Have I Mentioned Process Comes Before Technology?
November 25, 2009
I was recently talking with the president of a SMB, and during that conversation he mentioned some technologies he was thinking about implementing to improve some of his internal processes.
It is a constant refrain.
Technology Takes Last Place
Technology should be a distant last place in your considerations.
Technology is a tool that can be used by people.
A tool used by people to generate business results by following business processes.
Read these two reviews by John Caddel, and Bob Sutton referencing the same study on improving medication processes in hospitals. To quote Mr. Caddel;
I’ve seen both these situations in action: the ability of front-line personnel to understand and fix problems with the processes they use, and the effectiveness of often-overlooked simple and low-tech solutions.
The SMB Takeaway
Technology tools can help standardize, they can help speed up existing business processes. But if those processes don’t even exist right now. Don’t think (or let vendors convince you) that a software tool will be a magic bullet that can do it all for you.
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Photo Credit bunchofpants via flickr
The Value Of Process
September 10, 2009
Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth has an excellent overview of the benefits of continuously improving your business processes. He also has three clear examples of what process is not! (check out the blog for those!)
On process;
Business processes serve as the central nervous system for your organization providing a framework for every action, decision, activity or innovation to flow from and through
There is an old saying that if something has to be done more than once, it could be a process.
Simply put; a process is a framework of inputs and outputs that map out the tasks, functions and steps required for a particular business outcome.
For example, a customer calls your sales staff to order some product, the availability of the product is verified by the sales rep, then somehow warehouse staff have to be informed to pick and pack that product, then again, shipping has to know that the product has to get to the customer, and don’t forget A/R for invoicing.
Mapping out each of these steps shows you were the hand offs from person to person (and even department to department) occur.
By defining what, who, when and how these hand-offs occur allows you to monitor and improve that particular process. For example, it takes two weeks for your customer to get that order?
Using that process map you developed, you can identify how long each of those steps takes – and identify where in that process that the time loss to equal two weeks comes into play!
The SMB Takeaway
You may not currently call it a process but managed or not, they exist. It is how people do their jobs. Take a look at them, see if they need some fixing.
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Process Improvement FAIL!
June 8, 2009
A very humorous look at how process improvement initiatives fail by Andrew Baker at CIO Zone
Let me quote his introduction;
I started writing this blog intending to call it “Successfully introducing process improvement” but thought the opposite approach much more fun
Now you just pop on over there and read the rest!
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Utility Computing: And What’s In A Word?
June 4, 2009
If you have been reading this blog for a while, you know that I believe that computing will become more utility oriented. That there will be less reliance on what we currently look at as internal technology infrastructure.
My belief in this came about in the mid 80’s when I read that every automobile manufactured in North America had more computing power built into it than the NASA moon shots.
If you have read Nicholas Carr’s IT Doesn’t Matter you will notice one key difference, I never saw it as the world of software that we currently have, the way I saw it back then was along the lines of intelligent hardware devices. Similar to the “smart” thermostats in most new homes.
This type of Utility IT has often been compared to electricity – just plug it in, and pay by the sip. I have used that analogy myself.
But there is an excellent warning by Andrew McAfee, formerly at Harvard, now MIT. He argues that we should not try to simplify this concept down to the simplicity of an analogy like electricity.
His argument is that even in a more utility environment, IT is not as simple as 110 or 220 volts (North America) coming out of a socket. There is no decision to made there, no decisions or management is required around an electrical socket.
So using terms like electricity may overly simplify, or “dumb down” our thinking of IT.
And that is dangerous.
When was the last time you talked about electricity at a management meeting?
Exactly!
And even if get your IT through a wall jack (eg Salesforce.com) There are still management decisions that must be made. We use technology to create or consume information. To do that there are work flows, business processes and certain business metrics and capabilities.
All of these will still demand management attention, demand decisions, and need to be top of mind for all businesses.
So, you can consider me a convert!
Will more and more of our IT resources continue to come from outside our walls? Yes,
But will you be able to plug in a cable and by magic have exactly the information, processes and work flows just appear? No!
It will still need management attention – lots of it.
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ITIL: Risks And Rewards
May 19, 2009
If you are a larger organization looking at ITIL, here is a good overview by Bob Mathers on ITWorld Canada titled; Payback time for ITIL
It dives into risk, metrics, and goals required for process improvement frameworks.
It covers many of the processes I have outlined here, and some of the risks and influences to be aware of.
The one piece that I wanted to highlight is an analogy that Mr. Mathers (you know I like analogies!) on defining metrics that incent actions that you are looking for.
In Mr. Mathers words; (emphasis mine)
And this does not apply only to IT processes. Consider a bank that provides customers a confusing telephone self-service option to change their PINs. Callers quickly become frustrated and abandon the service to talk to a live agent. Because the customer problem is easy to solve, the first-call resolution rate approaches 100 percent. Call center management has no incentive to search out and prevent this type of call, because then the calls could be avoided altogether. Fewer calls would push down the overall resolution rate, which would reflect poorly on management performance. Meanwhile, the customer experience suffers.
This is directly linked to your process governance. Direct causal linkages between your goals and the improvements to meet them.
The SMB Takeaway
As I have stated before – do you need ITIL for improving processes (including IT) No!, but regardless of the framework used or chosen. The governance issues remain.
