The Best of

2008-2012

The Best of The Process Ninja 2008 - 2012 © Craig Reid 2012 www.theprocessninja.com

The moral right of Craig Reid to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright Act 1968.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic, photocopying or otherwise without prior written permission of the author.

First published in Australia 2012 by The Process Ninja.

Disclaimer : All information contained within this book constitutes general advice only and is not in any way intended for any individual. Should the reader choose to make use of the information contained within, this is entirely their decision and the author, publisher and their representatives do not assume any responsibility whatsoever under any conditions or circumstances. Individuals should seek their own professional advice applicable to their specific situation.

Any opinions expressed in this work are exclusively those of the author.

Contents

Background

History

Practical Tips

Technology

Customer Experience Management

Process Thoughts

Broken Processes

Background

I started The Process Ninja blog on a whim in 2008, albeit with a whim of great excitement. I’m pleased to say that today the blog is now one of the most talked about process blogs in the world.

This e-book contains what I consider to be some of the best content from the last four years. I hope you enjoy reading this book and that you will visit the blog at www.theprocessninja.com to enjoy further posts.

I have purposely made this e-book to spread the word about the importance of business process. I would greatly appreciate it if you can forward it on to anyone who may be interested.

Craig Reid, The Process Ninja – June 2012

About Craig Reid,

The Process Ninja

Craig Reid is known throughout the business world as “The Process Ninja”. He is a passionate advocate of business process management. His unique approach to business process improvement rapidly achieves business benefits by creating alignment between customers, strategy, processes and technology. Recognised as a leader in his field, Craig’s work has been featured on the BNet, Telstra Enterprise & Government and Flyingsolo.com.au websites as well as in the Sun-Herald newspaper. To discuss how Craig can help your organisation improve its business processes, please contact him: Mobile: +61 400731029 craig@theprocessninja.com www.theprocessninja.com

History

A Brief History Of Process – From the Industrial Revolution To Today

When we sit in our offices and perform our day-to-day tasks, we don’t often think about how our jobs came to exist or the way in which work is structured in our organizations. But the fact is that the way we work today is a legacy of hundreds of years of thinking about the way work is best performed. In particular the legacy of the industrial revolution looms large.

Hundreds of years ago work was the domain of each individual. From a process perspective they completed all parts of the end-to-end process. They researched, created, sold and distributed their products – much like a small business today. Fast forward to 1776 and Adam Smith introduced the world to the Industrial Revolution via his iconic book “The Wealth of Nations”.

Smith talked about what he defined as the "Division of Labour" - what we call functions today - and he used the example of the making of metal pins to demonstrate the benefits of the division of labour:

"Each person, therefore, making a tenth part of forty-eight thousand pins, might be considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins in a day. But if they had all wrought separately and independently, and without any of them having been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day"

Adam Smith was right and it became the basis of how we do work today - functions designed to complete specific tasks. But as companies, products and marketplaces became more complex and segmented, so became the need to have more complex and specialised functions within organizations. We are now all acutely aware of the challenges that this brings for organizations to manage the flow of work across these functional specialities.

With a way of working comes ways to improve that work and improve the quality of the work that is performed. Frederick Winslow Taylor was one of the key figures in improving industrial engineering processes in the 19th Century. Taylor’s focus was on scientific study of work, standardization of process, systematic training and sound structure of employees and management.

In contrast to Taylor, Peter Drucker (1909-2005) took a more sympathetic approach to employees, coining the term “knowledge workers” in contrast to Taylor’s structured and sometimes inflammatory treatment of workers. Drucker’s focus on simplification and decentralization effectively created what we understand as outsourcing today. Another of Drucker’s key points was his continual focus on serving the customer.

Whilst many others contributed to new trends and new terminologies Smith, Taylor and Drucker stand out as the “poster boys” of process from the industrial revolution until the early 1990’s.

In the mid 1980’s Motorola introduced the Six Sigma methodology that focused on the improvement of quality. Six Sigma was based strongly on other quality approaches such as Total Quality Management. In the early 1990’s Lean (based on the Toyota Production System) became a popular means of eliminating “waste” from organizational processes.

The mid 1990’s saw a frenzy of interest in what came to be called “process re-engineering”. Unfortunately rather than being seen as a means of improving organizational effectiveness and productivity it became synonymous with corporate downsizing – a PR disaster for the process movement that lasted many years. Nothing typified this period more than Michael Hammer’s eponymous quote that when implementing process change organisations should “carry the wounded, but shoot the stragglers!”.

So where are we today? Methodologies such as Lean and Six Sigma (or a combination of both) are still used extensively in organizations, but both have their share of critics who cite the lack of practicality when rigidly implementing the methods. Many process experts also argue that techniques historically developed to suit manufacturing industries are not well suited to service industries and “knowledge work”, which exhibit less linear processes. New methods such as the CEM Method are proving popular due to their practical implementation methods but their viability is yet to be proven over the long term.

