We have been building OLAP cubes over SunSystems for some time now and more and more the realisation dawns in people's heads that process and performance are just two different ends of the same spectrum. I have blogged on this topic before and won't torture you with any more on that (yet).
What I will do is offer interested parties a free - yes, that's right, gratis and for nothing - SQL script that you can run against your SunSystems MS SQL database to build a little Microsoft Analysis Services OLAP data warehouse.
You will then need a snazzy viewer to allow you to look at your data in a way that you have never seen it before and truly turn it into "information". We recommend Executive Viewer - it is one of those user display tools that just blows people's socks off - and it does exactly what it says on the box - lets executives view their data in a browser (without doing any damage) and allows them to dream up almost any spontaneaous (crack pot) way of wanting to view the data without having to come back to system support to get a report written.
So - do you want a free SunSystems cube builder? What I will need from you is your company name, an email address and your SunSystems serialisation number, then I can make the magic happen.
By the way, this comes with no formal support because once you start tinkering with the script (and I know you, you will!) all bets are off - if you break it, call somone who cares! (I'm not that heartless actually, come back to me and I can give a little help around the edges).
09 Nov 2006 update - While I'm at it, I'll give away a Time @ Work cube builder for those interested - same deal as with the SunSystems one.
Respond to this post in confidence - I won't publish the recipients.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Monday, October 16, 2006
The difference from LHR to Kingsford Smith in Sydney
Time has passed and I have calmed down over the Heathrow shocker (although it still gets me hot under the collar when I think of it) sufficiently to do a little comparison with the people and processes at the airport in my home town of Sydney.
We have a tricky thing called curfew here that restricts flight arrivals prior to 6.00am - and fair enough, the airport is close into the city and surrounded by residential areas. So at 6.01am planes start to pour out of the sky into the airport - we were 3rd to touch down and I watched out the window whilst we taxied to the terminal and there seemed to be one ever 2.5 minutes back to back, headlights twinkling in the distance.
So duty free, immigration and customs are swamped as thousands of people pour down the aisles. Generally the queue moved quickly and efficiently - first sign of a problem at the immigration desk and the offender was whisked off to a separate area for processing and the bulk of us weren't held up. (There is a bit of smarts in the commercial sector as well - the exit from duty free (booze, perfume and tobacco products mainly) funnels you into a dedicated passport/immigration queue rather than back into the main queue which means you aren't penalised for stopping for that last minute gift - now that's joined-up thinking.)
Baggage pick up is a tricky area and a little slow and that is due partly to every bag being xrayed on its way from the plane to the carousel. Then there is the queue through the green and red customs channel and this is where the queue really built up last trip. Australia has very strict quarentine laws, we don't have many of the agricultural nasties that the rest of the world has - think mad-cow, foot-and-mouth, rabies for starters - and customs takes a very hard line on stopping unprocessed foodstuffs entering the country with international travellers. Unfortunately many arriving passengers either don't understand, don't "get it" or don't care and forget to mention the fruit/dairy products/pigs innards that are in their luggage as gifts for their Aussie mates.
You approach the customs queue with a little declaration card you filled in on the plane. This is where Sydney whips Heathrow big time - there were people all the way down the line checking the forms, guiding you into the correct queues, confirming your understanding of the rules and regulations, pointing out the dump bins for discarding those forbidden fruits.
So there could be no mistaking where you were to go and what was expected of you long before you got to the top of the queue. That's the way it should be done - good signage and cheery, friendly people - a completely different experience.
These ushers had a little delegated authority as well. Scattered amongst the tourists were obvious local business travellers who know all the rules, have the frequent flyer baggage tags etc and they (including me!) were efficiently weeded out of the thronging mass and sent on their way after a swift bit of questioning.
This international travel thing is no longer any fun but the pain can be salved with a bit of common sense and courtesy. For some of course, hard work is easier than thinking.
We have a tricky thing called curfew here that restricts flight arrivals prior to 6.00am - and fair enough, the airport is close into the city and surrounded by residential areas. So at 6.01am planes start to pour out of the sky into the airport - we were 3rd to touch down and I watched out the window whilst we taxied to the terminal and there seemed to be one ever 2.5 minutes back to back, headlights twinkling in the distance.
So duty free, immigration and customs are swamped as thousands of people pour down the aisles. Generally the queue moved quickly and efficiently - first sign of a problem at the immigration desk and the offender was whisked off to a separate area for processing and the bulk of us weren't held up. (There is a bit of smarts in the commercial sector as well - the exit from duty free (booze, perfume and tobacco products mainly) funnels you into a dedicated passport/immigration queue rather than back into the main queue which means you aren't penalised for stopping for that last minute gift - now that's joined-up thinking.)
Baggage pick up is a tricky area and a little slow and that is due partly to every bag being xrayed on its way from the plane to the carousel. Then there is the queue through the green and red customs channel and this is where the queue really built up last trip. Australia has very strict quarentine laws, we don't have many of the agricultural nasties that the rest of the world has - think mad-cow, foot-and-mouth, rabies for starters - and customs takes a very hard line on stopping unprocessed foodstuffs entering the country with international travellers. Unfortunately many arriving passengers either don't understand, don't "get it" or don't care and forget to mention the fruit/dairy products/pigs innards that are in their luggage as gifts for their Aussie mates.
You approach the customs queue with a little declaration card you filled in on the plane. This is where Sydney whips Heathrow big time - there were people all the way down the line checking the forms, guiding you into the correct queues, confirming your understanding of the rules and regulations, pointing out the dump bins for discarding those forbidden fruits.
So there could be no mistaking where you were to go and what was expected of you long before you got to the top of the queue. That's the way it should be done - good signage and cheery, friendly people - a completely different experience.
These ushers had a little delegated authority as well. Scattered amongst the tourists were obvious local business travellers who know all the rules, have the frequent flyer baggage tags etc and they (including me!) were efficiently weeded out of the thronging mass and sent on their way after a swift bit of questioning.
This international travel thing is no longer any fun but the pain can be salved with a bit of common sense and courtesy. For some of course, hard work is easier than thinking.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Process chaos at London Heathrow
Having had the misfortune to pass through London Heathrow airport twice in the last few weeks I can personally vouch for the chaotic, careless, rude and unprofessional way in which that airport is processing its customers since the latest round of safety threats regarding UK to US flights and the threat of liquid explosives.
I fully acknowledge the (unfortunate) need for enhanced security measures and the added stress this entails for all parties in the international travel supply chain - however, the operations and behaviour I witnessed and experienced by the Heathrow systems and people was dismaying and disgraceful.
I traveled through LHR almost 3 weeks, and then again 4 weeks, after the security alert regarding liquid explosives occurred and I naively thought that they would have had their act together and systems and processes in place to be able to efficiently handle the congestion that the enhanced security measures would cause. I was sadly, badly and madly wrong - this place is a disaster. I am writing this 10 days later and it still makes me angry.
Let's just quickly summarise those additional security measures (which weirdly enough were rather inconsistently applied):
OK - fair enough - restrictions were called for - although the smaller hand baggage allowance was certainly very inconsistently applied as I looked at people going through ahead of me all booking into similar flights and destinations - however I digress.
The nightmare started at dawn when arriving at Terminal 4 and transferring to Terminal 1 for a connecting flight. The human congestion was so bad that even the transfer buses were backing up, unable to disgorge their tired and grumpy passengers due to the queues ahead in the processing area. And this is where the shocking process and behaviour occurred.
Imagine a queue of many hundreds if not thousands, of passengers pouring in from all destinations and connecting on to many more being funneled into a single queue for security processing at the very front - idiocy. I got to the top of the queue to be told that my hand luggage, that had been acceptable out of Australia, was now too big for the new regime, so I had to join a different queue to check it in to the hold for my connecting flight. That's OK, I am happy to do that, but why have me wait in a line for 45 minutes to get that instruction? A sign and a size tester at the start of the queue would have had me processed and out of the way in seconds. Madness. And it was the same for fluids and pastes, only when you got to the top of the queue were you told there was another queue for those (and a tiny table on which to dump your offending liquids absolutely groaning under the pile of discarded items - this was not day one of the change - where was the big dumper bin?).
Throughout this nightmare a couple of uniformed comptrollers paraded up and down rebuffing all pleads for assistance in meeting tight connecting flight times - I literally heard an official snarl to an elderly woman in tears "that is your place in the queue now stay there" - disgraceful. (At another potential "flash point" area the supposed crowd management official was sitting behind a desk reading a novel whilst queue jumpers barged the doors and elderly couples started to faint).
