overall business performance and operational efficiency. Sales enablement is a subset of business enablement. Operational enablement runs parallel to business enablement, addressing daily tasks and new product releases to ensure smooth overall processes.
Need for business enablement
Efficiency and automation are the buzzwords for businesses that want to get ahead of the competition. Growing companies buy tools to improve efficiency and get into the rut of managing these tools instead of getting their work done. With the right tools and processes, organizations implementing business enablement can multiply their productivity and profit upto15%.In a recession economy, this impact is even more pronounced.
Business enablement helps increase customer satisfaction, employee retention, productivity per employee, and overall sales. There are multiple levels of enablement like technology, operations, sales, and business enablement.
Business enablement is your secret weapon to:
- Skyrocket Customer Satisfaction
- Boost Employee Retention
- Maximize Productivity
- Elevate Sales
Major Stakeholder of Business Enablement
C-Suite and Owners
Owners
Owners set the tone for innovation and adaptation. Owners also need to ensure governance and regulatory practices are aligned with new systems. If the bandwidth permits, a bi-weekly progress report can be requested from the respective department-level champions for owners to get a bird’s-eye view of the progress.
Founders
Founders play a crucial role in business enablement by setting the vision, culture, and strategic direction of the company. They are often the driving force behind innovation and growth. They ensure the culture of the company stays intact during the business enablement process and tools are not just purchased but implemented.
Executives
Top-rung executives will carry forward the vision of the founders or board. They also set an example of ground-based leadership. They should ensure the risk-resilience of the changes.
Team
HR Team: The team that hires decides the culture and initiative of the company. Right business enablement helps the HR team retain key employees, reduce turnover costs, and maintain continuity in operations. Data and analytics will help in making informed HR decisions. HR will be able to maintain open and effective communication channels between management and employees.
Marketing team: The marketing team helps in brand development and customer outreach. Having business enablement tools that manage their content, research, and analysis will ease their process of digital marketing and overall product positioning.
Sales team: Salespeople are the faces of the company that the client meets. They manage the pipeline, negotiate, and close deals. Sales enablement is a crucial part of business enablement. The sales + team will track if CRM tools and marketing content is providing sufficient leverage to their day-to-day function.
IT department: The IT team plays a critical role in business enablement by providing the technological infrastructure, tools, and support necessary for all other departments to function efficiently. While spearheading the implementation, they also keep a close eye on any potential cybersecurity pitfalls.
Finance department: With the right forecast and budgeting, the finance department ensures the company has enough financial headspace to undergo an overhaul process. Finance operations enablement will help them manage cash flows, investments, tax planning, and compliance and be an advisor to management.
Operations team: They figure out processes that will boost up overall productivity, to deliver on time, cost-efficiently, and high quality. Processes like Lean Six Sigma, quality assurance, and scheduling will be their specialization.
Effective teamwork and collaboration are required for the success of business enablement. Moreover, the team helps to bring perspective. More often than not, top management’s vision may not completely reflect ground reality. The team’s cooperation and continuous feedback are required to get business enablement going.
How to achieve business enablement?
Assessing Organizational Needs – Identifying Gaps and Opportunities
Finding which department or which line of the process is lagging behind is one of the most important aspects. This will also help in figuring out the right tool that will integrate seamlessly into the existing system without many disruptions. Setting objectives and goals for what to achieve in a division or process is essential to ensure the eyes are sticking to the prize and staying focused.
Let us say your IT department needs to catch up in decommissioning older assets, having a tracker system will help them prioritize the tasks.
Fixing stakeholders – Assigning who will be in charge
After setting goals and timelines for each section, assign someone who will take the process forward. It can have multiple subdivisions and separate champions for each. This will ensure accountability and instill a sense of responsibility.
For example, if Jira is implemented for project management, each project can separate managers/contributors who will take the project forward. Key milestones can be defined and customized as per each department.
Implementation
This is where the real action happens with effective channels of communication and process setup and putting it in place.
Rolling out the initiatives with brief communication on how and what the team aims to achieve through this process improvement ensures the cooperation of all parties.
Rolling Out Initiatives
A pilot test run of the new tools/process can be done for 2 weeks in smaller organizations and up to 2 months in larger organizations. During the pilot close monitoring should be done to catch any possible issues and any future issues that may arise.
