Master Process Mapping: The First Step to Simplifying Your Small Business Systems

You're a small business owner, trying to do all the things, and you know that you should get some systems into your business. So you start writing out the steps for some of the things that you do. 

But the problem is that creating random SOPs for a task here and there won’t solve the bigger issue - the business still depends on you. Without clear, mapped out processes, those tasks are all disconnected, and you’re still juggling the gaps in between. To really free up your time and stop doing all the things, you need to map out the entire process - not just the individual tasks. That way, you can hand over the whole workflow, knowing it’ll get done right every time, without constant back and forth.

Without knowing how to map your business processes, you won’t be able to:

• See the big picture of how your workflows operate.
• Identify inefficiencies and fix gaps before they cause bigger issues.
• Build the systems that free up your time and make delegation easier.

Instead, you’ll continue to:

• Waste your precious time and energy on tasks that could be streamlined.
• Struggle to delegate effectively, leading to micromanagement or missed steps.
• Feel overwhelmed without a clear plan to make your business run smoothly.

If you're ready to fix this, you’re in the right place! I created this simple, 5 step process to help you map your core business processes and turn them into efficient systems. This is exactly what I do with my clients, small business owners like you, to simplify their operations, reduce their stress levels and create more time.

We’ll cover everything from identifying your core processes to refining your maps and creating a foundation for SOPs. I’ll also share tips to avoid common mistakes - ones I’ve made myself and still see other small business owners making.

Just follow these steps, and by the time you finish Step 5, you’ll feel like a pro. You’ll have the clarity and confidence that comes from knowing exactly how your business runs and how to improve it.

Ready? Let’s get cracking!

Why You Need Process Maps Before SOPs

When it comes to building systems in your small business, process mapping is your first step. It’s not just for big corporations with complex operations - it’s critical for small businesses like yours, too.

You might be tempted to skip straight to writing SOPs (standard operating procedures). But without a process map, it’s like trying to write a recipe without knowing the ingredients. Here’s why mapping your processes first is essential:

• See the Big Picture: A process map gives you a visual overview of your entire workflow. It shows you the sequence of tasks, decision points, and handoffs. This clarity is crucial - it’s how you understand what’s actually happening in your business.
• Identify Gaps and Fix Issues Early: When you map out your process, you’ll often be able to spot missing steps or inefficient tasks right away. You'll quickly see where things slip through the cracks. Fixing these issues straight away saves time and prevents headaches later.
• Create a Strong Foundation for SOPs: Your process map is the blueprint for your SOPs. It’s the birds eye view that guides you when you start documenting details. Without this map, you'll find yourself creating random SOPs that are incomplete, confusing, or don’t match what actually happens throughout the process.
• Make Delegation Easier: A clear process map helps you see exactly what needs to be done and who needs to do it. It makes it easier to delegate tasks without the need for constant follow up and micromanagement. As the business owner, this is how you free up your time and reduce overwhelm - the fewer decisions you have to make in the day, the better!

Want to know more about the difference between systems, processes and SOPs? Check out this post, here. 

What Is Process Mapping?

Process mapping is a way to visually represent the steps of a process. We usually use some kind of a flowchart because it's a visual overview of every task, decision, and outcome in the sequence it happens. It’s not about making a perfect diagram - it’s about capturing the flow of your work so you can understand and improve it. 

Step 1: Identify Your Core Processes

The first step in process mapping is to identify your core processes. These are the essential workflows that keep your business running smoothly. For small businesses, the core processes usually fall into four main areas:

1. Marketing: How You Get Leads

• This is how you attract potential clients or customers. Depending on your business, there may be multiple ways you generate leads.
• Examples:
  • A physiotherapy clinic might attract new patients through local advertising, word-of-mouth referrals, or social media.
  • A bricks and mortar retail store could bring in customers with in store promotions, community events, or window displays.
• Best Practice: Start by mapping the lead generation process you use most often or the one that’s causing the most issues. This helps you make a big impact straight up.

