What is operational support in business?

Operational support simply refers to any process or team which is key to the successful running of a business’s core operations. For your operational support strategy to be successful, you may need a specialised team with a high level of expertise.

This is so that they can provide solutions to complex technical issues and provide professional guidance. In the next section, we will explore the key role support professionals play in running your business ops.

Jobs involved in operational teams

Operational support roles help ensure smooth day-to-day functioning and continuous improvement of a business’s workflows, supply chains, logistics, on-site facilities, accounting, finance and information technology (IT) systems.

Staff in operational support are often responsible for carrying out essential jobs and working in different capacities to support business operations.

Therefore, they typically require input from HR, IT and supply chain and logistics management teams.

For example, when a company onboards a large number of new employees, operational support staff coordinate closely with HR to ensure certain tasks are complete.

This includes processing contracts, arranging training schedules and working with IT to set up user accounts, devices and system access.

How supply chain management and operations management differ

Supply chain management is somewhat different to ops management. Overseeing the flow of goods and services from sourcing to delivery, supply chain management involves building a network of suppliers, retailers, wholesalers and more.

Conversely, ops management involves the streamlining of more internal activities.

The importance of operational support for business success and customer satisfaction

Operational support employees work behind the scenes on internal processes. These include the smooth operation of customer services, customer support, sales, marketing, finances, production and organisational transformation.

Therefore, good operational support can help speed up core workflows, ensure that they are running smoothly and have a low error rate.

This can increase employee productivity, increase sales and ensure the best possible customer service.

When it comes to people operations, or ‘people ops‘ as it is also known, everyday management of employees is integral to success.

Our article on people ops explains that maintaining key initiatives such as diversity, equity and inclusion and employee wellbeing can improve retention.

A supportive team and supporting staff are essential for maintaining a positive workplace, as they foster collaboration and ensure smooth daily operations.

Skills supportive teams need to meet operational needs

Effective operational support also requires a diverse set of skills, including communication, leadership, problem-solving and adaptability, to manage the various demands that arise in employee management.

Cybsersecurity measures

Finally, security experience may be an important aspect of operational support, as it helps keep organisational assets and data secure, ensuring a compliant working environment.

Staff members may also need additional compliance training, such as in operational risk management, continuity planning and workflow safety.

Ideas to improve operational support

As operational support keeps a business’s systems running effectively, streamlining this can help make business protocols more effective and increase productivity.

Fostering a culture of continuous improvement within your support teams is important for driving efficiency, adapting to changing needs and maintaining competitiveness.

Identifying opportunities for improvement, optimising resources and aligning support protocols with operational needs may help you to enhance efficiency.

Addressing risk through automation and process enhancements can also greatly help facilitate this.

Use automation to increase operational efficiency

Automation can help create consistent and accurate operational workflows, which may prevent errors that cause delays and require time-consuming fixes.

When deciding whether to automate an operational process, consider the following steps:

• Does the operation have a high number of repetitive jobs?
• Are the tasks time-sensitive?
• Do they need to be compliant with certain government regulations?
• Do they have a big impact on other systems and processes in the business?

This type of automation can be useful to HR teams that are working to automate their payroll, purchase orders or onboarding processes, such as sending out forms to new employees.

Increase recruitment effectiveness with AI automation

Automation can also be useful when hiring for jobs. Automation during the recruitment process may increase effectiveness by speeding up the candidate screening phase.

Generally, the quicker the time-to-hire or feedback on an interview is, the more likely both candidates and employees can interpret your brand positively.

While automation can be useful for replacing manual tasks, it can still be important to ensure that a business welcomes its employees in a ‘human’, personal manner.

Automating repetitive tasks that don’t require human input, however, can be hugely beneficial.

In Indeed’s article on human experience (HX) in the age of AI, we explain that empathy and emotional insight can be an important part of workplace communication, particularly if you are increasingly using AI.

For example, while some aspects of employee management can be automated, only good human managers have the empathy it takes to boost morale, listen to employee concerns and handle sensitive conflicts.

Performance metrics

To make sure operational support is running as smoothly as possible, businesses can consider measuring their performance. Key performance indicators (KPIs) to consider for operational support performance are operational KPIs. Some examples of operational KPIs include:

• Absenteeism rate
• Overtime hours
• Employee turnover rate
• Time-to-hire rate
• Cost-per-click for marketing campaigns
• Cost-per-acquisition for marketing campaigns
• Marketing goal conversion rate
• Sales lead conversion rates
• Sales opportunity scores
• Logistical transportation costs
• Picking and packing time cycles
• IT server downtime
• Production volume
• Production downtime
• Support desk ticket volume

Tracking the progress of service requests is also essential in service request management, as it helps ensure timely fulfilment and maintains high internal service standards.

Using operational KPIs effectively

Operational KPIs are typically wide-ranging and can cover many aspects of a business’s operational support.

These KPIs can provide a snapshot into the daily, weekly or monthly performance of a business’s operational support as well.

Managing incidents effectively is important for maintaining service quality and operational stability, as it helps operational support teams respond quickly and prevent future issues.

Like with other forms of KPI, businesses can compare current operational performance with their targets.

A business may have some of its operations running smoothly but may need to assess the performance of specific areas.

For example, a business may have lowered its transportation costs in the last few months, but is having increased issues with absenteeism, which means that there are fewer employees to transport products.

While the business has found a way to cut down on its costs, customer satisfaction may decrease if they experience any issues delivering products in time.

Operational support training

By providing employees with the appropriate operations training, you can help ensure that employees know how to use operations systems correctly can help them run more smoothly.

Types of operational training include:

• Providing the right training materials
• Training employees on any new systems
• Preparing any support teams for business transformation
• Creating succession plans so that key ops managers can pass their knowledge on to their successors
• Providing the right onboarding and ongoing training to new ops staff members

Ongoing professional development is essential in operational support roles, helping employees to build their skills and advance their careers.

Sharing best practices and learning from others also enhances operational training, ensuring continuous improvement and high standards across the team.

Cross-department collaboration

While different supportive teams work on different processes, it can be useful to consider how they work together as part of a whole. For this reason, consider fostering close cross-communication between different operations teams.

Imagine a business are developing a new software product they hope to launch onto the market.

To achieve this, their engineering team designs the product, the marketing team work to communicate its features to the public and the sales team looks at developing a competitive price strategy for it based on market analysis.

Use a single point of contact (SPOC)

Consider nominating an SPOC in each ops team so that there is a specific person to talk to if someone from a different team has any questions to ask.

These are usually accountable leaders from the team, perhaps a manager or highly experienced member of staff.

To help ensure clear cross-communication is to define the roles of employees precisely in each operational team and may provide clarity on who is involved in which part of a project.

When roles are clearly defined, employees with questions about a particular project stage may have a better idea of whom to ask for support.

Operations support covers a wide umbrella of different teams and systems. Streamlining operations support can help make a business more competitive; it can potentially run more smoothly, improve hiring rates and measure performance better in general.

Some challenges to operations support management can be providing employees with the right operations training, or creating a balance between automation and maintaining a human, empathetic communications and HR approach.