Technology solutions have also exploded in the last 20 years – we now have systems for process mapping, process modelling, data modelling, workflow and process management to name but a few. Indeed we are now seeing a convergence of all of these technologies into integrated business process suites.

The arguments over methodologies and systems will always be with us, but as long as we are continuing to look at new ways of adding value to organizations the future of process thinking will continue to be bright for many years to come.

Process, Learning & The Division of Labour

With every piece of new work or indeed any new experience we undertake in our lives we go through a process of learning. We may watch the task, repeat the task, read about the task - there are many different ways of learning how to do something and a thousand scholarly scientific textbooks that will tell you all about it.

But why is this relevant to process? The answer is simple - the benefits of process are fundamentally based on the way humans learn.

In a former life I was a commis chef. One day I was given a task to make the tomato concasse for one of the dishes. The chef showed me how to do it and I repeated it after him. "Good" said the Head Chef, and proceeded to give me a bucket of tomatoes to turn into concasse. So I started to make the concasse - I took the first tomato, chopped it in two, scooped out the seeds, pressed it flat, chopped the middle out and pressed it flat then diced the tomato. Half an hour later I felt the burning eye of the chef looking at my paltry pile of tomato concasse. "NO, NO, NO!" he said and proceeded to show me the error of my ways. "First chop all the tomatoes, then scoop out all the seeds, then press them all flat, then dice them ALL!"

I didn't realise it at the time but this was my first real-life lesson in the benefits of process. As I did each step in turn I found myself speeding up dramatically. The first few I did were slow as I got my technique right, but after that I was flying, and in no time I was finished my bucket of tomatoes and was feeling very pleased with myself (until I was given a bucket of potatoes!)

What I had replicated was the concept of functional design - the same concept that was the basis of the industrial revolution. If I had, for example, a tomato concasse factory I would probably have a team that would put the tomatoes into buckets, another team to chop the tomatoes, another team to flatten the tomatoes, etc. When we split tasks into functions we break them down into simpler more easily understood parts. As they are simpler to understand the learning curve is shorter; workers can learn to do each task quickly and become very fast at doing the tasks whilst maintaining quality. Conversely if we have multiple tasks performed by one person the complexity of learning becomes greater and it is slower to complete the overall process - we introduce multiple learning curves within the process. I would also argue that when each learning curve is repeated simultaneously there is greater memory retention than when multiple learning curves exist.

Back in 1776 a very canny Scotsman, Adam Smith talked about this exact phenomenon in his famous book, "The Wealth of Nations". He talked about what he defined as the "Division of Labour" - what we call functions today - and he used the example of the making of metal pins to demonstrate the benefits of the division of labour.

Adam Smith was right and it became the basis of how we do work today - functions designed to complete specific tasks. But as companies, products and marketplaces became more complex and segmented, so became the need to have more complex and specialised functions within organisations. As process people we are now all acutely aware of the challenges that this brings for organisations to manage the flow of work across these functional specialities.

The division of labour and the specialisation of work functions provided a totally new way of working and had a major role in the industrial revolution - but it has now become both a blessing and a curse for organisations. Now and into the future the ability to manage processes across increasingly complex organisations will become imperative.

Practical

Tips

Processes, Procedures, Work Instructions - what's the difference anyway?

It’s often all too easy to bundle “processes and procedures” into one statement as if they are a single entity. Of course, they aren’t, but ask a dozen people what the difference is and you are likely to get a dozen different answers. Throw in the oft misunderstood “work instructions” and chaos can ensue!

When working to improve business processes and procedures it’s critically important to define what each is prior to embarking on the improvement initiative. This sets a clear understanding for the business in terms of what work will be performed.

The easiest way to think about processes and procedures is in the level of detail of the information. Processes can be described as being at a “high level” and operate across the organization’s varying functions, whereas procedures sit at a “low level” i.e. they contain detailed information. Both are, of course, intrinsically linked. The procedural level can be thought of as a detailed breakdown of a step in the process.

Processes vs Procedures

…and Work Instructions

So what are the key difference between processes, procedures and work instructions?

Processes are cross-functional and define what is done and by whom. They are often depicted in diagrammatical form such as a decision tree or flowchart where the work performed is split into logical interrelated steps or “activities”. Processes should always have a “trigger” or start event and a “terminator” or

end event that achieves a specific result. All processes should seek to fulfill a successful customer outcome.

Procedures define how the work is performed. They are typically documented in a step-by-step order with detailed descriptions of how the work is to be performed and who is responsible for performing the work.