So - that is my rant - but could I have done better? I don't know, I don't work in the business, I don't understand the constraints of the location, staffing, job demarcation, emergency legislation etc and haven't been exposed to their disaster/emergency planning and change management challenges. However, call me old fashioned, call me a fool, some simple "streaming" via large (and cheap) signage and cheery folk guiding and advising at the start of the queue would have been a massive productivity improvement in my opinion.
"If your bag doesn't fit in the size-slot go right - If you have fluids and pastes go left - If you have connecting flights within X mins from now join that queue - Everyone else join this queue". Not rocket science, not expensive, not hard, not training intensive.
How about having announcements in the buses on the way to the terminals - "you will soon be arriving at Terminal 1 and the security procedures are as follows ...... Please note that these will strictly be enforced and we advise you to pay attention to the signs and officials as you get off the bus" - hey, have it in a couple of languages too.
The Heathrow passenger processing methods were disgraceful, their communication was shocking, their people training would appear to have been appalling and there was no sign of improvement a week later when I did it all again so there was no intention of improvement. Very sad and a lesson in "how not to" for all of us interested in process.
I fully acknowledge the (unfortunate) need for enhanced security measures and the added stress this entails for all parties in the international travel supply chain - however, the operations and behaviour I witnessed and experienced by the Heathrow systems and people was dismaying and disgraceful.
I traveled through LHR almost 3 weeks, and then again 4 weeks, after the security alert regarding liquid explosives occurred and I naively thought that they would have had their act together and systems and processes in place to be able to efficiently handle the congestion that the enhanced security measures would cause. I was sadly, badly and madly wrong - this place is a disaster. I am writing this 10 days later and it still makes me angry.
Let's just quickly summarise those additional security measures (which weirdly enough were rather inconsistently applied):
- reduced size hand luggage (a wooden board was attached to the top of the steel "does your hand baggage fit in here" frame - basically halving the width of the acceptable bag. Interestingly if your bag had soft sides and malleable contents and you could literally wrestle it through the slot that was OK! And business/first class was not restricted - I don't think terrorists intent on personal annihilation would be concerned about the price of the ticket they bought but obviously not a concern for LHR.
- no liquids or pastes of any sort allowed in hand luggage - very distressing for a lot of women who had to abandon their perfume and cosmetics
- all pocket contents, belts and footwear to be scanned at the security checkpoints into the departure areas
- thankfully they had relaxed the "no notebooks, cameras, mobile phones etc" policy as apparently a huge volume of these had been stolen during the period this was applied and I didn't want to join that statistic (says a lot about the security vetting in the HR recruitment process and exit controls for employees when thousands of expensive, portable items can be willfully stolen so easily).
OK - fair enough - restrictions were called for - although the smaller hand baggage allowance was certainly very inconsistently applied as I looked at people going through ahead of me all booking into similar flights and destinations - however I digress.
The nightmare started at dawn when arriving at Terminal 4 and transferring to Terminal 1 for a connecting flight. The human congestion was so bad that even the transfer buses were backing up, unable to disgorge their tired and grumpy passengers due to the queues ahead in the processing area. And this is where the shocking process and behaviour occurred.
Imagine a queue of many hundreds if not thousands, of passengers pouring in from all destinations and connecting on to many more being funneled into a single queue for security processing at the very front - idiocy. I got to the top of the queue to be told that my hand luggage, that had been acceptable out of Australia, was now too big for the new regime, so I had to join a different queue to check it in to the hold for my connecting flight. That's OK, I am happy to do that, but why have me wait in a line for 45 minutes to get that instruction? A sign and a size tester at the start of the queue would have had me processed and out of the way in seconds. Madness. And it was the same for fluids and pastes, only when you got to the top of the queue were you told there was another queue for those (and a tiny table on which to dump your offending liquids absolutely groaning under the pile of discarded items - this was not day one of the change - where was the big dumper bin?).
Throughout this nightmare a couple of uniformed comptrollers paraded up and down rebuffing all pleads for assistance in meeting tight connecting flight times - I literally heard an official snarl to an elderly woman in tears "that is your place in the queue now stay there" - disgraceful. (At another potential "flash point" area the supposed crowd management official was sitting behind a desk reading a novel whilst queue jumpers barged the doors and elderly couples started to faint).
So - that is my rant - but could I have done better? I don't know, I don't work in the business, I don't understand the constraints of the location, staffing, job demarcation, emergency legislation etc and haven't been exposed to their disaster/emergency planning and change management challenges. However, call me old fashioned, call me a fool, some simple "streaming" via large (and cheap) signage and cheery folk guiding and advising at the start of the queue would have been a massive productivity improvement in my opinion.
"If your bag doesn't fit in the size-slot go right - If you have fluids and pastes go left - If you have connecting flights within X mins from now join that queue - Everyone else join this queue". Not rocket science, not expensive, not hard, not training intensive.
How about having announcements in the buses on the way to the terminals - "you will soon be arriving at Terminal 1 and the security procedures are as follows ...... Please note that these will strictly be enforced and we advise you to pay attention to the signs and officials as you get off the bus" - hey, have it in a couple of languages too.
The Heathrow passenger processing methods were disgraceful, their communication was shocking, their people training would appear to have been appalling and there was no sign of improvement a week later when I did it all again so there was no intention of improvement. Very sad and a lesson in "how not to" for all of us interested in process.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Continuing the BPM journey - is it a map or a script?
So here you now sit with a finely honed process model in your hot and sticky hands. What do you do now? Well the first question to ask yourself is probably - is this a map of how to get somewhere or a script of how to do something? How you answer this will radically direct your next steps.
A map is the easy one - this process flow records the path that is taken to get from one point to another in the business continuum. It is something to be referred to if you lose your way or are starting on the journey and want to understand what the destination is. In effect this is a reference document and can be managed appropriately - published on the Intranet? Or bound into a handsome manual? How about laminating it and sticking it on the wall? (I know one company that was driven to dementia by the abuse of the kitchen facilities and the mess they were always being left in. So an impressive, colourful and explicit process map was drawn up that clearly identified the role of the dishwasher and the wiping cloth to those who were in doubt. Laminated of course for easy cleaning!). By the way, remember to keep it up to date as the landscape changes as there is nothing more frustrating to the intrepid traveler than an out-of-date map (this issue of currency is invariably a painful and tedious process and something I will be coming back to in due course).
The script is the harder answer to deliver against - for this means the process is to become procedural law, every time we perform this process, no matter by whom, these are the rules and regulations that are to be followed. This of course is the great challenge - how do you get everyone in the organisation to follow these laws? How do you communicate them? How do you implement them? How to you entice, enforce and police them? How do you handle the crises of non-compliance? This is the area where technology and the automation of business processes comes into their own - the land of the Business Process Management System/Suite.
But beware, before you launch off on the next great technology hunt, spare a thought for the herd of white elephants that may already be cluttering up your cupboards, there is little room in there for another, choose wisely and choose well!
A map is the easy one - this process flow records the path that is taken to get from one point to another in the business continuum. It is something to be referred to if you lose your way or are starting on the journey and want to understand what the destination is. In effect this is a reference document and can be managed appropriately - published on the Intranet? Or bound into a handsome manual? How about laminating it and sticking it on the wall? (I know one company that was driven to dementia by the abuse of the kitchen facilities and the mess they were always being left in. So an impressive, colourful and explicit process map was drawn up that clearly identified the role of the dishwasher and the wiping cloth to those who were in doubt. Laminated of course for easy cleaning!). By the way, remember to keep it up to date as the landscape changes as there is nothing more frustrating to the intrepid traveler than an out-of-date map (this issue of currency is invariably a painful and tedious process and something I will be coming back to in due course).
The script is the harder answer to deliver against - for this means the process is to become procedural law, every time we perform this process, no matter by whom, these are the rules and regulations that are to be followed. This of course is the great challenge - how do you get everyone in the organisation to follow these laws? How do you communicate them? How do you implement them? How to you entice, enforce and police them? How do you handle the crises of non-compliance? This is the area where technology and the automation of business processes comes into their own - the land of the Business Process Management System/Suite.
But beware, before you launch off on the next great technology hunt, spare a thought for the herd of white elephants that may already be cluttering up your cupboards, there is little room in there for another, choose wisely and choose well!
