What is operations management? The ultimate guide
Airtable
8 min read
Every successful company depends on efficient business operations to deliver value to customers and the wider organization. It might even be fair to say that operations-focused teams are unsung heroes, working behind the scenes to ensure your company can deliver on its promises.
Operations management provides a framework to turn difficult challenges—like disconnected workflows, unclear priorities, and inefficiencies that drain resources and slow growth—into competitive advantages. In this guide, we’ll explore the purpose of operations management, key responsibilities, essential skills, and best practices that drive high customer satisfaction and overall profitability.
What is operations management?
Operations management is the practice of designing, running, and continuously improving the workflows, resources, and systems that keep a business operating efficiently—from planning and execution to reporting and optimization. It connects people, data, and processes end-to-end to deliver real-time visibility, predictable outcomes, and smarter decision-making at scale.
The most effective operations management focuses on maximizing productivity and minimizing waste, ensuring that resources are allocated strategically, quality control standards are met, and business goals are achieved. This applies whether you’re in manufacturing, managing patient flow in healthcare, coordinating workforce scheduling in service industries, launching products for a technology company, or working in any company that needs to coordinate workflows and resources to deliver consistent results.
Why operations management is important
Operations management has a large impact on business success. It can mean the difference between shipping products on time at the expected quality level and missing the mark, both of which directly impact your bottom line.
Organizations with strong operational frameworks consistently maintain their competitive advantage by delivering products (according to specifications) faster, adapting more quickly to market demands, and establishing business processes and workflows that can be replicated and scaled.
Operations teams manage this by streamlining processes, and by eliminating inefficiencies and unnecessary expenses to create marginal improvements that add up over time. They also identify bottlenecks, dependencies, and vulnerabilities before they become critical issues. Together, these areas of oversight are designed to build customer trust and drive repeat business.
Key elements of a good operations management strategy
Successful operations strategies have the following elements in common to enable consistent execution and a cycle of continuous improvement, generally with the help of technology:
Clear objectives and KPIs: Begin by defining specific, measurable goals that align operational activities with broader business outcomes. Track metrics like cycle time, quality control rates, resource utilization, inventory levels, and cost per unit to gauge performance.
Process standardization: Document workflows and establish best practices that ensure consistency across teams and time periods. Standardization reduces variability and makes it easier to identify opportunities for process improvements.
Resource optimization: Balance capacity with demand by understanding team workloads, equipment availability, and material requirements. Prevent both underutilization and overextension through effective forecasting and planning.
Quality management systems: Build quality control checks into processes rather than saving quality assurance for the end of the process. Methodologies like Six Sigma provide structured approaches to continuous improvement.
Technology integration: Connect systems to create a single source of truth for operational data. Automation handles repetitive tasks, allowing humans to focus more on predictive and real-time insights that affect strategic decision-making.
Continuous improvement culture: Encourage teams to identify inefficiencies and experiment with solutions. Small, incremental changes—whether through lean manufacturing principles or other business practices—compound into significant operational advantages.
What do operations managers do?
Operations management professionals bridge the gap between strategy and execution. Their responsibilities span tactical coordination and strategic planning, making them essential to business operations across industries. Team members may focus on specific areas of responsibility, but typically engage in a number of the activities below.
Design and optimize workflows: Create processes that balance efficiency with flexibility. Map dependencies, identify bottlenecks, and implement improvements that accelerate delivery. Functions of operations management include streamlining both production and service workflows.
Manage resources and inventory: Allocate people, equipment, and materials to meet demand without excess waste. Oversee inventory management to maintain optimal inventory levels, forecast future needs, and plan capacity accordingly through effective supply chain management.
Ensure quality standards: Establish quality control metrics, conduct audits, and implement corrective actions when performance drifts from targets. Maintain consistency across outputs to drive customer satisfaction.
Coordinate cross-functional teams: Bridge gaps between departments like sales, product, finance, human resources, and delivery. Ensure seamless handoffs and shared accountability for business success.
Monitor performance: Track operational metrics in real-time, generate reports for stakeholders, and translate data into actionable insights that support decision-making at all levels.
Drive problem-solving: When issues arise—supply chain delays, quality problems, capacity constraints—operations managers diagnose root causes and implement solutions quickly using strong problem-solving skills.
Plan for the future: Evaluate new technologies, anticipate market demands, and prepare operational infrastructure to support growth initiatives through strategic planning.