Work instructions add a level of confusion to the puzzle, but are generally recognized as a sub set of procedures. The way they differ is that the work instruction is typically written to describe how to do something specifically for a single role, rather than procedures that may contain instructions for several different roles within an organization.

How to Use

The next question then relates to how each of these should be used.

The answer is simple: together.

Processes are an excellent means of quickly displaying the entire process in an easy to understand format, but on their own they are too high level for staff to use to perform their day-to-day work. This is where procedural detail is required.

The solution to this problem is to always pair process diagrams and procedural detail together, clearly showing the step (or steps) in the process that the procedure refers to.

This way staff can see the greater context and implications of the cross functional process whilst having the level of detail required to be able to successfully complete their own tasks. Work instructions can also be used in this manner but caution should be exercised as single role based work instructions can lead to an insular view of the work being performed. Well-written procedural detail can often eliminate the need for documenting work instructions.

Processes, procedures and work instructions are all part of the business eco-system, and just like life on earth, they work best when we work to manage all of them together in perfect harmony.

Linking Process, Procedures & Business Requirements to Successful Customer Outcomes - a Business Analyst Guide

"Go out to the business and gather their requirements!"

How many times do we hear this said?

When I hear this being said it immediately fills me with dread; images of men in suits wandering through dark forests without maps, looking for mushrooms...needles in haystacks and the like (you get the idea...)

What generally happens in these situations is that business analysts go away and do just that - gather requirements - what the business thinks they want. Typically what this results in is a giant rambling document written in a pseudo business / IT speak that the business say they can't read and the IT guys say isn't detailed enough for them to build from. So the BA goes away and creates a functional spec which the IT guys love, but by this point in time it has morphed so far from what the business want, they have a heart attack when they see the final product!

"That's not what we wanted!" they say!

"But that's what you told us!" say the BA's and IT guys!

It doesn't have to be this hard. Here's how you do it:

1. Define the successful customer outcome(s)

What is it that the customer really needs? What does the business need to do to meet those needs?

2. Define the process scope

Establish what the process actually is from the customer's perspective - current state (if a current state exists!). Don't take the business's word for it - their interpretation of what a process is may be radically different to yours. Document the process at a high level (e.g. SIPOC) - confirm with the business. Tick in box from business?

3. Define the current process

Proceed to document the process at a task level. Don't waste too much time on the as-is if you are going to change the process! Photos of sticky notes on a wall is sufficient. Tick in box from business?

4. Improve the process / define new process

List all the tasks in the current process and eliminate or improve tasks focussing on the outcomes required. If a new process, sticky note the tasks required to achieve the outcomes required with the minimal amount of activities. Don't just consider "sunny day processes" where everything goes right - consider everything that can go wrong! Look at the paths from every business rule in your process! Consider all process permutations!

5. Link Process Tasks to Procedural Steps

For each task, create procedural steps - how and why each process step is done rather than what is done. This can be done very simply in a spreadsheet (for example my Process Ninja Workbook that utilises the CEM Method). What's more, you can then split it into a procedural document for your staff to use for training and day-to-day operational procedures.

6. Link Procedural Detail to Business Requirements

The procedural detail helps to create a granular level of detail that greatly benefits the creation of specific requirements. It forces the analyst to think of all possible permutations and options - it forces them to think in the context of the real world, not a gobbledegook business requirements document.

7. Link Business requirements to test scenarios

Use procedural detail and business requirements together to develop test

scenarios and use cases - IT can then use these for their unit testing then they can be re-used for user testing. Easy.

8. Build it. Iteratively.

Presuming that there is actually an IT solution involved (and let's face it, there usually is), it's best to adopt an iterative (agile) approach where there are short development cycles with high business involvement. I have seen too many waterfall development disasters in my time.

So in eight steps a Business or Process Analyst can create complete traceability from the customer outcomes to the delivery.

It's not really that hard, but isn't it amazing that so many people can make it seem that way?

Taking The "IT" Out Of ITIL

I've worked with the ITIL framework for 12 years now and have watched with interest the changes that have occurred from version 1 to (the current) version 3.

For those of you who don't know what ITIL is, it was designed initially as framework to support IT Infrastructure with a series of best practice processes. Over the years it has evolved to be something much more than that.

Traditionally ITIL is still used extensively within IT departments - Incident Management, for example is the cornerstone of most Service Desks these days. For those of you still stuck in the 20th century, that's what you call the "IT Helpdesk". But version 3 of ITIL has two important elements that make it much more than a framework for IT Nerds:

• Service Management - rather than being just a set of processes as it was in previous versions, ITIL v3 embraces a services management approach. This involves looking at business services and using ITIL's service management lifecycle to support those services.