Friday, August 25, 2006
Deconstructing BPM journey (1) and (2)
To read my previous posts on starting the BPM journey you could be mistaken in thinking any old fool could do this and what is the big deal about it all. Unfortunately the reality is that these type of improvemnet projects have a glorious history of failure or catastrophic under delivery. We recently ran an internal workshop of the core stakeholders of our own improvement project and the following points are straight from that forum - warts and all.
- these things take time and it needs to take time, you will not see all the options and complexities in the first pass
- look for the key influencers in the various pools of employees and look for high levels of involvement with these individuals
- the level of involvement of these indviduals will signify the level of takeup and enthusiasm later
- some people are habitual sniffers and just sit around the edge waiting for things to be proven for them
- without the support at least one of senior management and the business management the project will fail
- maintain credibility through the project - come clean about missed targets, changed objectives, challenges faced and not yet overcome etc
- you can only force people to turn up - they must be personally interested and motivated in improving the process (particularly if it is cross functional) to be able to achieve a quality outcome - if they don't give to the project then they will not achieve all the benefits possible to them
- people always underestimate the amount of time they will have to commit to the project - it is not a one meeting wonder session
- Visio is a reasonable one-dimensional tool and easy to use but the challenge is to cover all the interconnected layers of people, process and applications in a digestable and manageable ways - there are modelling tools available that do this better - we have now selected one to move forward with
- be prepared to be flexible and don't be surprised if things change around on you
- face reality as it is not as you would like to be
- communicate regularly and at appropriate times
- have the resources as available as possible when they are required for the project - if everything goes into stasis waiting for resources then the project is going to suffer in credibility
- do iterative boardroom prototype workshops with clear thinking stakeholders - more than once
- don't just follow the "happy path", question hard around where things go wrong, exceptions occur etc
- There are complicators and simplifiers - always hunt out the simplification - and be aware - it's amazing how complicated cultural issues can be
- think about the level of tolerance to compliance requirements that you may be happy to live with in line with your capacity just to "do business" - for some processes there may be zero tolerance, others may be less rigid
- you can't abdicate your process improvement to third parties - all good athletes have coaches and mentors but they have to run the race themselves - don't try to outsource the project, only the business can do it for itself
- think about setting up a "process office" so that as people come in and out of the project they are situated appropriately within the team for their involvement
- be organised and be seen to be so - if that is a problem for you then you are probably the wrong person to be managing this project
- "fight" for this internal project as hard as you would fight for a customer project
- An interesting point - when you get properly involved stakeholders workshopping around the table it is quite likely that technologies and BPM application/solutions etc don't get discussed
- Name the project other than the technology platform - problems are invariably people rather than application system issues but the project will be tarnished unfairly if it is named the same as any technology component being implemented.
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Progressive implementation and continuous improvement
Another week - another iPOS for SunSystems eProcurement client management workshop. This organisation really has its head screwed on:
- senior management level (director) project sponsor
- believes that progressive implementation is the pragmatic way to improve the business
- a focus on continuous improvement "and in our business that improvement means iPOS" (this is an enterprise whose demands for cost control and quality service delivery far outweigh the revenue generation function).
So what are they focussing on improving this year?
Approx 10,000 of their supplier invoices last year - over 30% of their purchasing spend - were generated before the purchase order - oops, plenty of maverick spending there but now at least they have all purchasing going through the one channel. With a single source of truth in the data they now have the opportunity to report and reflect on their users' buying habits and supplier delivery patterns.
Big improvements will be made in contract adherence when the culture of "PO before invoice" for the workforce and "no PO-no payment" for their suppliers becomes business as usual.
Great opportunities for administrative cost reduction and efficiencies in supplier invoice processing when they can be loaded from PO rather than punched in like last year.
Supplier rationalisation is another likelyhood, and while we're at it let's punch-out to the online catalogs of major suppliers and a preferred buying hub, hence outsourcing the administratively demanding catalog management to the suppliers. And maybe some new contract negotiation based on actual volumes.
Good days ahead for this client and a great opportunity for all stakeholders as some potential merger style activity is on the radar.
- senior management level (director) project sponsor
- believes that progressive implementation is the pragmatic way to improve the business
- a focus on continuous improvement "and in our business that improvement means iPOS" (this is an enterprise whose demands for cost control and quality service delivery far outweigh the revenue generation function).
So what are they focussing on improving this year?
Approx 10,000 of their supplier invoices last year - over 30% of their purchasing spend - were generated before the purchase order - oops, plenty of maverick spending there but now at least they have all purchasing going through the one channel. With a single source of truth in the data they now have the opportunity to report and reflect on their users' buying habits and supplier delivery patterns.
Big improvements will be made in contract adherence when the culture of "PO before invoice" for the workforce and "no PO-no payment" for their suppliers becomes business as usual.
Great opportunities for administrative cost reduction and efficiencies in supplier invoice processing when they can be loaded from PO rather than punched in like last year.
Supplier rationalisation is another likelyhood, and while we're at it let's punch-out to the online catalogs of major suppliers and a preferred buying hub, hence outsourcing the administratively demanding catalog management to the suppliers. And maybe some new contract negotiation based on actual volumes.
Good days ahead for this client and a great opportunity for all stakeholders as some potential merger style activity is on the radar.
Friday, July 21, 2006
Starting the BPM journey (2)
So you have chosen the correct path for your business vis-a-vis drive down admin costs or attack high value/risk operations and for good or for bad you now need to "do something".
Common and worthwhile advice is to map out the process "as is" - this means draw out the logical steps and decision points of the process as it currently exists and you understand it today. Invariably this means setting up workshops with the various stakeholders, recording their comments and then extrapolating your notes into a pictorial representation of actions, responsibilities and directional flows (perhaps prepared in Microsoft Visio or - shudder - PowerPoint. There are some very powerful tools to help here - more on this later).
So now you think you know what the process looks like and you may be able to identify some of the problems/challenges/breakdowns/fractures/bottle necks etc.
Next step for most if not all protagonists is to map out the process as you would like it "to be". Look to iron out the wrinkles, reduce the number of handovers, drive down human errors and remove the areas that cause iterative queries, rework and indecision. Especially look for where things get stuck in the lifecycle and concentrate on driving down time wasted whilst nothing happens (time lag).
Now what? Workshop it - take it into the boardroom and expose it to the rigour of team thought. Allow the stakeholders an opportunity to assess and critique your thoughts and plans and give you guidance on improvements and problems. Take them seriously - you will get a better outcome. This is a good change management tactic too - people involved in the design of new ways, and educated early on why and what any changes will be, are invariably more willing and supportive of the change when it comes.
Rework the "to be" and re-workshop it. When all done start asking the stakeholders to commit to some service levels around the handover points from one org-chart responsibility to the next (or be more radical). If you go on the premise that "the customer deserves a quality experience" at each point (starting with the real end-customer and working back through the supply chain) then at each handover point you will be able to identify a factor that directly impacts on the quality experience of the customer-end of each handover. A sales manager may say "my team will commit to placing correct orders on service delivery 100% of the time". That's a good start, now work back from there. (You will need to measure these commitments so keep them tangible and objective).
Looking good - you now have a documented, commonly understood, consultatively honed and improved process ready to be implemented with service level agreements for quality at each responsibility point in the process lifecycle.
Whew, take a break, you deserve it!
Common and worthwhile advice is to map out the process "as is" - this means draw out the logical steps and decision points of the process as it currently exists and you understand it today. Invariably this means setting up workshops with the various stakeholders, recording their comments and then extrapolating your notes into a pictorial representation of actions, responsibilities and directional flows (perhaps prepared in Microsoft Visio or - shudder - PowerPoint. There are some very powerful tools to help here - more on this later).
So now you think you know what the process looks like and you may be able to identify some of the problems/challenges/breakdowns/fractures/bottle necks etc.
Next step for most if not all protagonists is to map out the process as you would like it "to be". Look to iron out the wrinkles, reduce the number of handovers, drive down human errors and remove the areas that cause iterative queries, rework and indecision. Especially look for where things get stuck in the lifecycle and concentrate on driving down time wasted whilst nothing happens (time lag).
Now what? Workshop it - take it into the boardroom and expose it to the rigour of team thought. Allow the stakeholders an opportunity to assess and critique your thoughts and plans and give you guidance on improvements and problems. Take them seriously - you will get a better outcome. This is a good change management tactic too - people involved in the design of new ways, and educated early on why and what any changes will be, are invariably more willing and supportive of the change when it comes.
