For company managers: how solid are your business processes? If one or more steps in your process fall through, will it affect your business revenue and brand reputation? Do you have a plan for damage control?

These questions address a business’ investment in a risk mitigation strategy or, what one of my colleagues likes to refer to as, “hit by a bus” insurance. When one of our newer, yet beloved Ad Sales customers recently felt the pain of an oncoming cross-town express (about $100,000-worth of damage), we figured out how to prevent the same mistake from happening again.

What happened...
Email was a standard part of their communication process between the various teams involved in designing and placing sold ads. The company had been around a few years and everything had run smoothly until a critical message was missed by an employee just before a national holiday. This small mistake led to a sizable batch of ads run incorrectly, a $100,000 cost to the company, and some rather upset customers.

Smart business is damage control
It might be tempting to point the blame at a team member, but the real weakness was in the process. There was no transparency of the status of all the critical moving pieces and milestones that needed to be met to successfully place a set of ads. None of the team members knew the status of tasks and work-streams in which they were not directly involved. No one knew if Joe or Bob or Mary were on the same page or if all changes had been successfully communicated.

Lesson learned!
This was an eye-opening refresher on why critical business processes should be scrutinized, routinely reassessed and aligned with supporting technology. When we were notified of the error, Bluewolf’s Beyond team quickly designed a process with the client through salesforce.com’s case functionality.  It allowed for transparency, accountability, and a system of checks and balances throughout the ad placement process. Subsequently, the entire Ad sales team could then log into Salesforce and see the status of all of the moving parts of the ad placement process.

Bluewolf Best Practice: Recognize the importance of safety nets and damage control. Don't wait for a catastrophe to implement smart processes and supporting technology...and never assume that the current way is infallible.