• Continuous Improvement - ITIL's service management lifecycle concept embraces four key phases (Strategy, Design, Transition & Operations) which feed into a cycle of continuous improvement.

What does this mean? Well, we now have a framework that manages the entire lifecycle of a service and which embraces continuous improvement. So why should we restrict ITIL to simply supporting IT? The answer is, we don't have to...

If we strip the IT terminology out of ITIL we can use the framework as a means of supporting ANY business service. It helps us to firstly define the strategy of the organisation, the business services to support that strategy and provides the means to support those business services via a set of processes - all wrapped up in a cycle of continuous improvement. Incident Management? Use it in a call centre! Capacity Management - use it for a warehouse! Think outside the IT square and many applicable uses spring up.

So when you think about how to manage your strategy, your business services and the processes required to support them - remember that you can take the IT out of ITIL to provide you with a great starting point.

How Does Your Garden Grow? Selling BPM

I have a love/hate relationship with my garden. I love it when it is blooming beautifully, but I hate the time and attention and cost it takes to maintain. So what do I do? Ignore it. I ignore it until I look at it and say "Oh god, it's weeding time". Then I spend an inevitable half a day of a precious weekend pulling out weeds.

All of this is, of course, totally avoidable. I own a very nice little weed sprayer which if I scheduled 10 minutes every two weeks to spray the weeds I'd never have to spend a wasted day in the garden again.

This, of course is a perfect analogy for BPM - we turn to process when the weeds have overgrown our gardens and we need to fight back, but rarely do we spend the time to put BPM in place to ensure that the weeds never get big enough to warrant a project.

But with the weeds we have the opportunity to show how process can add value. Getting a few project successes under our belts can be a persuasive means to start the journey towards continuous improvement. It may be a slow journey, but it can have a destination.

Often the problem we have with selling BPM is that we (process people) often sound like a bunch of crazies selling a new religion. Leaders of organisations aren't interested in buying a concept that sounds like it crawled out of the backside of the IT department. Leaders want to buy solutions to business problems: they want to save money, improve turnover and improve customer service - or more reactively, fix any problems that are getting them into trouble (and quickly).

So whilst we all agree that BPM's outcomes are fundamentally important to organisations - we need to be careful about how we sell the concept. We may need to pull out a few weeds to prove we are capable of looking after the whole garden.

Don't Waste Time On The AS-IS

One of the biggest wastes of time in the world of process is the excessive attention paid to the AS-IS state. Now before you scream and shout at me and call me a process heretic, I would like to add that I think looking at the as-is is essential. I have seen organisations that have skipped to the to-be state and it is nothing short of disastrous.

What I have an issue with are organisations spending vast amounts of man hours documenting as-is process in detail. Unless the as-is state is felt to be close to being optimised already, spending time documenting it in detail is a bit like writing a book then burning it.

When you know you are going to be improving a process, don't waste time on the as-is - do a workshop with stakeholders to define and agree the process, but there is no need to waste time documenting or modelling it. Taking a photo of the agreed process is sufficient.

What will separate you from the herd is moving to the improvement phase as rapidly as you can and delivering change which will bring business benefits - not creating more useless documents.

Don't Dictate the To-be Process, Facilitate the To-be Process

In my opinion there are few worse things in the world than a consultant in a shiny suit turning up at your business and telling you what to do. It's arrogant, unnecessary and gets the customer offside from day one.

Last night I attended the Sydney BPM Link meeting where one of the speakers was John Jeston, Partner at The LiTMUS Group. When John was asked by an attendee whether he "tells people what they should do" with regard to the to-be process I was glad to hear him say that he would never tell the client what to do.

I am exactly in agreement with this approach. I find it abhorrent when process consultants walk into a business and start to design to-be processes that they think are correct. I believe that a good process person facilitates the to-be process, but they never dictate to the customer what that process should be. Often the to-be process may be obvious to the process facilitator - but it is vitally important that the customers come to the conclusion on what the process should be with the help of the facilitator.

One of the great benefits of the CEM Method I use is that it actively involves the workshop participants in designing not only the as-is process and the to-be process but it helps the customer define the actions required to get from the as-is to the to-be.

It's your job to guide your customers in the right direction, not push them.

Lessons from a Process Project Failure

Recently I worked on a process project that I consider to be a failure. In the eyes of the company involved, however, it will probably be viewed as a great success.

Success or failure can be bizarrely subjective sometimes - mostly due to complete ignorance of what a process project should achieve.

Here's what I deemed to be the reasons for its failure and what lessons can be learned:

Failure 1 - Too expensive

While the particular company had oodles of money to spend the eventual cost of the project was approximately 10 times what it should have been. This was due to the fact that the company was mentally locked-in to old ways of thinking and could not see past developing new systems in the manner of which they had previously done it - hardcoded, costly and slow.