2. Sales: How You Convert Leads

• This is the process of turning your leads (potential customers) into paying ones. The sales process will be different depending on your business model.
• Examples:
  • For a physiotherapist, the sales process might include a patient booking an appointment online or over the phone, then arriving at the clinic for treatment.
  • In a retail store, the sales process could involve helping a customer find the right product, processing the payment at checkout, or offering a gift with purchase.
• Best Practice: Focus on the main way you close sales. If you have several methods, choose the one that brings in the most revenue or has the most issues.

3. Delivery: How You Deliver Your Product or Service

• This process covers everything involved in fulfilling your customer’s needs - how you actually give them what they've paid for. Delivery could be physically delivering your product, or giving them the service they paid for. Sometimes it's called "operations". Whatever it's called, it’s one of the most important parts of your customer experience.
• Examples:
  • A physiotherapist’s delivery process includes welcoming the patient, providing treatment, and booking follow up appointments.
  • For a florist who specialises in events, the delivery process might involve helping the client to choose the flowers, arranging the flowers, and setting up the display at the venue.
• Best Practice: Start with the part of your delivery process where issues may be affecting the customer experience. Are there delays, mistakes, or areas causing frustration for your customer? If everything runs smoothly for your customers, focus on the process you handle most frequently or that takes the most time. 

4. Cash Management: How You Handle Cash Flow

• Cash management involves tracking income, paying expenses, and managing your overall cash flow. It’s crucial for keeping your business financially healthy.
• Examples:
  • A florist might need to handle client payments for event bookings, track deposits, and manage payments to suppliers for flowers and materials.
  • A hair salon manages daily payments from clients, as well as regular payments to suppliers for hair products and equipment.
• Best Practice: Start with the process that impacts your cash flow the most, like late client payments or paying key suppliers on time.

Pro Tip: Focus on High Impact Processes First

Don’t try to map every process at once - it’s overwhelming and you'll end up doing nothing. Instead, start with the processes that have the biggest impact on your business. These are usually:

• The ones you handle most frequently.
• The ones causing the most issues or delays.

This is where the 80/20 rule comes in. The 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto Principle, states that 20% of your efforts produce 80% of your results. When we apply this to process mapping, it means that around 20% of your processes account for 80% of what you actually do in your business.

By working on these high impact processes first, you’ll:

• Fix your biggest problems quickly.
• Make the biggest improvements to your workflow.
• Build momentum and the confidence to tackle other processes later.

Start with your core processes - like delivery or customer communication - that are crucial to your customer experience. Alternatively, focus on core processes that take up most of your time.

Step 2: Choose Your Process Mapping Tool

The next step is choosing the right tool for your process mapping. As a small business owner, you don’t want a basic design app like Canva or a super complicated enterprise solution like Smartsheet. You need a happy medium - a purpose built tool that’s easy to use but is still designed specifically for mapping processes. Here’s why I think Whimsical, Miro, and Lucidchart are the best fit for small businesses:

• Why Not Canva? Canva and similar design apps are great for graphics, but they aren’t made for process mapping. You’ll end up spending too much time adjusting shapes and arrows, rather than focusing on your actual processes. It’s inefficient and you end up with unclear, inconsistent maps that are hard to update later.
• Why Not Enterprise Level Tools? Advanced tools like Smartsheet have advanced features designed for government and large companies with complicated workflows, multiple departments, and org charts. They’re powerful, but they’re also expensive, harder to learn, and overkill for small business owners who need something simple and efficient.
• The Sweet Spot: Purpose Built Tools Tools like Whimsical, Miro, and Lucidchart are designed specifically for process mapping. You'll find them:
  • Easy to Use: These tools are intuitive and beginner friendly, so you can get started quickly without a steep learning curve.
  • Flexible: You can easily edit your maps as your processes change, which is important since process maps aren’t a one-and-done task. You’ll need to revisit and refine them often.
  • Affordable: All three options have free plans that give you everything you need to create professional workflows without a big upfront cost.

Pro Tip: Pick the Tool That Feels Right for You

Test out Whimsical, Miro, or Lucidchart, and choose the one that feels the most intuitive. The goal is to make process mapping easy and efficient, so you can focus on building better systems for your business.

Step 3: Break Down Each Process into Steps

Now that you’ve identified your core processes, it’s time to break them down into individual steps. Start by figuring out the trigger event - what kicks off this process? Then, think about the outcome - how do you know when the process is complete? From there, list all the steps in between.

