Valentina Akpan: Founder of Rellatech, providing administrative and operations support to executives, founders, business owners and teams. Her background combines technical support, customer success, administration and operations.
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When work is falling behind, an extra person may help. An unclear process may also need attention. Review both the workload and the way it moves through your business before deciding what to change.
Good systems support people. They still need owners, judgement and maintenance.
Map one recurring process
Start with a process that causes repeated chasing, such as client onboarding, document approval or monthly reporting. Write down what starts it, what information is needed, who acts next and how completion is recorded.
Identify the actual gap
Is there more work than the current team can reasonably complete? Are responsibilities unclear? Is information missing? Are several people repeating the same step? Those are different problems. Capacity may require additional support. Unclear steps may require documentation. A broken connection may need technical repair.
Give each responsibility an owner
Name the person completing the work and the person approving exceptions. Keep requests, deadlines and decisions in an agreed place so follow-up does not depend on someone remembering a conversation.
Document a usable method
Capture the steps and important exceptions with someone who knows the work. Test the instructions, then assign an owner to keep them current. My accounting onboarding case study shows how working instructions became SOPs, a task inventory and a list of unresolved questions.
Add support around the real need
One capable person may cover several connected administrative and operational responsibilities. A larger workload or specialist requirement may call for additional people. Decide from the work and available capacity, rather than an arbitrary team-size or revenue rule.
Discuss operations support
Tell me which process keeps needing to be chased, who is involved and what you want to be different. You can also read about operations support.
Book a free callTell me what needs attention and which tools you use. I review inquiries personally and normally reply within one business day with the next step. Any detailed audit or implementation is scoped separately.
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