Lesson 1

Don't be locked into old ways of doing things. Utilise new software solutions to provide agile systems that are flexible today and tomorrow.

Failure 2 - Too slow

6 months after inception the project had not even started to be developed. Actually it hadn't even been resourced. Old, bureaucratic management processes with no agility meant that projects had to follow a stuffy development cycle with 150 rounds of sign offs to get anything done. As a result nothing got done. What could have been done in 3 weeks took 3 months.

Lesson 2

Realise the cost of bureaucracy and unleash staff by empowering them to make decisions. Embrace "freedom within boundaries".

Failure 3 - Not Utilising Staff Experience

Whilst some highly experienced and capable resources had been engaged to work on the project it was clear from day one that they would neither be allowed to use their experience or their initiative. Staff were treated like

junior BA's and PA's. Management paid lip service to their suggestions. 6 months on, all the staff had left.

Lesson 3

Treat staff with respect and allow them to utilise their experience. Managers need to swallow their egos.

Failure 4 - Not Involving Stakeholders

Throughout the project stakeholders were treated like lepers - not to be spoken to or touched in any way. As a result they became disengaged and skeptical of the direction of the project. "buy-in" was disintegrated.

Lesson 4

Involve stakeholders from start to finish. Make them part of the project. Sit with them, involve them, and communicate with them. A few workshops and a slap on the back is not enough.

Failure 5 - Forgetting The Customer

No matter how many times I tried to bring up the customer experience, the concept fell on deaf ears. Customers were not advised or consulted. If the stakeholders were treated like lepers then customers were treated like they had bubonic plague. There was to be no consultation with customers.

Lesson 5

Customers are an organisation's reason for being. If we fail to take into account the customer experience we simply fail. Customers must be involved no matter how afraid we might be of what they will say. The implications of what they will say will never be worse than the danger of us not communicating with them.

Failure 6 - Technology Defining Process

It was clear from the start that the project was dangerously focused on (old) technology being pushed at the business. Rather than look ahead to find new and innovative solutions the project was trapped in the mire of inflexible legacy systems that were limiting the company's ability to do business.

Lesson 6

Technology is a tool for achieving business success - nothing more. Technology should not be pushed to the business - the business should define what it wants, and receive the technology it needs. Customer > Business Strategy > Process > Technology. It's that simple.

Failure 7 - Shyster Consultants

When things started to go wrong (i.e. all the staff left) the panic button was hit and in came a highly paid consultant. Rather than delivering tangible project benefits the consultant swanned around telling other staff what they should be doing (in meaningless management speak riddles) and re-hashing previous work into a number of new and equally useless PowerPoint presentations.

Lesson 7

If you are going to spend money on consultants, ensure they have a history of being able to deliver, rather than just talk and create PowerPoint presentations. Focus on them demonstrating expertise, not legalese.

Whilst this is not an exhaustive list of reasons for process project failure, this is a REAL list of reasons for process failure based, sadly, upon my own experience. It doesn't have to be this way - and I, for one, will not be putting up with it again.

You shouldn't have to either.

Don't Talk the Process - Walk the Process

There are so many ways to gather information these days that it's easy for us to get lost in the detail. When it comes to looking at and understanding processes we have the same challenge - how to wade through that sea of information and data to find the truth.

The short answer is that you will never understand everything and you shouldn't expect to. It is ridiculous for us as process analysts to walk onto a project and set about trying to learn every piece of information on a subject that has taken years to create and which sits within the heads of numerous subject matter experts. To quote a sage friend of mine, we need to take the approach of "how much do you need to know, to know that you know enough".

Whilst workshops can have value, and depth interviews, well, add depth, I am a great fan of walking the process. This involves very simply following the flow of information through the process - walking to each person or department and asking them to take me through their work. Information will always disappear into systems and pop out somewhere else, but we can still follow that too.

What walking the process achieves for me is to build a visual picture of flows in my head. It also helps me to build relationships with the staff involved in the process and to explain what I am trying to achieve. There is something about walking the process that helps the staff to build a sense of trust and to speak openly about the work they perform and the issues they face. Putting the same staff in a workshop environment creates a totally different set of group dynamics where staff may not be so open with their thoughts.

So as a starting point, do not underestimate the power of walking the process. It's an ideal first step.

Carry The Wounded And Shoot The Stragglers

BPM Guru Michael Hammer once famously said that in re-engineering they would "Carry The Wounded And Shoot The Stragglers". Whilst the cutback and redundancy culture of the 90's re-engineering era gave birth to the horrendous process PR that we are still battling today I believe that Hammer's quote is still relevant today in terms of change management and process.