Rework the "to be" and re-workshop it. When all done start asking the stakeholders to commit to some service levels around the handover points from one org-chart responsibility to the next (or be more radical). If you go on the premise that "the customer deserves a quality experience" at each point (starting with the real end-customer and working back through the supply chain) then at each handover point you will be able to identify a factor that directly impacts on the quality experience of the customer-end of each handover. A sales manager may say "my team will commit to placing correct orders on service delivery 100% of the time". That's a good start, now work back from there. (You will need to measure these commitments so keep them tangible and objective).
Looking good - you now have a documented, commonly understood, consultatively honed and improved process ready to be implemented with service level agreements for quality at each responsibility point in the process lifecycle.
Whew, take a break, you deserve it!
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Starting the BPM journey (1)
A noisy and opinionated little group of us were "workshopping" (shooting the breeze) the perennial problem for most companies which is where to start the BPM journey. Peeling away the layers of enthusiasm and passion and looking at the hard cold facts we have seen around the traps there seems to be two schools of thought:
(1) under the radar, low cost-low value, administration/HR style processes
(2) pick a strategic process involved in delivering high cost services to an important client
The first option takes a path of least resistance approach and builds an inoffensive, but perhaps undervalued, reputation for the project which may cause it to stumble when the real meaty challenges are faced.
The second option takes a braver stance in the business and needs a visionary to see it through however the final outcome has much greater potential.
Comparing two professional services firms we know - one desired the benefits around automating their HR and admin processes vis-a-vis employee benefits and the like - the other was dismissive of that and was far more driven towards a commoditised process to build a new line of revenue by packaging existing practices. Horses for courses.
Based on our watercooler conversation it all came down to the business imperative and the project champion - are you looking to drive down basic costs and increase consistency, predictability and visibility or looking for strategic opportunities for revenue generation and high value transaction commoditisation?
(1) under the radar, low cost-low value, administration/HR style processes
(2) pick a strategic process involved in delivering high cost services to an important client
The first option takes a path of least resistance approach and builds an inoffensive, but perhaps undervalued, reputation for the project which may cause it to stumble when the real meaty challenges are faced.
The second option takes a braver stance in the business and needs a visionary to see it through however the final outcome has much greater potential.
Comparing two professional services firms we know - one desired the benefits around automating their HR and admin processes vis-a-vis employee benefits and the like - the other was dismissive of that and was far more driven towards a commoditised process to build a new line of revenue by packaging existing practices. Horses for courses.
Based on our watercooler conversation it all came down to the business imperative and the project champion - are you looking to drive down basic costs and increase consistency, predictability and visibility or looking for strategic opportunities for revenue generation and high value transaction commoditisation?
Monday, July 17, 2006
Does your company listen to you?
It is a rare beast indeed that empowers people throughout an organisation to truly initiate changes to "business as usual" in the pursuit of efficiency and productivity. Many talk the talk but how many really walk the walk?
The impetus for significant change struggles to bubble up from within. It depends on senior management for the oxygen and nutrients necessary to survive. This is the reality of the business world we live in and good sales people cut to the chase in their qualification very quickly - am I dealing with a decision maker and is there a budget for this project - if the answer is not "yes" to both of these questions then they know there is a challenge to success lying ahead.
This pragmatism relates directly to the issue of process change and change management within an organisation. No matter how well intentioned and passionate a middle manager may be about their visions for efficiency gains and improvement - if there isn't a senior manager sponsor on board (and at least a little bit of budget) it is going to go nowhere. The passion and vigour will be beaten out of the provocateur and over time they will fade to beige.
So how do you get a senior manager sponsor? You need to ensure that you are focusing on what keeps them up at night - and remember, what keeps you awake at night may not be the same thing so you may need to extrapolate your tactical worry up to their strategic worry. You will most likely need to put a business case in place. You might need to build a return on investment model.
If these are new concepts to you then you probably need a coach or mentor to help you through the journey. Beware however of the coach dogmatically telling you what to actually change, only you have the intimate exposure to what the problem is, however a coach can provide great thought processes, strategies, comparisons and ideas to look for innovative ways of attacking things.
The impetus for significant change struggles to bubble up from within. It depends on senior management for the oxygen and nutrients necessary to survive. This is the reality of the business world we live in and good sales people cut to the chase in their qualification very quickly - am I dealing with a decision maker and is there a budget for this project - if the answer is not "yes" to both of these questions then they know there is a challenge to success lying ahead.
This pragmatism relates directly to the issue of process change and change management within an organisation. No matter how well intentioned and passionate a middle manager may be about their visions for efficiency gains and improvement - if there isn't a senior manager sponsor on board (and at least a little bit of budget) it is going to go nowhere. The passion and vigour will be beaten out of the provocateur and over time they will fade to beige.
So how do you get a senior manager sponsor? You need to ensure that you are focusing on what keeps them up at night - and remember, what keeps you awake at night may not be the same thing so you may need to extrapolate your tactical worry up to their strategic worry. You will most likely need to put a business case in place. You might need to build a return on investment model.
If these are new concepts to you then you probably need a coach or mentor to help you through the journey. Beware however of the coach dogmatically telling you what to actually change, only you have the intimate exposure to what the problem is, however a coach can provide great thought processes, strategies, comparisons and ideas to look for innovative ways of attacking things.
Thursday, July 06, 2006
New Account Opening (NAO)
It appears that Phil Ayres and I stumbled across each other from two different sides of the world at pretty much the same time. While I was reading his excellent blog on New Account Opening last night he appears to have been responding to one of my posts on risk removal - gotta love that Internet.
Phil's background and experience are perhaps in a strata of business that we don't have much of a footprint in and the challenges of efficiently and effectively managing NAO in a mid tier organisations are admittedly less complex and far less volume driven than the banking industry - but just as important and challenging for the mid tier enterprise. In the pursuit of bringing process improvements into the SunSystems arena we have perhaps developed what has been coined by Gartner a Composite Process Solution (CPS)
WARNING - unashamedly commercial plug from this point on:
Workflow for SunSystems from Professional Advantage is a "boxed set" of predefined, non-transactional process templates within a BPMS that allows SunSystems installations to automate the control of their master data management (MDM) or customer data integration (CDI). Boy there's a lot of three letter acronyms (TLA) in that - and they're all for real - I don't make this stuff up!
What all that actually means is ...... when you want to open a new account in SunSystems you initiate, direct, manage and complete the process through a browser based set of workflow rules and screens that control things like:
- who is allowed to request a new account be opened (in our business just sales department and management people)
- what initial information about the account is required before the request can be submitted (like division/business unit engaging with the client, client name, address, company registration (needs to be unique in our customer database and gets auto validated against the online government portal), primary contacts etc etc)
- what is the first step of review and approval (in our business the Sales Manager confirms we are willing to sell this product and service combination at this price point etc).
- what is the next step of data gathering, verification and approval - classically at the B2B trading level we want to check trading references (force a minimum of three perhaps?), credit agency reports (rating must be greater than "orange" perhaps?) etc
- then what information do we need to issue the client in terms of bank details for electronic payment, contact details for query resolution etc for their financial systems (afterall if we are setting them up as a client they are setting us up as a supplier). This can be sent as an email or as a link to a web page for them to review and complete as required.
- penultimately a senior fincancial manager reviews all the steps to date and approves the work to date
- then a client, chart of account and contact record are automatically created in the target SunSystems database (optionally supported by the creation of equivalent records in other line of business applications - CRM, sales invoicing, distribution etc etc) - nobody logs into SunSystems to do all that, it just happens automatically with all the data collated during the approval process, and hey, no keyboard errors either.
- and finally an email to the original sales executive confirming creation of the new account with the relevant reference code if required and the whole lot gets archived away
Throughout the timeline there are activity and bottleneck reports available and extensive reporting options for auditing and compliance management (hello SOX, Clerp 9, Basel 2 et al)
In the real world it's not just new clients of course, so we have the same for suppliers, assets, account and transaction analysis codes (A codes and T codes in Sun-speak). In the background we have stacked up a few HR processes as well including leave management, employee onboarding, travel request and advances management, employee expenses and the like.
These templates come out of the box in Workflow for SunSystems and seamlessly integrate to SunSystems 4 and 5 installations on the MS SQL and Oracle database platforms. They can be implemented "as is" or modified slightly or substantially to better fit the company policies and procedures. I would be the first to acknowledge that this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to risky processes in a business. However the added benefit of Workflow for SunSystems being contained in a BPMS is that other processes identified in the organisation can be mapped and automated over time within the one common framework (even if they have nothing whatsoever to do with SunSystems itself).
