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Business process vulnerability identification and repair
VIA·Business is an affordable business diagnostic that identifies process vulnerabilities in small businesses. The resultant improvement recommendations are used by business leaders, and those who help businesses, to increase their likelihood of future success.
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Welcome to VIA·Business!
If you need insight into how your very-small business (about 5 to 50 employees) is operating, then you are in the right place. We are glad you are here!
Our “business consultant in a box”
We help you learn at each step of the process. This learning can begin with reading information on this site, to learning from the assessment itself, and learning what to do in our recommendations in the report. We are not here to simply sell you a canned product (not one size fits all). Instead, we are here to listen to you and your current status. That guides us to make a diagnosis based upon our expertise to create a prescription that is unique to you and what you tell us.
Business advice whenever and wherever you are ready
We would like to help you get quality answers for your business process issues both quickly and affordably, yet also have those answers be custom built for you and your situation. We do this in a way that helps you make improvements yourself, because at the end of the day you are the one with the self-interest to do so.
That’s it!
Vector Reports offers a faster, better, and less expensive method to improve the right business processes through customized recommendations delivered by our on line virtual business consultant.
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The problem with typical searches for help
What is the real problem in my business?
Business leaders of very-small businesses seek help because they have a feeling, or a sense, that something isn’t quite right in their business. Or perhaps they know something isn’t performing as expected, but can’t quite pin-point it quickly.
That happens frequently, so you are not alone in that journey.
Most could identify the issue and design a solution, but they are extremely busy, and have little time to conduct research on their own or to gain the expertise to accurately diagnose what is actually going on inside their business quickly.
Leaders also know that businesses have a lot of processes and changing one thing will often affect another thing because those processes are so interconnected and interdependent upon each other. One would think you would have to hire a business systems analyst.
That’s when leaders turn to outside help—which is an entirely different process that is often very costly.
Clickbait fails to deliver the promise!
Vector Reports has discovered that when business leaders or their change agents are looking for online guidance it can take a long time. It is hard to separate the wheat from the chaff (the solid advice from the fluff). One can be overwhelmed with attractive promises that leave you where you started.
Clickbait often catches our attention offering the “one thing you need for success“, or “the secret that can fix it all” but only if you use their program—education materials and programs that end up being very expensive. Those clickbait sites have designed urgent “BUY NOW before it’s too late” call to action messages to inject fear into your current concern. When you dig deeper, it becomes clear they’re after YOUR attention to make money for themselves, often through Ad clicks.
We really dislike that approach!
Even the experts have to overcome bias about root cause
And sometimes, despite best intentions, results over time may not even address the root cause. The grim evidence is: even with good intentions, publicly available business education, consulting services delivering expensive advice, and government-funded free help, the current business improvement process consistently produces a phenomenally dismal failure rate—about half the companies that form in any year are out of business five years later.
The right outside experts can help. However, that help should very quickly identify and solve the right problem in a way that educates you, doesn’t create a long-term dependency upon that specific expert, and doesn’t break the company bank.
We have also discovered that some sites actually offer good quality content. However, they tend to be experts in one field or business process. This means two things;
- You have to know your true root cause issue before you ask for help, and
- Few understand, as well as you do, the interdependency of your system of processes and how one process unexpectedly affects another. This requires paying the outsider to learn what you probably already know about you.
The unfortunate effect of that kind of searching for help is that it steepens and lengthens the climb to business success.
The journey is already fraught with difficult steps, unanticipated turns, uneven surfaces, and hidden vulnerabilities in business processes.
Often the improvement advisor or consultant field is not level, broad nor fair. Expert know-how about a given process, and access to high-quality advice, can be difficult to obtain. And, even when it is available, it can be unaffordable.
So, why make it worse?
The message here is that you already own the challenge, know your current state, and you have to do the work anyway—so why not focus your efforts, or the outside expert’s help, on the results of a robust diagnostic based upon you and your business’ current condition to target the right improvements early?