Required skills in operations management
Operations intersect with many areas of a business, so operations managers need a deft combination of analytical capabilities, interpersonal strengths, and technical expertise. Many roles require a bachelor's degree in business, engineering, or related fields, though experience and demonstrated skills also matter. Some operations managers find that other career paths have prepared them well for success in this field.
Required skills typically include:
Analytical thinking to parse complex data to identify patterns, forecast demand, and make evidence-based decisions about resource allocation and process improvements.
Strong project management skills to coordinate multiple initiatives simultaneously, tracking timelines, dependencies, and deliverables across teams and functions.
Communication and leadership skills help translate technical operational details to executives and to provide clear direction to team members executing the work.
Problem-solving skills to diagnose issues quickly, consider multiple solutions, and implement fixes that address root causes rather than symptoms.
Technical proficiency to understand the tools and technologies that enable operational visibility and efficiency.
Adaptability to respond to disruptions with composure, and to adjust plans and resources using real-time data as circumstances evolve.
Business acumen to understand how operational decisions affect profitability, cash flow, customer satisfaction, and market positioning.
Operations management tools
The right technology stack transforms operations from reactive firefighting and disconnected processes to streamlined, proactive optimization. To support effective operations management, modern platforms should offer:
Unified visibility
Connect workflows, data, and teams in one system that integrates with all core business systems so everyone works from the same information. Eliminate scattered spreadsheets and siloed tools that create blind spots in business operations.
Workflow automation
Workflow automation is critical to reduce time wasted on manual coordination. Start by automating request routing, status updates, approvals, and notifications. Free teams to focus on high-value strategic work instead of day-to-day administrative tasks.
AI-powered intelligence
Leverage no code artificial intelligence tools like AI agents to analyze patterns, predict risks, and recommend optimizations without technical oversight. AI can surface insights hidden in operational data and enable smarter decision-making for both routine and complex scenarios.
Real-time reporting
Generate dashboards and executive summaries that provide instant visibility into performance metrics, capacity utilization, inventory management, and portfolio health. Real-time insights enable data-driven decision-making to keep businesses competitive in dynamic markets.
Flexible customization
Adapt tools to your unique business processes rather than forcing operations into rigid solutions. Build customizable apps and workflows that match how your teams work.
Integration capabilities
Connect with existing systems—from customer relationship management (CRM) platforms to enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions—to ensure that data everywhere is updated, consistent, and accessible in the tools where teams work and collaborate.
Solutions like Airtable provide operations teams with these capabilities in an accessible, no-code platform. Teams can build custom workflows, implement automation, and gain portfolio-wide visibility without requiring technical resources or lengthy implementation cycles.
Explore Airtable for operations
What are types of operations management?
Operations management principles apply across industries, but approaches will vary according to company goals and the specific areas of the business that operations teams support.
Manufacturing: The focus is typically on production planning, quality control, inventory management, and supply chain management. There’s an emphasis on minimizing waste through lean manufacturing principles and maximizing throughput in the production process.
Service: The focus is on optimizing customer experiences, workforce scheduling, and service level agreements (SLAs). Balancing quality service and consistent delivery with emerging technologies is particularly challenging because human interaction is central to the business model; there’s always a human at one end of the conversation.
General project management: The focus is on managing resource allocation, timeline coordination, and deliverable tracking across multiple concurrent initiatives. These are time-bound, and this role is critical for agencies, consulting firms, and technology companies managing complex projects or campaigns.
Supply chain and procurement: The focus is on coordinating vendors, logistics, sourcing, and distribution to ensure raw materials and components arrive when needed, without excess inventory costs. This includes managing relationships with suppliers and optimizing procurement processes.
Digital product management: The focus is on overseeing software development workflows, product launches, customer onboarding, and technical support, and requires tight integration between product, engineering, and go-to-market teams.
Healthcare: The focus is on coordinating patient care delivery, medical equipment inventory, staffing schedules, and facility management to improve patient outcomes while controlling costs.
While the focus areas differ, all types benefit from the same fundamental principles: clear visibility, optimized business processes, and data-driven decision-making that drives operational efficiency.
Supply chain management vs. operations management
Supply chain management is a subset of operations management that specifically focuses on the flow of materials, information, and pricing from suppliers through the production process to customers. While operations management broadly encompasses the entire business operating model, supply chain management concentrates on procurement, sourcing, logistics, and distribution.