Phil Ayres challenged me to be able to "show it in action" with "an implementation of less than 30 days" - we can install in an afternoon! I can "show and tell" by Webex - gotta love that Internet.
UPDATE - 16 June 2006: Access to Workflow for SunSystems doesn't have to be restricted to within the corporate firewall - being browser based it can easily be published to customers, suppliers, the supply chain in general - to enable people to initiate and be involved in processes specific to them. For example, we can allow suppliers to enter their own invoice online (forcing a valid PO number to be entered if required), attach a document image as support and submit for processing by accounts payable. How's that for a way to drive down those administration costs? Just one of many that can be addressed with Workflow for SunSystems.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Entering the SOA and BPM debate
Plenty of blogs and mainstream press these days are focussing on SOA (service orientated architecture) and in the business process management world there is lots of debate about are SOA and BPM the same thing? Is one a subset of the other? How do they interplay?
I'm a simple old soul really and perhaps not sufficiently learned about the various, and assuredly complex, layers in all of this however as I see it:
My thoughts are guided more along the lines of where the budget holder and project sponsor is than affinity to any church on this.
If the dollars and sense are in the IT division then there is a reasonable likelyhood that SOA will get the nod - it comes with lots of techno-speak that sufficiently disguises it as a complex and IT-driven dark art.
If the champions are from the business then BPM may be more involved in the outcome as the push comes from the outside in and the business will most likely be focussed on costly customer-driven interactions and processes and looking for tangible ways to salve those pains.
If there are drivers at both ends then I think there is a comfortable place in the middle where they intersect with a common goal of driving efficiencies and improvements in service delivery for all parties.
I'm a simple old soul really and perhaps not sufficiently learned about the various, and assuredly complex, layers in all of this however as I see it:
SOA serves the IT community and BPM serves the business community.
My thoughts are guided more along the lines of where the budget holder and project sponsor is than affinity to any church on this.
If the dollars and sense are in the IT division then there is a reasonable likelyhood that SOA will get the nod - it comes with lots of techno-speak that sufficiently disguises it as a complex and IT-driven dark art.
If the champions are from the business then BPM may be more involved in the outcome as the push comes from the outside in and the business will most likely be focussed on costly customer-driven interactions and processes and looking for tangible ways to salve those pains.
If there are drivers at both ends then I think there is a comfortable place in the middle where they intersect with a common goal of driving efficiencies and improvements in service delivery for all parties.
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Do you manage risks or remove them?
Lots of meetings and conversations I am having at the moment seem to have a "risk management" component to them - everyone is looking for ways of managing the risks they have in their business. But hang on - if you are into risk management then you go looking for risks to manage - why not be into risk removal? Go looking for the risks and then identify how to remove the scale or nature of the risk rather than "manage" it through continuity/crisis planning.
Yet again Business Process Management comes to the fore in this - so many risks described to us invariably boil down to people or process problems - and rarely anything to do with the individual person - more often it is how the processes or procedures are allowing the person to fail in some way.
Plenty of risk always revolves around where people interact with eachother or a business management system - particularly those grey fuzzy areas of inter-departmental responsibility transfer. Opportunities for delay, ambiguity, misunderstanding, keyboard error etc abound. The classic time and cost driven risks. A Business Process Management Suite gives you a great framework for building rule sets and process steps around the people-to-people/system activity flow thereby removing a huge percentage of those potential risks.
Risk management struggles to add tangible value to the business process - risk removal catapults you into a new place entirely.
Yet again Business Process Management comes to the fore in this - so many risks described to us invariably boil down to people or process problems - and rarely anything to do with the individual person - more often it is how the processes or procedures are allowing the person to fail in some way.
Plenty of risk always revolves around where people interact with eachother or a business management system - particularly those grey fuzzy areas of inter-departmental responsibility transfer. Opportunities for delay, ambiguity, misunderstanding, keyboard error etc abound. The classic time and cost driven risks. A Business Process Management Suite gives you a great framework for building rule sets and process steps around the people-to-people/system activity flow thereby removing a huge percentage of those potential risks.
Risk management struggles to add tangible value to the business process - risk removal catapults you into a new place entirely.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
eProcurement and the dreaded catalogue management
Catalogue management is one of the trials and tribulations of implementing an eProcurement system. There are many reasons why managed catalogues make absolute sense and yet so many businesses fight it off during process design and system implementation workshops - "it's too hard - we won't be able to maintain it - our suppliers can't give us their catalogs electronically" etc etc.
The following is an excellent article on this topic by Debbie Wilson in Cool Tools for Purchasing.
http://www.purchasingautomation.com/articles/articles173.shtml
I particularly liked the section "Maximizing Catalog-Based System Performance" - as always it's all about people and their behaviour rather than systems and their operation. I smiled broadly when I read this bit.
The final line is a cracker - "if someone tells you that in order to successfully implement eProcurement you must normalize your data, offer requisitioners millions of items to choose from, and insist on certain formats from your catalog suppliers, don’t believe a word of it."
It doesn't have to be hard and it doesn't have to be every item on day one (or ever). It's all about mindset - look for the benefits to your business, pick the targets appropriately, keep it simple and remember the 80/20 rule - probably 80% of your spend is with 20% of your suppliers - focus accordingly and turn the heat up in your negotiations.
However let's not forget about online/web catalogues that a supplier maintains themselves. This can be an excellent way to outsource the responsibility of catalogue management to the supplier - "but how does that help me?" you may ask. With a sophisticated eProcurement solution (like iPOS for SunSystems) you can optionally punch-out to online catalogues and allow users to select items for their shopping basket as normal. The "check out" function on the website actually returns the item list back to your internal/buy side system for processing through the normal budget control and delegated approval rules.
In my experience this is most applicable for the classic low value - high volume suppliers such as office supplies etc where once a contract is in place you want the end-user to be able to select and purchase items with the least amount of fuss and effort. There may be "millions of items" for people to choose from but someone else is doing the hard work of managing them.
Punch-out is also the best way to interact perhaps with government or commercial buying hubs where multiple supplier catalogues may be aggregated. The challenge in leveraging these online marketplaces is the lack of real-time integration to the backend financial management system and the ability to overrun budget and approval controls through poor data integrity.
Punch-out comes with some downsides however:
- You rely on the supplier to maintain the currency of the catalogue and also to accurately apply the service levels of your contract.
- It may not be possible for the supplier to build restricted views of their catalogue for different user profiles in your business - it may be a one-size-fits-all approach.
- They may have more detailed views of your buying habits and trends than you do when it comes to contract negotiation.
- There could even be the ability for "push selling" in their catalogue management that leads people to buy upgrades or additional items or volumes based on the choices they make for their shopping basket.
In reality many organisations may decide to live with a combination approach to their purchasing procedures, internal catalogues for critical business purchases and strategic suppliers, online catalogues for "consumables" and free-form item description for those exceptions that invariably exist (controlled by increased levels of supplier selection, review and approval).
The sensible and reasonable wish of the business is for all options to be managed within a common, process-driven purchasing channel that delivers aggregated spend control and reporting with single source of truth in the financial data.
The following is an excellent article on this topic by Debbie Wilson in Cool Tools for Purchasing.
http://www.purchasingautomation.com/articles/articles173.shtml
I particularly liked the section "Maximizing Catalog-Based System Performance" - as always it's all about people and their behaviour rather than systems and their operation. I smiled broadly when I read this bit.
The final line is a cracker - "if someone tells you that in order to successfully implement eProcurement you must normalize your data, offer requisitioners millions of items to choose from, and insist on certain formats from your catalog suppliers, don’t believe a word of it."
It doesn't have to be hard and it doesn't have to be every item on day one (or ever). It's all about mindset - look for the benefits to your business, pick the targets appropriately, keep it simple and remember the 80/20 rule - probably 80% of your spend is with 20% of your suppliers - focus accordingly and turn the heat up in your negotiations.
However let's not forget about online/web catalogues that a supplier maintains themselves. This can be an excellent way to outsource the responsibility of catalogue management to the supplier - "but how does that help me?" you may ask. With a sophisticated eProcurement solution (like iPOS for SunSystems) you can optionally punch-out to online catalogues and allow users to select items for their shopping basket as normal. The "check out" function on the website actually returns the item list back to your internal/buy side system for processing through the normal budget control and delegated approval rules.
