Rich Helps Entrepreneurs Learn the Importance of Business Processes at the Arizona Women's Education and Entrepreneur Center!
AWEEC is a great organization. While their mandate is to help women to start their own businesses, but they help anyone with an entrepreneurial drive to achieve their dream by offering classes and consulting. In fact, They have been conducting the Dreambuilder classes for the Small Business Development Corporation in Phoenix.
I admit I have the teaching bug and really miss teaching college students. Which is why I started to get involved with the SBDC as a student at first to explore whether such organizations could use volunteer teachers to help others understand how to start and run a business. That's where I met the AWEEC team, and both they and the folks at the SBDC were awesome. I wish I would have used the services of such organizations when I started my first business in the 90s.
So several months ago, I reached out to Laura at AWEEC to see how I might be able to assist them as an instructor. I suggested several possible classes, but the one Laura really seemed to like was one on The Importance of Business Processes. Now, I'm not a certified Business Process Analyst (a profession that intrigues me), but anyone who implements Customer Relationship Management technologies for businesses understands how important the underlying business processes are. So, in my field, one can't help but learn a fair amount about Business Processes. In the end, I wound up producing about 4 hours of material for a 2 hour class. (In my defense, I always think it's better to over-prepare, and one really never knows the pacing of a class until it is actually taught the first time).
So, Last week we held our first Business Process class at the AWEEC offices in downtown Phoenix. I wasn't sure how well it would be received because some of the material seemed so basic to me, I was afraid it might be too basic for the students. But even though the students all had solid backgrounds in the business world, they all gave positive responses on the after-class survey. The students also had some great insights to offer from their own experiences, so I like to think they were co-instructors with me.
In the class, we explored all the benefits accrued from sound business processes, why we often fail to implement good processes, principles of good business process design, why good processes are more important than technology, and then focused on some specific marketing and sales processes.
Laura asked if I would offer the class again in a couple months. so if you know anyone thinking about starting a business in the Phoenix area, have them check out the classes offered by AWEEC (http://aweecenter.org/). Perhaps I'll see them there.