The growth of successful businesses can be summarized in the form of a business trilogy. Before proceeding, it is important to define trilogy and its use herein. Essentially, a trilogy is a collection of three related things. In this context, a trilogy is a collection of three concepts that are related and important to the growth and profitability of a business.

This important trilogy in understanding successful businesses involves people, processes, and technology. Any business relies heavily on its people to work, manage, and ultimately dictate the direction and profitability of an organization. Those same people work within a set of processes that the business has developed. And finally, in order to reduce the number of people and streamline business processes, technology is often applied to help automate or at least reduce the amount of time that it takes people to complete any given process.

The bringing together of people, processes, and technology is referred to as The Cashmap Trilogy. It is this trilogy that governs the underlying premise, use, and application of Cashmaps within your business. Although the resultant, documented process is what you see at the end of your efforts, Cashmaps inherently address the interaction of people and technology within the process itself.

Part one of the Cashmap trilogy involves the people within a given business. People play a significant role at all points of a business life-cycle no matter if it is a large, multi-million dollar organization or a small, single owner business operation. People dictate the goals and mission of a business. People define the business processes and make decisions about the purchase and application of technologies. People no doubt play a major role within a business and therefore play the same role in determining business growth and profitability.

Furthermore, it is less about obtaining a quantity of people and instead about the quality. Finding the "right people" should be a major objective of any business. This is clearly supported through scientific research and explained in the highly regarded book, "Good To Great" by Jim Collins. And finally, once the people are part of your organization, the challenge remains to integrate the people into your processes.

The second part of the Cashmap trilogy involves the processes of a business. Business processes can be though of as the subsystems of a business system. For instance, if the main function of a business is to manufacture and sell widgets, the subsystems (or processes) that enable the manufacture and sale of widgets may include: advertising and marketing process, sales process, distribution process, customer support process, etc.

It is important that businesses identify, document, and utilize business process documentation to understand the inner workings of the company. Once a process has been documented, a multitude of analysis techniques can be applied to streamline, improve, and ultimately increase efficiencies while simultaneously reducing costs. Businesses can also use these processes to understand the role that people and technology play within the business system.

The third and completing segment of the Cashmap trilogy is technology. Technology can be defined as "the practical application of science to commerce or industry". The goal of technology should be to apply it within business processes to enable automation and centralization that can be realized in the bottom line.

However, far too often business owners get caught up in the flood of technologies that are available for purchase and use. Many unknowingly believe that technology is always good for the bottom line. The truth couldn't be more opposite. Therefore, businesses waste significant monies and time on the purchase and implementation of technology without an understanding of the impact to people and process.

The application and use of technology within a business should be determined only after the processes and people are defined. The performance of business processes should be evaluated over a period of time and evaluated against key process metrics. Only at that time can the need for technology application be identified and integrated seamlessly into key business processes.

It is important for business owners to understand the components of The Cashmap Trilogy. Gaining an understanding of the importance and interaction of people, process, and technology can lead to better business decisions and improved profits.