In my experience this is most applicable for the classic low value - high volume suppliers such as office supplies etc where once a contract is in place you want the end-user to be able to select and purchase items with the least amount of fuss and effort. There may be "millions of items" for people to choose from but someone else is doing the hard work of managing them.
Punch-out is also the best way to interact perhaps with government or commercial buying hubs where multiple supplier catalogues may be aggregated. The challenge in leveraging these online marketplaces is the lack of real-time integration to the backend financial management system and the ability to overrun budget and approval controls through poor data integrity.
Punch-out comes with some downsides however:
- You rely on the supplier to maintain the currency of the catalogue and also to accurately apply the service levels of your contract.
- It may not be possible for the supplier to build restricted views of their catalogue for different user profiles in your business - it may be a one-size-fits-all approach.
- They may have more detailed views of your buying habits and trends than you do when it comes to contract negotiation.
- There could even be the ability for "push selling" in their catalogue management that leads people to buy upgrades or additional items or volumes based on the choices they make for their shopping basket.
In reality many organisations may decide to live with a combination approach to their purchasing procedures, internal catalogues for critical business purchases and strategic suppliers, online catalogues for "consumables" and free-form item description for those exceptions that invariably exist (controlled by increased levels of supplier selection, review and approval).
The sensible and reasonable wish of the business is for all options to be managed within a common, process-driven purchasing channel that delivers aggregated spend control and reporting with single source of truth in the financial data.
Monday, June 19, 2006
What's the asset number for that process?
Last week I was at the inaugural meeting of the Sydney chapter of BPMG. We had an interesting little get-together with an assortment of players in town. Thank you Bryan for an excellent venue and breakfast. During the general discussion Bridget B from Telstra asked a probing question - why don't processes get treated like assets?
I am two-finger-typing this out on a very uninspiring notebook PC - a modest machine and one of hundreds in the business of course. Flipping it over I spy a little yellow sticker with a barcode and 10 digit number. That's comforting - somebody knows about it and will care for it and come and replace it for me when it dies. But let's face it - it's a commodity that brings little or no value to the business other than what I grind through it each day. Indeed if I drove a stake through its little electronic heart tomorrow I would only have to walk 100 metres in any direction to be able to replace it with a swipe of my credit card. Not much of an asset really.
This afternoon a few of us were workshopping a case study of a fantastic FlowCentric BPMS implementation. Not something I was personally involved with but a great story. An insurance company that automated its stolen vehicle assessment and recovery processes with integration and involvement with complex backend systems and external stakeholders in customs, law enforcement, crash repairers etc etc. The return on investment of this project was only three weeks and the ongoing benefits to the business will I am sure be measured in hundreds of thousands if not millions for years to come.
Does that process have an asset number? I bet not.
What's the big deal - why make it an asset? Because assets get budget allocation and processes need the same level of respect. An effective business process has an intrinsic value to the business but to maintain that value it needs budget. Things change, things that were not possible before are possible in the future, new opportunities arise and legislation interferes in the daily drone with a monotonous regularity. So a process needs to have a budget allocation that ensures it will be improved, rejuvenated, redirected or replaced during its lifetime.
No budget - no love. Give your processes a little yellow asset sticker.
I am two-finger-typing this out on a very uninspiring notebook PC - a modest machine and one of hundreds in the business of course. Flipping it over I spy a little yellow sticker with a barcode and 10 digit number. That's comforting - somebody knows about it and will care for it and come and replace it for me when it dies. But let's face it - it's a commodity that brings little or no value to the business other than what I grind through it each day. Indeed if I drove a stake through its little electronic heart tomorrow I would only have to walk 100 metres in any direction to be able to replace it with a swipe of my credit card. Not much of an asset really.
This afternoon a few of us were workshopping a case study of a fantastic FlowCentric BPMS implementation. Not something I was personally involved with but a great story. An insurance company that automated its stolen vehicle assessment and recovery processes with integration and involvement with complex backend systems and external stakeholders in customs, law enforcement, crash repairers etc etc. The return on investment of this project was only three weeks and the ongoing benefits to the business will I am sure be measured in hundreds of thousands if not millions for years to come.
Does that process have an asset number? I bet not.
What's the big deal - why make it an asset? Because assets get budget allocation and processes need the same level of respect. An effective business process has an intrinsic value to the business but to maintain that value it needs budget. Things change, things that were not possible before are possible in the future, new opportunities arise and legislation interferes in the daily drone with a monotonous regularity. So a process needs to have a budget allocation that ensures it will be improved, rejuvenated, redirected or replaced during its lifetime.
No budget - no love. Give your processes a little yellow asset sticker.
Friday, June 16, 2006
Is darkness your best practice?
Michael Rosemann told a very BPM orientated joke the other week - how many people does it take to change a light bulb?
None - if darkness is best practice.
Hmmm, OK, don't try it onstage at the comedy club but it has a certain drama hook.
Are there monsters in the dark corners of your business that keep you awake at night? Go out and find yourself a process doctor with a bag of light bulbs.
None - if darkness is best practice.
Hmmm, OK, don't try it onstage at the comedy club but it has a certain drama hook.
Are there monsters in the dark corners of your business that keep you awake at night? Go out and find yourself a process doctor with a bag of light bulbs.
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Business Process Owners touch other peoples stuff
This is a big conundrom in the process management world - when your business is structured in a vertical org-chart or traditional cost centre model and you start down the path of business process improvement just about everyone will tell you that you need Business Process Owners (BPO). They are champions responsible and accountable for the process end-to-end regardless of the edge-to-edge execution across divisional lines.
What that actually means is the BPO needs to be authorised to make changes to processes and tasks within the divisions that intersect with their process. In other words - they touch other people's stuff!
How do you reconcile that in senior management meetings?
I don't think there are any easy answers to this however I have heard of a few approaches to it, some very radical, others less so.
Extreme radical approach - transfer the IT budget out of the CIO role and into the CPO (Chief Process Officer). Budget only gets allocated on a process basis rather than a divisional basis. Of course you probably need to appoint a CPO first. This is for the maturity level 5 organisation perhaps.
Less radical - identify a set of KPIs for the Divisional Managers that are based around the performance of end-to-end process quality and link them to the annual performance bonuses.
Least radical - define service level agreements between the divisions and measure and monitor the process hand off activities and publish the measurements (effectively a leader board/shame list).
BPO's need the authority to make changes in order to improve a process even though the executors of the changes may not be in their reporting line. Indeed, an improvement to a specific process in one area may directly correlate to an increase in cost or responsibility within a division and come with little or no direct benefit. People in general loathe to have multiple bosses as the prioritisation of issues inevitably clash. Companies need to find ways of achieving the process improvements necessary without tearing the business to pieces.
I think in the end the relationship, and maturity, of the senior management team is pivotal in resolving this challenge. Finding common enterprise level goals and methods of measuring and reporting on these is perhaps a good place to start.
What that actually means is the BPO needs to be authorised to make changes to processes and tasks within the divisions that intersect with their process. In other words - they touch other people's stuff!
How do you reconcile that in senior management meetings?
I don't think there are any easy answers to this however I have heard of a few approaches to it, some very radical, others less so.
Extreme radical approach - transfer the IT budget out of the CIO role and into the CPO (Chief Process Officer). Budget only gets allocated on a process basis rather than a divisional basis. Of course you probably need to appoint a CPO first. This is for the maturity level 5 organisation perhaps.
Less radical - identify a set of KPIs for the Divisional Managers that are based around the performance of end-to-end process quality and link them to the annual performance bonuses.
Least radical - define service level agreements between the divisions and measure and monitor the process hand off activities and publish the measurements (effectively a leader board/shame list).
BPO's need the authority to make changes in order to improve a process even though the executors of the changes may not be in their reporting line. Indeed, an improvement to a specific process in one area may directly correlate to an increase in cost or responsibility within a division and come with little or no direct benefit. People in general loathe to have multiple bosses as the prioritisation of issues inevitably clash. Companies need to find ways of achieving the process improvements necessary without tearing the business to pieces.
I think in the end the relationship, and maturity, of the senior management team is pivotal in resolving this challenge. Finding common enterprise level goals and methods of measuring and reporting on these is perhaps a good place to start.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Bringing the adminaphobes into the fold
Remember our adminaphobic colleagues with the aversion to administrative tasks outside the areas of their important expertise? Well I have a few thoughts on how we can bring them back into the team.