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A Failure To Communicate
May 11, 2009
OK, titled borrowed from the movie!
If you have been following this blog for a while, you will know that communication, both inside, and outside of your business technology staff is something I have written about more than once!
In that same theme, Glenn Whitfield has a post on his IT Business Alignment blog titled; The Communication Divide Continues
Too many IT staff don’t think of process as the end-to-end sequence of events that provide a business outcome. And Glen gives some great examples.
Many technology staff simply think of this server or that device.
A business process can cross many devices. And it is the business process that count.
Glens’ post describes (painfully) how this lack of communication can hurt your business.
The SMB Takeaway
As much as I hate to say it, if you are a business manager in the SMB space, – unless you have already built trust with your business technology team, – you are going to have to assume assume that your communication is going to be mis-understood.
Ask the questions, have them repeated to you, and dig for that understanding.
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A Quote For Today 09-05
May 9, 2009
Sometimes when teams are responsible, no one person is accountable…
Rick Arthur
The SMB Takeaway
Someone must always be accountable for results, accountable for a deliverable.
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Creative vs. Scientific Process
May 4, 2009
In the March 2009 Harvard Business Review (subscription required) Joseph M. Hall and M. Eric Johnson have an excellent article titled; When Should a Process Be Art, Not Science?
We know that some tasks are truly difficult to standardize. Can a graphic designer have controlled processes for their creativity?
In my opinion – not really!
The Above HBR article dives into the difficulty of managing the inherent tensions between both artistic (which I have traditionally called creative) vs. the more scientific processes as defined by frameworks such as Six Sigma or ITIL.
(for a completely different take on the article, check out Peter Lijnse’s post here.)
Anyway!
For managers in the SME space, the handling of these tensions is many levels beyond the target of this post!
I have been asked before if creative organizations can implement process management frameworks such as ISO 900x or ITIL. My response and opinion has always been Yes.
But let me back up a bit.
The graphic artist, the author, the copy expert – those creative tasks are one thing. And the argument is always that you can’t make those into a systematic process!
But think of all the supporting cast! Think of all the pieces in your business that generally hide under the SG&A costs on your balance sheet. Most of those can be systematized via process improvements.
While the graphic artists work is non-structured, the input (the hand off to the artist) of the requirements and story boards, and the output (the artists hand off of the completed product or drafts) to the next step can be improved via process improvements.
And the root because….
In most organizations – time, and money is lost – not in the tasks themselves, but in the dead space between tasks. When work is moving to the next stage, or waiting for sign off.
I am quite confident you have been in a scenario where you were told; “I gave that to (insert name or department here) last week!”
And those are areas that are just begging for improvement.
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Don’t Shoot From The Hip
April 22, 2009
Controls
A great post by Miki Saxon on the Leadership Turn blog titled; Leaders Should NOT Be Cowboys.
Whether it’s just you, or one, ten, fifty, or more employees, whether full time, part time or virtual, you need viable processes to keep you focused
I echo Miki’s sentiment, too often growing businesses perceive that instituting financial and other controls is too time consuming, or too bureaucratic.
That perception can lead to wasted time putting out fires as everything arrives at the leaders desk. Rather than worrying about your business, you are worrying about that shipment, or that invoice.
Those processes and controls are the tools you use to measure, and to manage your people, and their work.
At its simplest, without those controls and processes, you have no way to measure your business. and what cannot be measured, cannot be managed.
Miki has a list of the corporate controls that any growing business needs at the executive level, but let me add some operational controls and measurements that you should be demanding from your IT staff or suppliers;
* Approval process for all IT expenditures, no matter how minor
* Number, type, and severity of IT service requests and IT service outages
* Time required to complete service requests, or repair IT service outages
* Fully loaded cost of supporting all IT assets and services
* Number, type, and status of all IT assets and services being managed
The SMB Takeaway
It is a lot easier to bake in these measurements and controls from the beginning, than to try and bolt them on later.
Later probably being when everything is riding off the rails.
(As a manager in the SME space, if you have not found and bookmarked Miki’s blog yet – go and do it now!)
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Photo Credit jspad via flickr
A Snapshot In Time; Doesn’t Work
April 20, 2009
I have spent a lot of time on this blog writing that strong documented frameworks such as ITIL can help reduce your IT costs.
In ITIL, the concept behind all of the processes (ie Change and Configuration Management) is having up to date configurations of all IT assets.
Larger businesses will need more complex configuration management databases, but even smaller businesses should ensure that accurate documentation is maintained.
‘Maintained’ is the key word.
If I document a server configuration, database linkages between applications, or any device configuration. If that information is not modified each and every time it changes, all I have a snapshot of that IT asset at one point in time.
It becomes obsolete as soon as it is written.
A process for managing that asset ensures that its configuration is a living document.
The SMB Takeaway
Photographs can be a great reminder of what a particular event was a few years ago.
But if there is an issue or problem with your IT infrastructure – a few years ago is useless.
You need a reminder of what it was just a few minutes ago.
If you do not enforce a process of ensuring this information is maintained, all you have is an old photograph. Maybe nice to look at , but not of much value to you now.
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Photo Credit: Jeff the Trojan via flickr