Feedback can be gathered from employees and a few loyal clients. Setting up communication channels is essential. This is also a time to install new communication apps if the internal communication tools seem outdated. The HR team can spearhead communication channels to ensure everybody gives adequate feedback.
Change Management and Adoption
Nudging employees to try out new systems is essential. If the change is done by brute force, not only the effectiveness will be reduced but it will also lead to an overall failure of the system. Making employees aware of the benefits and creating an open forum for discussion is imperative.
Conflicts need to be dealt with a very light hand as many seasoned employees may feel intimidated or uncomfortable with the changes. There will also arise problems of closely working teams needing to be on the same page like pre-sales and marketing. These issues are often not foreseen but there should be bandwidth assigned for resolution of possible issues.
How to Measure Business Enablement
Don’t roll a dice on business enablement and hope to land it on the correct numbers. Since the change is organisationally implemented, multiple metrics can be used to measure the same.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
- Sales Metrics
More often than not, sales metrics are an obvious sign. How fast your leads convert, what percentage of the leads convert to sales, and how viable your pipeline is, etc., are some basic key indicators to see if the enablement has worked.
- Employee Productivity
While what counts as ‘productive’ is a whole other debate, there are some specific factors one can look at. How fast employees can finish a task and how much they can handle complex tasks tells a lot. Reduced tendencies for attrition can also be counted as a benefit of business enablement.
- Usage rates and Customer retention
Website visitor metrics, subscription rates, and feature utilization are directly available from the databases to analyze if the business enablement has increased the visibility of the business. Reduced customer churn rates and improved prospectus of cross-selling show how the new process has increased customer satisfaction.
Overcoming Challenges in Business Enablement
Wise men say change is the only constant, but so is the resistance to change. Concerns regarding security, employee growth and safety, and poor communication can be great barriers to effective business enablement.
Detailed documentation, Q&A sessions, and encouraging employees to save time by involving in new processes can go a long way. The changes should also ensure that the two departments don’t end up at loggerheads. Creating a document enunciating any issues or errors that happened so far and how employees can get ahead of it will reduce repeat errors.
Small rewards such as a word of appreciation or shout-outs for employees who take the business enablement process forward will enable positive competition and an optimistic outlook.
Future of Business Enablement
Automation is no longer a buzzwordd. Keeping up with AI culture is not easy, but your business enablement should consider AI tools that will automate day-to-day processes like AI note-takers, smart calendars, and document summarizers.
Business enablement tools should be future-proof and while taking any tools or processes, a farsighted vision is required.
Tools for Business Enablement
A few popular tools that you can consider while going for business enablement are listed below.
HubSpot Sales Hub
What it does: A well-known Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and sales software that streamlines sales processes.
How it helps: Enhances business enablement by automating sales tasks, tracking deals, and providing insights, leading to improved efficiency, better customer relationships, and increased sales productivity.
Paperflite
What it does: A content management and distribution platform.
How it helps: it helps in organizing, sharing, and tracking marketing content effectively, ensuring sales teams have access to up-to-date materials, and improving engagement and conversion rates. It gives you real-time analytics with easy plug-and-play integrations. Content quality is a factor that needs to be taken care of outside the tool.
Mindtickle
What it does: Mindtickle helps to train your sales team and enable a more efficient onboarding process.
How it helps: It provides your sales team with training, coaching, and performance analytics, leading to improved skills, knowledge retention, and sales effectiveness. Gamification of training helps in higher retention and has high scalability. User retention and engagement should be something the management must keep track of.
Trello
What it does: A project management tool that uses boards and lists to track how a project is progressing.
How it helps: Facilitates business enablement by organizing tasks, improving team collaboration, and tracking project progress in real time, leading to enhanced productivity and streamlined workflows.
Jira
What it does: Jira is widely used in the software industry to manage sprints and project lifecycles.
How it helps: Improves business enablement by tracking issues, bugs, and project tasks, facilitating agile workflows, and enhancing team collaboration and transparency, leading to more efficient project management and delivery.
WhatFix
What it does: Whatfix helps in training and guiding clients to ensure faster adoption.
How it helps: Enhances business enablement by improving user onboarding and software adoption, reducing training time, and increasing productivity through contextual, real-time support and personalized learning experiences. It supported personalized training with real-time support. However initial adoption and integration might be a challenge.