An empowering strategy in addressing human conflict is the willingness to accept what the other person is saying as true for them in the moment. (Don't get me wrong - you don't have to agree with them, you just need to acknowledge that for them, what they are saying is true).
So take some time to listen to the argument and assess the situation from their point of view. Also, don't fall into the trap of looking for solutions within software systems from the get-go. Pretty much every problem can be solved within the people-process-product continuum (product in this case being software applications) however the people/process corners of the 3P trinity are always the best places to start in my opinion.
Perhaps the problem lies in change management. Does he understand the process? Does he understand the importance of the process? Does he understand his role in the process? Has he been trained in his role? Has he understood and absorbed the training or does he require additional support? Why has he not been able to adopt the expected behaviour as a norm? Is the completion of the process at odds in some way with the goals or KPI's of his job role or team?
It may just be that he is unsure, unconfident, concerned about making embarrassing mistakes, threatened by what the process means to his empire, or just plain missed the communications and education up front in the project.
Now, what about the process? Is it too complex? Can it be simplified? Are there conflicting elements or responsibilities. For very casual executors of the process is there too much collateral information? Or too ambiguous a data/job flow? Are there components of data coming from different sources that may be misunderstood, or overpowering or ambiguous for casual users?
Look into how that process can be improved, simplified and clarified. Other people will appreciate this effort as well.
Sometimes though he may have a valid point. Perhaps there is something about the "product" that is inefficient or ineffective for his role in the process. This then is a great opportunity for the business to improve its processes and enhance its relationship with important members of the workforce. Unfortunately most software applications struggle to adapt flexibly and agilely to very specific user requirements.
This is one of the many sweetspots for a business process management suite (BPMS). The wonderful thing about a BPMS such as FlowCentric is its inherent ability to define and control business processes outside of, and around the edges of, existing applications very cost effectively. It gives business the opportunity to hone areas of process that need to dovetail perfectly into human expectations whilst still leveraging the quite significant investment made in whatever the underlying application is.
A BPMS isn't generally concerned with the transaction end of a process, although this may be part of the outcomes, it is more generally successful in addressing the human element, and that of course is exactly where our adminaphobics sit.
An empowering strategy in addressing human conflict is the willingness to accept what the other person is saying as true for them in the moment. (Don't get me wrong - you don't have to agree with them, you just need to acknowledge that for them, what they are saying is true).
So take some time to listen to the argument and assess the situation from their point of view. Also, don't fall into the trap of looking for solutions within software systems from the get-go. Pretty much every problem can be solved within the people-process-product continuum (product in this case being software applications) however the people/process corners of the 3P trinity are always the best places to start in my opinion.
Perhaps the problem lies in change management. Does he understand the process? Does he understand the importance of the process? Does he understand his role in the process? Has he been trained in his role? Has he understood and absorbed the training or does he require additional support? Why has he not been able to adopt the expected behaviour as a norm? Is the completion of the process at odds in some way with the goals or KPI's of his job role or team?
It may just be that he is unsure, unconfident, concerned about making embarrassing mistakes, threatened by what the process means to his empire, or just plain missed the communications and education up front in the project.
Now, what about the process? Is it too complex? Can it be simplified? Are there conflicting elements or responsibilities. For very casual executors of the process is there too much collateral information? Or too ambiguous a data/job flow? Are there components of data coming from different sources that may be misunderstood, or overpowering or ambiguous for casual users?
Look into how that process can be improved, simplified and clarified. Other people will appreciate this effort as well.
Sometimes though he may have a valid point. Perhaps there is something about the "product" that is inefficient or ineffective for his role in the process. This then is a great opportunity for the business to improve its processes and enhance its relationship with important members of the workforce. Unfortunately most software applications struggle to adapt flexibly and agilely to very specific user requirements.
This is one of the many sweetspots for a business process management suite (BPMS). The wonderful thing about a BPMS such as FlowCentric is its inherent ability to define and control business processes outside of, and around the edges of, existing applications very cost effectively. It gives business the opportunity to hone areas of process that need to dovetail perfectly into human expectations whilst still leveraging the quite significant investment made in whatever the underlying application is.
A BPMS isn't generally concerned with the transaction end of a process, although this may be part of the outcomes, it is more generally successful in addressing the human element, and that of course is exactly where our adminaphobics sit.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
The Business Process Management elevator pitch
Another week another conference - well my life isn't actually like that, it is just coincidence that I had two back to back - no more for months. This one was on B-Process-M and had moments of enlightenment in amongst the chaff. One of the moderators was Dr Michael Rosemann from QUT in Brisbane - someone I have met a few times now and each time I am more impressed than the last - he has a marvellous intellect, a sharp wit and a passion for his calling.
One of the questions thrown to a discussion panel from the floor (actually a colleague of mine, go Jonathan) was "what is the elevator pitch for BPM?". Great question and one that the panel really struggled with. You know the scenario, the CEO steps into the lift beside you and as the doors close he/she turns to you and and asks "so what do you do for our company?". You have 6 floors (20 seconds) to pitch your value and worth to the top dog.
"Well, eh, um, I, eh, you see, we, eh, I'm........" ding go the doors and out walks the only platinum coated sponsor in the business - impressive work Agent 99.
It's important to practice these things - you only get one shot!
The problem with our trusty seminar panel is that the elevator must have been in the Empire State Building - CEO's need sound bites - not monologues. And as I listened to the various suggestions I realised that I sound just like them. So over the last 24 hours I have put myself to the test - give me the snappy elevator pitch - and the follow-up line when the CEO presses the stop button and says "tell me more".
I started out with "BPM increases customer satisfaction and reduces costs" - hah! Everything ever pitched to a CEO "increases customer satisfaction and reduces costs" - got to do better than that.
"BPM reduces customer irritation and recovers margins lost to the business" - all right, that sounds pretty good.
His hand is reaching for the stop button, quick what's the follow up? "We identify the most common complaints our customers have about our service delivery and then we iron out the wrinkles in the processes that underpin those areas so that we get a quality result everytime. The reduction of administration and problem management releases profits back to the bottom line everytime."
Hey, not bad, give the man a cigar - can anyone do better? Let me have it.
June 1st - Hmmm, having slept on that I don't think I nailed it. Some tweaking required.
"BPM increases staff and customer [internal and external impact] satisfaction and recovers profits [better than margins] lost in the business".
Followed by:
"We search out [more proactive] the most common and serious [intent] complaints people [not just customers] have about our value chain [end to end] and streamline and automate [expend effort] the processes that underpin those areas to get a reliable, quality outcome. The resulting reduction of administration and irritation releases profits back to the bottom line everytime."
I think that's better again - any thoughts out there?
One of the questions thrown to a discussion panel from the floor (actually a colleague of mine, go Jonathan) was "what is the elevator pitch for BPM?". Great question and one that the panel really struggled with. You know the scenario, the CEO steps into the lift beside you and as the doors close he/she turns to you and and asks "so what do you do for our company?". You have 6 floors (20 seconds) to pitch your value and worth to the top dog.
"Well, eh, um, I, eh, you see, we, eh, I'm........" ding go the doors and out walks the only platinum coated sponsor in the business - impressive work Agent 99.
It's important to practice these things - you only get one shot!
The problem with our trusty seminar panel is that the elevator must have been in the Empire State Building - CEO's need sound bites - not monologues. And as I listened to the various suggestions I realised that I sound just like them. So over the last 24 hours I have put myself to the test - give me the snappy elevator pitch - and the follow-up line when the CEO presses the stop button and says "tell me more".
I started out with "BPM increases customer satisfaction and reduces costs" - hah! Everything ever pitched to a CEO "increases customer satisfaction and reduces costs" - got to do better than that.
"BPM reduces customer irritation and recovers margins lost to the business" - all right, that sounds pretty good.
His hand is reaching for the stop button, quick what's the follow up? "We identify the most common complaints our customers have about our service delivery and then we iron out the wrinkles in the processes that underpin those areas so that we get a quality result everytime. The reduction of administration and problem management releases profits back to the bottom line everytime."
Hey, not bad, give the man a cigar - can anyone do better? Let me have it.
June 1st - Hmmm, having slept on that I don't think I nailed it. Some tweaking required.
"BPM increases staff and customer [internal and external impact] satisfaction and recovers profits [better than margins] lost in the business".