Example: Chasing a Late Payment

1. Trigger Event: The invoice is overdue. This is the starting point - it’s when you realise that a payment hasn’t been received by the due date.
2. Outcome: The late payment is either collected, or you’ve taken the next steps (e.g., sending a final notice or escalating the issue).
3. Steps in Between:
   • Check your records to confirm the payment is late.
   • Review the customer’s payment history and any previous communication.
   • Send a friendly reminder email or call the customer to follow up.
   • Set a reminder to check back if the payment isn’t received within a few days.
   • Send a more formal payment request if there’s still no response.
   • Consider offering a payment plan or escalating the issue if needed.
   • And what else? Keep asking this question until you’re sure you haven’t missed any steps. This question helps you to think of any other steps you might not think of right away.

Step 4: Create the Process Map

Once you’ve broken down your process into steps, it’s time to create your process map. This is where you bring everything together visually, using the tool you chose.

Use Basic Shapes and Symbols

Most process maps rely on a few common shapes to represent different steps. Here’s a quick guide to the key symbols:

• Oval: Represents the start or end of a process.
• Rectangle: Shows a specific task or action step.
• Diamond: Indicates a decision point, where you have to choose between two or more options.
• Arrow: Connects the steps and shows the flow of the process.

All the tools we recommend - Whimsical, Miro, and Lucidchart - have these symbols built in. You can just drag and drop them onto your map. If you’re not sure how to use these shapes, don’t worry - I've got a blog post coming up that will cover them in more detail.

Example: Chasing a Late Payment

Here’s how a process map for chasing a late payment might look:

• Start (Oval): Invoice due date passes without payment.
• Step (Rectangle): Check records to confirm the payment is overdue.
• Step (Rectangle): Review the customer’s payment history and previous communication.
• Step (Rectangle): Send a friendly reminder email or call the customer to follow up.
• Decision (Diamond): Has the payment been received?
  • If yes: Step (Rectangle): Update records and close the process.
  • If no: Step (Rectangle): Send a formal payment request or escalate to a next step (e.g., payment plan or collections).
• End (Oval): Payment received or escalation initiated.

Use your mapping tool to map this out visually. You can add extra info if you need or tweak the flow based on your specific process.

I also recommend coming back to the process map after a few days. I was working with a client recently to help map out their biggest workflows, and we really thought that we'd got all the steps down. Then she went away, did the actual job and came back next week with loads more steps that we'd missed. This is totally normal, and that's why I always suggest a break of a few days, then work through the process and you'll find that you capture everything that way. 

Pro Tip: Start Simple, Then Refine

• Simplicity First: Start with a high level overview of your process. Focus on getting down the main steps and decisions.
• Refine as You Go: As you review your process map, you can add details or tweak the flow. Process maps are living documents, so keep them flexible and easy to update.

Step 5: Review and Refine Your Process Map

Drafting your process map is just the first step. To make it truly useful, you need to review and refine it. This ensures the map reflects what’s actually being done, not just what you think is happening - or what you’d like to happen.

Why Reviewing Is Essential

Your process map should reflect what actually happens in your business, not just what you think happens. Reviewing helps you:

• Catch missing steps or unnecessary actions.
• Confirm that the sequence makes sense and flows smoothly.
• Make sure that everyone involved understands and agrees on the process.

How to Review and Refine Your Map

Here are actionable steps to guide you through the review process:

1. Involve the Right People
   • If team members carry out parts of the process, get them to work through mapping the process with you. Whoever does the job most often knows what they actually do. They'll know what works, what doesn’t, and what’s missing.
   • Even if you’re a solo business owner, come back to the map after working through the process yourself. Ask someone else to work through the process and give you feedback. Remember, the aim is to be able to hand this over to someone who has the skills, but not necessarily the knowledge of how your business works. 
2. Test the Process in Action
   • Use the map as a guide while performing the tasks. Pay attention to anything that feels unclear, overly complicated, or out of order.
   • Make a note of any bottlenecks or places where tasks take longer than expected.
3. Get Feedback
   • Ask team members or a tester to walk through the process and provide their insights.
   • Questions to ask:
     • Does this map accurately reflect how we do things?
     • Are there any steps we missed?
     • Could any part of the process be simplified?
4. Use Clear and Consistent Naming
   • Label each step clearly and consistently. This makes the map easy to understand for everyone, especially as eventually, you won't be the person responsible for doing this process - others need to follow or update it.
5. Make Adjustments
   • Update the map based on feedback and testing. Add missing steps, remove unnecessary actions, and clarify confusing areas.
   • Review any decision points (e.g., diamonds) to make sure the most common outcomes are accounted for.

