While many businesses have shifted their store from a physical one to online in hopes of grabbing a large audience’s attention, in any organization there exists a common set of core business processes that must exist for the organization to function properly. Small organizations start with a small set of five Core Business Processes, that are the critical business processes to every business, and then grow from there.

First Core Business Processes

Every organization needs a sales and marketing function. Even non profits, governments and hospitals must identify their customers, manage the relationships, and deliver a good or service in exchange for funds.

Once you have cash coming in you must account for that cash and complete your tax return, which means you need accounting policies and procedures . Accounting operates on technology, so in a small company a technology process often time is part of accounting (unless you are a technology company and then it is part of product development).

Product or Service Delivery Process

Next comes your product or service delivery process that you collected money for. You have to deliver it and deliver it well, with a quality process, or else you won’t get more money from your customers in the future.

A business must hire employees, manage the operation, and finance the ups and downs. And lastly, you have to have a product development process to design products for your customers.

Five Core Processes for Small Business

After selling and delivering your product or service, you have to account for it, pay your taxes, and ensure compliance with government standards, laws, and regulations. That means accounting, quality, human resources (HR), maybe finance, and product development.

So what are the Five Core Processes for Small Business?

1. sales and marketing
2. Accounting & Technology
3. Quality & Product/Service Delivery
4. Management, HR & Finance
5. Product Development

Ten Core Business Processes

A small business is pretty simple, until you start to grow. Growth introduces new complexities that require more employees and more focus. The five core processes for a small business quickly grow to the ten core processes for business.

That is, each of the core small business processes splits into two and now sales and marketing are separate processes, same with accounting, technology, quality and product delivery.

We now have identified the Ten Core Business Processes:

1. Customer Strategy & Relationships (Marketing)
2. Employee Development & Satisfaction (Human Resources)
3. Quality, Process Improvement & Change Management
4. Financial Analysis, Reporting, & Capital Management
5. Management Responsibility
6. Customer Acquisition (Sales)
7. Product Development
8. Product and Service Delivery
9. Accounting Management
10. Technology Management (Computer & IT)

Examples of Business Processes

As an organization grows even bigger it will add more sub-processes or perhaps additional core process like supplier management, strategy, or legal & compliance. There are hundreds of sub-processes that are created and when you get to that point then you are ready for a set of policy and procedure manuals.

Download Free Policies and Procedures to see hundreds of example business processes and how easy it is to edit MS Word Templates to build your own policy and procedure management system.