Followed by:
"We search out [more proactive] the most common and serious [intent] complaints people [not just customers] have about our value chain [end to end] and streamline and automate [expend effort] the processes that underpin those areas to get a reliable, quality outcome. The resulting reduction of administration and irritation releases profits back to the bottom line everytime."
I think that's better again - any thoughts out there?
Friday, May 26, 2006
The presentation virgin
Another session in last week's Corporate Performance Management seminar was a case study by the Melbourne Cricket Club. A venerable Australian sporting institution that coincidently I am proud to call an iPOS eProcurement for SunSystems client. The speaker introduced himself as "a presentation virgin" being his first presentation to a body of this nature. He performed admirably, his talk was on topic, his presentation was well considered and some of his graphics were simple yet brilliantly representative of a point (something a lot of presenters could learn from). Well done Ivan.
However it got me wondering what sort of guidance and support the seminar organisers gave this "virgin" in the lead up to the day. I hope he wasn't left to work it out for himself - that would have been a little discourteous.
Having given a presentation or two myself, and having also been the driver of some in-house events, I recently published the following tips and tricks on our corporate portal. These may not work for everyone, indeed some presentation experts may consider them amateurish, however they have helped me build a fragile confidence over time in the black art of public speaking.
In the interest of sharing, here they are:
However it got me wondering what sort of guidance and support the seminar organisers gave this "virgin" in the lead up to the day. I hope he wasn't left to work it out for himself - that would have been a little discourteous.
Having given a presentation or two myself, and having also been the driver of some in-house events, I recently published the following tips and tricks on our corporate portal. These may not work for everyone, indeed some presentation experts may consider them amateurish, however they have helped me build a fragile confidence over time in the black art of public speaking.
In the interest of sharing, here they are:
Preparation
- Use the correct PowerPoint template presentation. And a simple one too please- nothing too busy.
- If there is a keynote speaker, dove-tail some of your focus points to that topic and if you can talk on the fly, try to weave some points from that session into yours.
- Use pictures wherever possible.
- Read it over and over and remove every word that doesn't add clearly to your message.
- Shuffle points and slides around to get the best sequence.
- Don't use someone else's presentation unless you are very confident - build your own with trigger words that mean things to you.
- Develop a presentation model of “objective, benefit, feature”, e.g. “Driving down maverick purchasing [objective] will generate cost savings and reduce risk [benefit] – the delegated approval controls in iPOS eProcurement for SunSystems [feature] ensure only valid purchases are generated onto supplier orders.[objective achieved]”.
- There should be a re-focusing conclusion and a call to action for sales/next steps at the end.
- Workshop your presentation with your peers/the sales team/the seminar manager.
- Less is more – thin it out and stick to the core message. Averaging one slide every three minutes is a reasonable pace.
- Do a full dress rehearsal with the projector etc in front of an audience (the weekly team meeting perhaps).
- Backup your presentation on a USB key or similar.
- Practice your presentation at home in front of the mirror (I also use the ironing board!) – try out different phrases and word combinations to find what works well when spoken - very different from when being read - get confident in these phrases.
- If possible get some background on the interests of the attendees and relate information in your presentation appropriately.
On the day
- Get a good night’s sleep and get to the event early.
- Dress appropriately – suit & tie/business wear normally (better to be a little over than under dressed).
- Setup and test any hardware before people arrive especially including microphones/speakers.
- Bring plenty of business cards.
- Introduce yourself to some of the attendees as they arrive and engage in conversation – ask them what they are looking for from the seminar – later try to relate that in your presentation – “Sally from company XYZ was telling me over coffee that ….” – and please don’t pick on poor Sally every time.
- If you are being introduced to the floor by someone give them the details of how you would like that to happen i.e. “Here is John, he works in the basement” leaves a completely different impression to “Today John will talk to us about xyz. John has worked with Acme Company for 4 years and his current role is as such-and-such with prime responsibility for so-and so. John brings great passion to his topic today and will be available afterwards for further discussion”.
- If using a microphone, please don’t tap it, discreetly ensure it is switched on and start talking. Talk in only a slightly louder voice than normal, microphones do not amplify your voice clearly if it is not already somewhat amplified to start with. Do not shout.
- Start by introducing yourself and thank the attendees for their time.
- If you can involve some sort of personal experience with the topic you are speaking to, it can warm up the audience very well, particularly if they can relate to it themselves – keep it short though, no life stories.
- Don’t read every point on the slides – they can do that themselves – talk to the focus point. Telling stories with a relevant point can be very effective.
- Stop pacing around like a caged lion (I used to be an Olympic class pacer - very hard to stop).
- A stage actor gave me a tip to get into a slightly uncomfortable standing position pushing your toes into the front of your shoes, it may feel uncomfortable but it actually looks good from the audience.
- Use your hands for restrained emphasis, don't wave them around and don't shove them into your pockets gentlemen and fiddle with your keys.
- Make eye contact with people and smile.
- Talk slower.
- If a question threatens to derail the presentation, suggest that it can be addressed after the seminar one-on-one.
- If someone throws up a horrer story about your company or product/service try not to be drawn into a battle. Perhaps you could express amazement and disappointment that such an event has happened to them and welcome their feedback directly after the seminar. This is a rare occurance but can happen - think disgruntled shareholders.
- Encourage and thank people for filling out the feedback forms at the end of the session.
Now, that's not too much to remember is it? All you have to do after this is actually speak about the topic - easy - that will be your passion.
20 June 2006 - having just given another presentation last week there are two very important extra points:
- Urge all attendees to fill out the feedback form ther and then
- Take the feedback as constructive suggestion on how you can improve (rather than personal and hurtful abuse!)
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Adminaphobic knowledge workers
Today I am coining a new phrase - remember, you read it here first - the "Adminaphobic knowledge worker". The what? The well paid, over-ego'd, middle/senior ranking colleague who believes he (let's face it, rarely a she) is too important/busy/needed elsewhere to be bothered with the nuisance of administrative tasks such as purchase requisitioning, timesheets, incident reporting, leave requests etc etc etc. (Read this for an excellent explanation of the "knowledge worker" as opposed to the adminaphobe).
Know anyone like that in your patch?
The challenge for business management is the sickening reality that sometimes these guys are actually right - they may well be a little too important to us in some way, we may be somewhat over exposed, they could well be the "bus man" (the one person you don't want run over by that proverbial bus). Unfortunately they are also frequently arrogantly aware of this and willing to flaunt and abuse their position of power. So what can we do - because we really do want these guys to perform their admin.
An aside but an interesting and relevant little anecdote and a flash back to the malevolence of a previous ORA post. One of our iPOS eProcurement for SunSystems clients was complaining that "the system doesn't work for us". Now, I would say that pretty much everytime I have heard something like that the problem boils down to the fact that their business processes or people are the cause of the problem - not the "system" (and that is not a proud boast on our software, I would say it is a fairly safe general comment about most commercial, mature software applications). Sure enough, the problem was that requisitions for inappropriate spend were being "approved by the system incorrectly". After a little forensic analysis it actually turned out that one of their adminaphobes had handed over his password and responsibility to a group admin assistant to approve his requisitions (I'm too busy for that) and as she had no basis for deciding what was right and wrong she was merrily approving everything that came his way on his behalf.
So how would I approach the conundrum of our adminaphobic friends?
To be continued ..... (don't you hate that).
Know anyone like that in your patch?
The challenge for business management is the sickening reality that sometimes these guys are actually right - they may well be a little too important to us in some way, we may be somewhat over exposed, they could well be the "bus man" (the one person you don't want run over by that proverbial bus). Unfortunately they are also frequently arrogantly aware of this and willing to flaunt and abuse their position of power. So what can we do - because we really do want these guys to perform their admin.
An aside but an interesting and relevant little anecdote and a flash back to the malevolence of a previous ORA post. One of our iPOS eProcurement for SunSystems clients was complaining that "the system doesn't work for us". Now, I would say that pretty much everytime I have heard something like that the problem boils down to the fact that their business processes or people are the cause of the problem - not the "system" (and that is not a proud boast on our software, I would say it is a fairly safe general comment about most commercial, mature software applications). Sure enough, the problem was that requisitions for inappropriate spend were being "approved by the system incorrectly". After a little forensic analysis it actually turned out that one of their adminaphobes had handed over his password and responsibility to a group admin assistant to approve his requisitions (I'm too busy for that) and as she had no basis for deciding what was right and wrong she was merrily approving everything that came his way on his behalf.
So how would I approach the conundrum of our adminaphobic friends?
To be continued ..... (don't you hate that).
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