Pro Tip: Keep Your Map Simple and Accessible

• Focus on Clarity: Avoid unnecessary complexity. A simple, clear map is much more useful than a complicated one.
• Keep It a Living Document: Store your process map somewhere easy to find and share, like in your process mapping tool or a cloud folder. Review and update it regularly as your business evolves. A process that works today might need adjustments tomorrow.

How to Get Your Team To Care About Process Mapping

Process mapping shouldn’t be the responsibility of the business owner. It's not a good use of your time - you need to be working on strategy, growing the business and working on what you do best.  Instead, whoever is responsible for carrying out the tasks should create the maps. This ensures the maps accurately reflect what’s happening day-to-day and empowers the team to take ownership of their work. Not only that, your aim is to have a team member who is responsible for creating, reviewing and updating all your processes and SOPs. That's how you build a business that's not dependent on you, the business owner. 

Why Your Team Should Create the Process Maps

• They Know the Details: Team members who actually do the process know exactly how it works. They know all the steps, decision points, and bottlenecks that the business owner might not.
• Empowers Ownership and Accountability: When team members are involved in creating the maps, they take greater ownership of the process. This accountability motivates them to follow through and improve the workflows they help design.
• Ensures Practical and Accurate Maps: A map created by the people doing the work is more likely to reflect reality. This means fewer errors, less confusion, and a process that actually works in practice.

How to Support Your Team

1. Explain the Purpose: Make sure your team understands why process mapping matters. It’s not about creating extra work - it’s about making everyone’s jobs easier by clarifying tasks, reducing inefficiencies, and ensuring nothing falls through the cracks. It also means that anyone in the team can take a holiday, knowing that someone else can step in while they're away. 
2. Provide Guidance: Make sure you give your team tools, templates, and training to make process mapping easier. Show them how to use the process mapping tool you’ve chosen and give examples to get them started.
3. Encourage Collaboration: Team members don’t need to work alone. Encourage them to involve each other, share ideas, and review the maps together. This builds buy in and make sure the final map gets the benefit of multiple perspectives. It also means that you have multiple team members who can do the same job and cover if someone is not there.
4. Stay Available: Be a resource for your team. While they’re responsible for creating the maps, your encouragement, guidance and feedback help ensure the process stays aligned with business goals.

Pro Tip: Focus on Empowerment

Handing over the responsibility for process mapping to your team isn’t about dumping it on them and walking away - it’s about giving them the confidence to take ownership. This way, you build trust, accountability, and you get better outcomes for everyone.

Final Thoughts

Process mapping isn’t just for big businesses. As a small business owner, it’s your key to creating systems that reduce stress, save time, and make delegation easier. By mapping out your core processes, then building the standard operating procedures for each step in the process, you can simplify your operations and set your business up for long term success.

The beauty of process mapping is that it allows you to see your business clearly - step by step - so you can refine, improve, and delegate easily. It’s not about adding more work; it’s about building the systems that free you to focus on what matters most.

Freebie & Next Steps

Now that you’ve mapped out your processes, the next part is to turn each step into an SOP. This is where the magic happens - creating clear, repeatable instructions that anyone can follow.

To help you get started, I've got a couple of great resources.

FREEBIE: download my SOP Recipe Guide. I've designed this to help make documenting your processes simple and effective, so you can create the systems your business needs. Then you can hand over tasks, knowing that everything will get done exactly the way you want. Grab the guide here - it's what I use with my clients and with my own team. 

Even better, for just $11 you can grab my SOPs Made Simple bot. Using the power of AI, you can create SOPs with zero effort. You record yourself doing a task, and in seconds, you can create a step by step system your team (or future team) can follow to get the job done exactly the way you would. You also get a 10 page guide to show you exactly how to use it. No tech skills or systemising experience needed, promise!