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Signals that you need business analysis
Symptoms of Problematic Business Systems
Consider the question below. Click to see examples that only lead to bigger problems:
Are you seeing any of the behaviors or process characteristics listed in the table below in your team, your processes, product output, or business actions?
| Opinions | Hidden bias | Guesses |
|---|---|---|
| Opinions taking precedence over data-driven vulnerability identification efforts. | Hidden biases inadvertently, or worse, automatically invoked. | Guesses used to move things forward instead of cogent or qualified analysis. |
| Variation | Lacking resources | Goal distractions |
|---|---|---|
| Variation in processes, quality, and in the outcomes produced across the entire team. | Lacking time, resources, quality, capacity, funding, likely due to process inefficiencies. | Distractions force pathway and sequence changes to actions which delay goal achievement. |
| Inadequate advice | Indecision | Cognitive dissonance |
|---|---|---|
| Inadequate counsel from experts who may have based advice upon past “worst-case” experiences. | Indecision when choosing among competing priorities that wastes time and opportunity. | Cognitive conflict because of inadequate understanding of “why” and “what” is needed. |
| Uncontrolled results | Chaos | Turnover |
|---|---|---|
| Uncontrolled processes that make tracking performance and reporting metrics difficult. | Chaos in improving and implementing processes over multiple clients. | Turnover (employees, mentors, counselors, managers) creating disruptions. |
If you are seeing any of these symptoms, there is another concern that can emerge: Leaders can become emmeshed in a pattern of “solving” one crisis-of-the-day after another. They feel compelled to work tactically “in” the business itself as opposed to strategically “on” the business. This usually means their higher-level systemic thinking has been sidetracked, deferred or cast into the shadows or into the dark—letting systemic problems fester and grow larger and more difficult to repair later.
In business processes management, like in human bodies, ignoring symptoms can become problematic.
It is like having your doctor order a specific panel of diagnostic tests. You likely came in for something that didn’t seem right, hurt a bit, or something that worried you and you wanted an expert opinion. The right tests help eliminate what is or isn’t a concern and often reveal issues that are connected to the symptoms. The analogy describes your body as well as your business: Both are made up of complex interdependent systems of systems that—without specific well-designed diagnostic tests—can often obscure exactly what is going on.
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Is a VIA·Business diagnostic right for you?
Learn more and then decide if you need a virtual small business consultant.
Click to experience a sample of the thought work and rating design in a business diagnostic —————>
Below are links to a full-assessment process description and an annotated sample full-assessment report. If they don’t make you think more deeply about your business, then perhaps you won’t need this diagnostic. But, if they do cause you to pause and consider your condition, compared to generally accepted best business practices, then you’ll probably benefit from taking an assessment:
Click to learn more about the VIA·Business diagnostic—your business “advisor in a box” ——————->
Click to see an example of the VIA·Business report you’ll get after submitting assessment ratings ——->
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The business goal is to learn what’s next …
We all have times when the pressures of life and work cause mission, strategies and plans to be set aside. Those times often force us to work on what the next thing is. And then the the next thing, and the next … and so on. Eventually we end up spending time working on the things that might actually lead away from our goal.
The question each business leader might ask regularly is, “Are we working on the right things that make the most difference for us right now?
How do you know?
Business improvement using informed decision paths
The list below are decision categories. One would obviously want to move toward the better decision methods on the right. Consider, given your current state of process maturities, what it would take you to move to making informed decisions.
| Move From … | . | … To |
|---|---|---|
| Opinion | Base decisions upon facts, data & relevant team discussion | |
| Reliance on individual expertise | Build process standards and metrics | |
| Guesses based in the past | Make informed improvement decisions | |
| Chaos of all things at once | Understand / apply task priority synthesis | |
| Hidden bias | Perform evaluations in the “light of day” | |
| Random results | Design results into processes with progress metrics to prove performance | |
| Capacity limits | More efficient use of what you already have | |
| Difficulties helping those you need to help | Use “safe” ways and methods to bring them on board | |
| One client at a time | Use group methodologies for shared learning opportunities |
Using a VIA·Business assessment helps you to improve how you make informed decisions and what information they are based upon.
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Business process maturity model
We’d like to help you help yourself to perform business process improvements in way that moves you from “Ow!” to “Know and Grow!” more quickly. Make more informed decisions; 1) no matter where you are, 2) time of day, or 3) your status —to be helpful to all that seek guidance on what the better next steps might be that help make a difference for you faster.
The actual assessment model is fully designed with cmmi-like vetted
characteristics specific to small businesses.
A conceptual introduction is shown below.
The levels
3 ………………………………………….. Know to Grow!
2 ……………………………. “So” to Know!
1 ……………….“Oh” to “So”!
0 “Ow” to “Oh”!
We all start out experiencing the “Ow” and pain of learning. In time we learn to see and can say “Oh, things could be different.” Then at the next level that ‘Oh’ awareness transforms into a “So, that is what I need to do.” And as you progress and learn more, your actions create the confidence of “knowing.”
Then, once you “Know, you can grow!“
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