Operations management asks: "How do we optimize our entire business system to achieve our goals?"
Supply chain management asks: "How do we ensure raw materials and products flow efficiently from source to customer while maintaining optimal inventory levels?"
In practice, these disciplines overlap as supply chain issues—like vendor delays or inventory management problems—create operational challenges that affect the production of goods and services. Larger operational inefficiencies can also strain supply chains and impact customer satisfaction.
9 operations management best practices
Leading organizations follow proven business practices to deliver operational excellence:
1. Start with strategy alignment: Ensure operational activities directly support business objectives. Every process and metric should connect back to customer value or market differentiation.
2. Build in transparency: Make performance data visible to stakeholders at all levels. Shared visibility creates accountability and enables faster problem-solving across teams.
3. Automate the routine: Use automation to handle repetitive coordination work—request routing, status updates, basic reporting—and give humans back some time. Start with pre-built templates and workflows, such as Airtable’s AI Plays, to make adopting AI easier.
4. Design for exceptions: Build business processes that handle 80% of standard use cases while leaving room and flexibility for processes that do require customization or special handling.
5. Measure what matters: Track metrics that drive real decisions and outcomes, not vanity numbers that make teams look good. Focus on leading indicators that predict problems before they impact customer expectations or profitability.
6. Create feedback loops: Implement post-mortems, retrospectives, and continuous improvement programs that turn operational experience into ongoing process improvements.
7. Invest in relationships: Business success depends on cross-functional collaboration. Build trust with stakeholders through consistent communication and follow-through on day-to-day commitments.
8. Embrace forecasting: Use historical data and market analysis to anticipate demand, plan capacity, and prepare for seasonal fluctuations, where applicable.
9. Monitor performance and adjust: Test business strategies against actual results. What works in theory may need adjustment when confronted with constraints and market demands.
Operations management trends [for 2026]
Operations management continues to evolve as technology, sustainability priorities, and business strategies also evolve. Here are a few trends to keep in mind.
AI-native operations
Artificial intelligence is moving from experimental to essential. Teams use AI for predictive analytics, automated decision-making, and intelligent resource allocation that improves operational efficiency.
Remote and distributed operations
As workforces disperse geographically, operations management increasingly focuses on digital coordination tools and asynchronous workflows that support day-to-day collaboration.
Sustainability integration
Environmental and social governance (ESG) considerations are becoming core operational metrics. Efficient resource use, waste reduction, and responsible sourcing serve both financial and sustainability goals.
Real-time everything
Stakeholders expect instant visibility into operational status, inventory levels, and production schedules. Batch reporting is giving way to live dashboards and automated notifications.
No-code digital operations platforms
Low-code is making way for no-code platforms that allow teams to build custom workflows without requiring developer resources, dramatically reducing time-to-value for process improvements and operational efficiency gains. Invest the configuration time up front to set yourself up for success.
Predictive vs. reactive
Advanced analytics and forecasting enable operations teams to prevent problems rather than scrambling to respond to them—a shift that improves the experience for the customer and the business.
Company-wide integration of operations strategy
Organizations are breaking down silos between functions, recognizing that the purpose of operations management is beneficial to the business as a whole. It also allows teams to assign someone to focus on processes while others focus on the quality of output.
Manage your operations more efficiently with Airtable
Airtable transforms operational complexity into clarity. Its AI-powered platform is designed for how operations management professionals actually work. Unlike rigid ERP systems that require months of implementation, Airtable adapts to your unique business processes and provides the automation and intelligence you need to scale operations effectively.
Operations teams can use Airtable to centralize workflows, implement automation, and gain real-time visibility across their entire portfolio—from vendor management and project management to capacity planning, inventory management, and executive reporting. AI capabilities analyze patterns, predict bottlenecks, and recommend optimizations that prevent problems before they impact delivery or customer satisfaction.
Explore Airtable for operations
About the author
Airtableis the AI-native platform that is the easiest way for teams to build trusted AI apps to accelerate business operations and deploy embedded AI agents at enterprise scale. Across every industry, leading enterprises trust Airtable to power workflows and transform their most critical business processes in product operations, marketing operations, and more – all with the power of AI built-in. More than 500,000 organizations, including 80% of the Fortune 100, rely on Airtable's AI-native platform to accelerate work, automate complex workflows, and turn the power of AI into measurable business impact.
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Operations