Quality and Small Business

For many years, the concept of quality has turned into a matter of consideration by the majority of businesses. Large corporations, thanks to their extensive means, have been working on quality for over 30 years. However, with SMBs, it is more recent and some still don't give it the importance that it deserves.

The concept of the SMB includes a wide spectrum of organizations, ranging from freelance employers to companies with hundreds of employees and companies with very few employees that manage gigantic businesses, although, this last example is difficult to classify. quality is important for all of them.

Every day it's more important for SMBs to invest in the concept of quality as this is the way that will help them to be more competitive, reduce costs and be more efficient. The goal should be to eliminate manual, disorganized and disjointed processes, which comprise a cultivating mix for errors, poor production, unsatisfied customers and, definitely less business.

The easiest thing to do is to blame the government and public agencies for all the bad things we complain about. I won't be the one to defend the government, not only because it doesn't provide help for businesses, but because we're its favorite source of revenue, an area where it demonstrates surprising efficiency. However, taking on our problems and confronting them with same enterprising spirit that led each of us to start our businesses should be the goal that permits us to create new opportunities, a future and hope. If we put our focus on optimizing our processes, avoiding repetitive work, decreasing simple manual and low quality work, and taking it to higher levels in order to provide new developmental opportunities for our employees, then we'll be achieving real efficiency based on an optimized system, free of errors and executed by people who feel part of a common adventure.

Quality, how it's considered by the auditing and certifying companies, is meant to assure the continuation of the business and guarantee the same level of efficiency and quality, independent of people and circumstances. However, the biggest benefit of quality comes from achieving the maximum optimization we can when we analyze the internal administration of our businesses and, with a critical spirit, we attempt to eliminate unnecessary work, improve procedures and, what's very important, utilize technology to perform and control repetitive work which usually is the cause of the majority of problems as it is usually performed very frequently and sometimes by people not familiar with it. It's mainly in this area where information technology can be an invaluable tool for improving the administration of our businesses.

In my case, for many years I've put great effort in optimizing our processes, in correctly using the technology that's available to us today, and I can assure that such effort has produced excellent results.

I have no doubt that the medium-size businessman thinks that the cost of technology is too high and that it's a luxury that can wait. This idea is erroneous since the cost of technology can quickly pay for itself with the great savings it provides.

From my modest position, I encourage the small and medium size businessmen to dedicate one day, behind closed doors, to analyze their business processes, to try to imagine how they can be optimized and then to look for the technical accessory that will permit them to transform their new ideas into a successful reality.

Julio Olivares, DocPath President