What is Operations Management

Think of operations management as the behind-the-scenes magic that makes businesses run smoothly. It’s all about planning, organizing, and keeping an eye on how things get done —whether that’s making a product or delivering a service. The goal? Make sure everything happens efficiently, on time, and without breaking the bank.

Example: Imagine you’re running a bakery. Operations management is making sure you have enough flour, your ovens are working, and your team knows who’s baking what, who's serving the customers, etc., so customers get their croissants fresh, hot, and right on time.

Operations are part of the overall customer experience and that is why it is important, for every company, to make sure it runs smoothly. What would happen if customers of a bakery gets dry croissants, or if tech support requests are answered incorrectly constantly?

Operations Manager: Job description

So, what’s the job of an operations manager?

At the core, it’s about making everything run as smoothly as possible. That means constantly looking for ways to improve processes, cut down on costs, and increase efficiency. They’re the ones figuring out how to make things faster, cheaper, and better.

But depending on the company an Ops Manager is working for, the scope can change dramatically.

• If the company is scaling and attacking new markets or deploying new products, the ops manager will be responsible of designing new processes, building new teams, etc.
• If the company is aiming for profitability, then improving processes and cutting costs would most likely be the priority.

And to do that, an operations manager have three main components to work on: processes, people and company.

Processes, people, company

The three main ingredients to understand how a company operates.

First, there are the processes. These are the step-by-step actions that get the job done, whether that’s making a product or delivering a service. Good processes are like a well-oiled machine—they keep things consistent, fast, and high quality.

Next up are the people. This is your team—everyone from the frontline staff handling day-to-day tasks to the managers making sure everything stays on track. Even the most well-designed processes can fall apart without the right people to carry them out.

Lastly, there’s the company—the big-picture view. It’s all about how operations connect to the broader goals of the business, like expanding into new markets, launching new products, or improving efficiency to do more with less. The company’s vision acts as the reality check for your operations, making sure everything you do aligns with where the business wants to go.

For example, let’s say you’re managing a small tech support company. You’ll need solid processes for handling customer support tickets, a friendly, knowledgeable team to solve problems, and a strategy that aligns with your company’s goal, like offering 24/7 support to customers worldwide.

Feeling lost? Our internal and external team of experts has created The Customer Operations Handbook: A comprehensive course that covers all the fundamentals of ops management in a lightweight way. It is split into two parts: the processes and the organization. Stay along for the ride! It's entirely free.

Go to Class Two: Designing and understanding business processes.