I'm a strong believer in Change Management as the right-hand man of process. If process is to succeed we need change management - not at the end, not in the middle, but throughout the entire duration of the process change. We need to sell process and what it can deliver and we also need to make people understand and be comfortable with the changes that are coming. But change management can also be exhausting; there are always staff who "don't get it" and who never will and there are always managers who try to assassinate the process change.

This week, interestingly, engagement expert James Adonis talked about "Adherance to Policies and Procedures" where he talks about using "Hard Power" and "Soft Power":

"When trying to get your employees to adhere to policies and procedures, you have hard power and soft power at your disposal. Hard power is negative motivation. This is when you intimidate employees into compliance. You issue warnings, reprimand them, and offer greater (or fewer) tangible rewards. Soft power is when you get them to follow a process via the art of influence".

Both of these methods are applicable to process change management - always start with soft power, such as using 5 simple steps to communicating process change. If soft power isn't working for you, that's when it's time to switch to the hard stuff.

So in change management we carry the wounded and talk softly to them, heal their wounds and rehabilitate them so that they can join the good fight. But if they won't take their medicine, won't keep up and won't join the good fight, it's time to shoot the stragglers...

Using Criteria to Choose

"Best Fit" Processes

How easy would life be if we only ever had one option? Remember Henry Ford? OK, I'll have a black one Mr. Ford - thanks very much, next please. Sometime life is complicated and throws up more than one option, particularly for processes.

For example, in the morning I have two options of getting to work: car & train. Actually I have many more options than that, don't I? I could walk, cycle, run, hang-glide, helicopter it, swim, etc. So there's the first lesson when choosing a process:

1. Consider ALL the options, not just the ones you think might work (because you just never know what might work out best)

OK, so am I going to swim 14k to work? Probably not. Am I going to hang-glide? Not unless I want to die a hideous death. Second Lesson:

2. Eliminate all options that definitely won't work

So when all is done and said I have a few options: Car, Bus, Train, Bike and Ferry. But how do I decide? There are several factors in the decision - it isn't just a matter of how expensive it is or how fast it is. So how do I take that into account? Lesson 3:

3. List your criteria for the decision

So I come up with my criteria: Journey Time, Comfort, Price, Productivity (to explain that am I able to do productive stuff like work at the same time I travel). But once I have those criteria decided I need to work out how important each of them are to me. Lesson 4:

4. Give the criteria weightings

I come up with what is most important to me, so for example I rate each score out of ten. Next it's time to score each and come up with the totals. But wait have I forgotten anything, have I missed anything? Yes, I've realised that I've forgotten a criteria score that covers risk! Which form of transport am I likely to be bombed by terrorists on? Or exposed to swine flu!?? So before you rate, you need one more lesson:

5. Review all options from the start

This is a bit like agile software development where you loop round and pick up what defects you've missed on the first pass. Then it's just a matter of:

6. Adding up the scores

So once you've got all your criteria sorted, you plug in your scores, multiply the weighting by the rating, sum the totals and you should have what is the "best fit" process option.

This technique can be used for any method of comparison - choosing software, a vendor, a process - anything! It's remarkably simple and remarkably effective. Just shows you - not everything needs to be complicated...

Have You Lost Control of Your Processes?

Is it all falling apart? Oh dear, what has gone wrong? Did you think about controls when you built that shiny new process?

When Joy Division once sang "And she showed up all the errors and mistakes, And said I've lost control again." in their eponymous song "Control" they hit the nail on the head. Control is about reducing the errors in process, it is about reducing mistakes and it is about keeping the process true to its original intent.

When you create a new process or fix a broken one you must create process controls. What I mean by this is that you must have means of keeping the process on track. Think of it as being like a slalom skier going down a course. His goal is to get to the finish line, but he has to follow the flags or he gets disqualified. But how do you set controls?

Choosing the controls can be as simple as looking at your process and thinking about what are the drop dead, must happen steps in the process. How many you have depends on the complexity of the process (but don't overdo it). Once you have decided upon your control steps you should continually audit the process to ensure that the control steps are being adequately met.

Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division eventually committed suicide - tortured by his inner demons and his inability to control his world. Thankfully we have the simpler task of controlling business processes, but the lesson here is the same: if you lose control you can be left with nothing.

Proving the value of process:

If It Moves, Measure it, If It Doesn't Move, Measure It

STOP! Don't do anything. Sir, move away from the process. Before you think about changing any process for the better there is one thing you must do: MEASURE.

Why measure when you know it's broken? Why measure when it's already caused a catastrophe? I'll tell you why; because one day some little prick with a bald head and a bad suit will come along and say "how can we justify all this spend on process?" and if you haven't measured anything you will have nothing to disprove him. He'll pack up your little process shop and go back to counting his beans, happy in the knowledge that he's saved money - even though we know he's cost more money in the long run.

