How to make operations more efficient?

Operational work is numerous and complex, requiring operators to be patient and careful, and have their own set of process-based systems. So how can we make operational work more efficient? The author will talk to you based on some of his own work experience.

I have been studying e-commerce operations recently and found that it is not an easy task to operate e-commerce well. Because to operate e-commerce well, you need to know how to make a main picture with high click-through rate, the temperament of the through train, the function of each module in the background, the back-end supply chain and the dynamics of the front-end competitive products, and a lot of other content.

A person who can do a good job in e-commerce operation must be a person who can grasp the overall situation. How can you grasp the overall situation? Your brain capacity determines everything.

When I first started working in operations at an Internet company, I had to do the work of three people alone. At the same time, I would have at least three different things going on. I am also very grateful for that time, which allowed me to upgrade my brain memory. It may have been 4G of memory before, but after training in that high-intensity work environment, my brain memory has been upgraded to at least 16G.

One thing that should be of interest to everyone is that any operator who has been trained in that environment, regardless of whether he is smart or not, will eventually become very strong.

In other words, no matter how high or low your IQ is, you can be trained to become an operation expert, of course, the premise is that you have to go through two or three years of high-intensity training. When you have completed this stage, your brain capacity has been upgraded and cannot be increased any further. Then you enter the next stage, and by optimizing the work process and work ideas, we can improve our operation efficiency.

If you have a super brain like Einstein or the memory space like a supercomputer, there is no need to talk about workflow, because the brain space is large enough to accommodate the little things in work.

But we are all ordinary people after all. The content of our work, especially the operational work, is very complicated and far beyond the scope of memory. Therefore, a good work process and ideas are what we operators must master to improve our work efficiency.

01 All operations can be streamlined

After I started to operate e-commerce, I learned a lot of knowledge points one by one, such as how to upload materials and how to contact official customer service. Then I learned a lot of knowledge points one by one, such as how to promote products from listing to promotion, and how to collect evidence and sue for freeloaders.

Finally, we come to the knowledge points of each aspect, such as how to open a through train and the product selection layout. When we go to the knowledge points of each aspect, we can streamline and standardize these contents.

The benefit of process is that it shortens our thinking time and reduces the memory consumption of the brain. Take the main picture as an example. When I first make the main picture, I have to focus on thinking about which elements of this picture will impress users and whether it fits the style of this category.

After the process is standardized, a good main picture contains elements such as copywriting selling points, clear product close-ups, and giveaway activities. When a new main picture comes out later, it can be directly matched with the original. If it has these elements, it is a good picture. If it does not, it is likely to be bad. I don’t have to think about this process anymore, and I can focus more on other things, which naturally improves my work efficiency.

Process standardization is not something you can do as soon as you start a new job. It can only be summarized after working in a certain work module for one or two years. Newcomers can get the same results by following your process without thinking. Not only is the output guaranteed, but everyone's efficiency is also improved. This is the benefit of process standardization.

02 All operational work needs to be summarized

The most common summary is the daily, weekly and monthly report. When you hear about doing these things, everyone will cry and scream, "I'm already working so hard, why do I have to do these things? It's a waste of time."

Sometimes, what makes us suffer often makes us grow. If we do a monthly summary carefully and review our work output from a 30-day perspective, we will definitely find a way to improve ourselves.

If you don’t summarize after finishing your work, you won’t know what you did well or poorly, and naturally you won’t know what points you need to optimize to do better next time. When I have mastered a module, I will habitually make a tree diagram on paper or in Excel.

Everyone, try to force yourself to do this. Even if we don’t make a tree diagram, we can still do the job at hand well. But making a tree diagram only takes a few minutes, and your perception of the work will become different. If you don’t believe it, you can try it.

If you are a junior operator, it is enough to be competent for the job. If you want to become a more powerful operator, you must not only know how to do it, but also why to do it. Continuing with the example of driving an e-commerce business, I learned very early that when a link cannot be opened in the entire site, open a search, place a few orders, and then run the entire site, and it will work.

I have tried it and it is true. Not only that, a product with a price advantage will not generate orders if it is not driven. After driving for a few days and then stopping, there will be natural orders every day.

When we encounter the above situation, we don’t need to summarize the rules and know how to do it. But how to solve similar problems in the future? I don’t know. We should learn to draw inferences from one example and know why things are done in a certain way. Why can the whole site be started after searching for a few days?

This is because the link has no weight and crowd label at the beginning, so the system does not know who to recommend it to, and naturally there will be no orders. Understanding this principle, we know that we don’t necessarily have to open a search to increase weight. If we are a manufacturer, the product cost is low, and we don’t want to spend advertising money, we can also register for activities to attract crowds and weight.

Why do I know all this? It's all from summary. If you know the facts but not the reasons, you will only become a tool for execution, which is worthless. Make summaries frequently and understand the principles behind things, so that your operation work can be more effective.

03 Great operations can be trained

The efficiency of operational work ultimately depends on the executors. Everyone has different personalities, hobbies, and strengths, but these are not important. If you want to work more efficiently, you must train yourself to become an operator with standardized thinking.

What is standardized thinking? My understanding is that when facing an operation task, we should arrange and execute it without emotion. It is a bit like assembly line operation. We should train ourselves to be able to split any operation task into assembly line-like tasks.

Taking e-commerce customer service as an example, online consultation and product after-sales will encounter all kinds of strange problems. If you look at this matter with standardized thinking, all the problems encountered by customer service can be put into boxes, and these boxes can be labeled and classified.

Then different boxes flow to different processing methods, just like combing messy hair into straight hair. This greatly improves work efficiency, and all problems encountered can be solved in the best way.

If you don't have standardized thinking, you will feel that every after-sales problem is very tricky, and every consultation requires reorganizing the language. This will waste everyone's brain memory. Data that can be stored in 2M of memory will take up 200M of space, and efficiency will naturally be reduced a lot.

04 Last

In the end, what we operators compete on is efficiency. What you can do, others can do too. If you work ten hours a day and others work twelve hours a day, how can you surpass them?

It's all about improving your work efficiency, knowing how to follow the process, summarizing frequently, and becoming an operator with standardized thinking. Your value will definitely be much greater than that of your peers.

Author: Tiger Talks Operations, WeChat Official Account: Tiger Talks Operations