So here's what you do - measure everything. Measure before you start, measure when you're finished and keep measuring when you're done. After that, start measuring again. You must always be constantly aware of where you are - that way when you make a change you can measure exactly how much you've achieved and thereby prove the power of process. Process is your compass, but if you're in the dark you'll never see where you've come from or where you need to go.

Are you creating a monster? Repeatability & Scalability in Process

I'm working with a team at the moment who have a product that they sell to clients. As part of the ongoing managed service to this client they have 9 key services that they provide. Basic stuff really - service requests.

Think about this:

• They have 9 process maps for each service request type • They have procedures for each service request type • They are all "client specific"

So what happens when they bring on a new client? Yes, they create a new set of processes and procedures for that client.

And what happens if a change is required to a process - yes they have to change the process across all the clients!

Just think about the administrative overhead of all that and the potential confusion caused by 9 processes times X number of clients. Essentially what they have done is to create a process monster. We're now going through the process (ahem) of stripping back the client specific information to create 1 process and set of procedures that can be used across all clients. This reduces the admin overhead, reduces the margin for error and allows us to go to market quickly and implement rapidly if a potential client comes along.

So the message is, when you create or modify process remember:

• Repeatability - make it easily repeatable, don't re-invent the wheel each time

• Scalability - make it adaptable to growth • Don't create a monster.

Documenting your business procedures in ten easy steps

This is an article I have recently written for Flyingsolo.com.au. Its audience is small / micro businesses, but you may find it relevant...

Processes. Love ‘em or loathe them, we can’t live without them. They are part of everything we do in our lives and in business. But often we take our business processes for granted until disaster hits or we need to break free from our indispensible role as the boss; but how do you get started with documenting processes for your business?

Here are 10 easy steps to get you onto the path of process enlightenment:

1. Start with the basics It is tempting to try to jump straight into writing procedures, but before you do this it is important to document information about your business that may seem obvious. It might be obvious to you, but ask your staff a few simple questions and you may get a surprise! Start with the basics – what the business does, who its customers are, where you are located, who your suppliers are, what your operating hours are and how you can be contacted.

2. Who are you writing for? Before you plunge headlong into your business’s most complex processes, remember who you are writing the procedures for - not for those like yourself who have intimate knowledge of the entire business, but for your staff. The more accessible you can make your instructions the easier it will be for your staff to learn. Write your procedures as if you are talking to a child – that way everyone will understand them.

3. Make a list Before you start writing procedures, make a list of all of the processes within your organisation, note who can provide the information and prioritise each one of them.

4. Just start What are you waiting for? Just start! Stop thinking about it and do it. Procedures are like life insurance - don’t put it off. You never know when you might need it…

5. Never mind the medium Don’t be overly concerned with how you document your procedures. Whilst Word and Excel are good ways to start, it doesn’t really matter if you write them with a rusty nail dipped in blood - as long as you do write them (just make photocopies!)

6. Step By Step When you write a procedure, break everything down, step-by-step. Try to number each step, write down who is responsible and clearly articulate what is required. You may find it helpful to start each step with a verb. For people like me, that means a doing word, like “create”!

7. Ask your staff You probably think you know everything about your business (and I’m not saying you don’t!) but you should always let your staff review your procedures. You might find out that they aren’t doing things the way you had hoped, and they may even have some new ideas for ways to do things better…

8. Re-invent Documenting your processes and procedures forces you to think about the way things are currently done. This very act can help to stimulate creative juices and generate ideas to re-invent and improve your business.

9. It’s a living thing Once you have documented your procedures don’t put them on a shelf and forget about them. It’s important to keep them alive and up-to-date. If you can’t handle continually updating them then set a date in your diary to review them on a regular basis.

10. Get Professional Help If it all seems too hard or you can’t find the time, don’t be ashamed to get help. There are many experienced procedural writers out there who can help you to pull things together (like me!)

Why not share your experiences and tips for creating procedural manuals for your business?

How to make process change smoother – 5 simple communication tips

Process does not operate in a vacuum. Process is not all about systems. Process is about people. People need communication. Here’s how to oil the wheels of process change: 1. Plan Before you do anything, draft a communications plan. This should include the messages you want to communicate, the mediums you will use to communicate and the timeframes for the communications. But who are you communicating with…? 2. Identify your audience. Who will be the process owners? Who is involved? You need to ensure that these people feel loved from day 1. More communication is better than less. Explain to them what you are trying to do, what help you need from them and how you are going to perform the work. 3. Start off big. You may think that by identifying your key audience that you have covered all your bases, but be sure to expand your communications to as many people as you can (within reason). There are always people who are left out of the loop who feel that they should be involved. It’s important to make these people feel that their opinions are being heard or they can inflict negative PR on your process change. Remember, however, that the bigger the audience for communication the more general your communication should be. 4. Build Rapport. By this I mean that you should get to know your audience personally. The more you can break down barriers and understand personality types the more likely they will be to co-operate with you. Don’t be afraid to ask them about their lives outside of work. They may even start to think of you as a human being! 5. Make it regular, consistent. Whatever communications you are performing you need to make sure that it is regular. This is because it often takes time for a message to sink in. The world is so filled with communication “noise” that it may take a number of communications before people start to “get it”. This is why the communication

needs to be consistent, in order to hammer home the message. It’s like beating a drum over and over – eventually people will hear it and start to walk in step.

Technology

How to avoid Technology Process Failures

When I tried to buy my train ticket this morning I failed to notice that the machine was not currently accepting credit or debit cards. So after queuing up then dashing to join the queue at the ticketing window I watched as my train slowly slid away from the platform without me. It was a subtle reminder that we walk a perilous technology tightrope every day.

Let's face facts, systems fail regularly even in today's age of disaster recovery and business continuity planning. There are still major mishaps that hit the news on a regular basis. But let's not lay the blame on BCP & DR - they are the emergency option when the shit really hits the fan. But what about day-to-day operational processes?

Certainly my experience at the train station could have been better. It would have been good if cityrail had a crack team of eftpos machine repair guys with brutal SLA's so that it didn't happen. Even better, if the machines were of higher quality so they didn't break down so often. But at the end of the day there was only one machine, so it is a single point of failure. So what is the backup? The ticketing window. If only both of the ticketing windows were open to cope with the extra demand as a result of the broken machine I wouldn't have missed my train! So what can we learn to safeguard our processes?

• understand that where there is technology there will be failures • don't create technology single point of failures • have a technology backup (not just for DR & BCP but for day-to-day

operational processes) • in the event of multiple technology failures, ensure that there are

manual backups in place (like calling in an extra staff member to cope with increased demand!)

• perform technology root cause analysis to identify and eliminate ongoing problem areas

There is talk of cityrail adopting a new fully integrated ticketing system. Let's hope that they think more carefully about making their processes failsafe, otherwise it won't be just one ticket machine that causes the next problem.

Why Building for Change is Essential

For three years now I have been wondering why the next train doesn't arrive for 7 hours. Obviously someone, somewhere down the line (pardon the pun) made a mistake. But more importantly, why didn't they fix it?

When we don't build the ability to change into our processes and systems, we plan for failure. The world is moving at an increasingly dynamic rate, so we need the ability to change rapidly to meet business needs. So, in this day and age why do we still perpetuate idiotic paradigms such as:

• Building systems from scratch • Using old technologies • Failing to replace legacy systems • Ignoring the customer need

One day, I hope that someone will fix the system problem so that I will actually know when the next train is. Maybe then they will think to build a system that won't be so difficult to change that they can rectify things with the change of a simple business rule. Maybe they will even think about what their customers might want (bigger screens for example, so old people can read them!)

I will wait patiently, like I wait for the next train - in 7 hours and 26 minutes.

Does Process Automation = Process Optimisation?

There is often the misguided thinking that by simply automating a process we are optimising that process. After all if we remove the human element we often reduce time and cost, right? And this improves the process, right?

Wrong. The problem with simply automating the work fixes the effect and not the cause of work. Whilst the process may have disappeared into system-land, it's not the fact that manual work has been reduced, it is the effect on the customer experience that needs to be considered.

Take a recent example: Cityrail, the NSW Australian train provider recently automated their ticketing to provide customers with the ability to purchase tickets from their website. Previously to buy a long term rail pass greater than 180 days you had to line up at a counter, collect a form, fill the form in then return the form and pay for your ticket. With cityrail's new automated system you could now buy your ticket online. Well, you could buy a ticket online: either monthly, quarterly or yearly. So, if, like me you wanted to buy a ticket for 5.5

months you'd have to buy a quarterly ticket, a monthly ticket (twice) then a fortnightly ticket.

So even though Cityrail automated a manual process to reduce queues at stations and make it easier for customers, they have increased the moments of truth by 4 times! The customer experience has deteriorated for many customers as they can't buy a ticket which suits their needs - so what do they do - go back and join the queue at the station!

So when thinking about automating processes, think about the number of moments of truth that are occurring in the process, and look to eliminate or improve them. Process is not just about time and cost; it is fundamentally about the customer experience.

Manual Versus Automated Processes - Finding The Magic

A comment by Nimbus CEO Ian Gotts on my last blog "A Coffee Procedure" struck a chord with me:

"Great looking coffee. So you have described a process. One you want repeated accurately, one that would benefit from certain steps have photos or videos, but one you cannot automate.

That is why Nimbus Control exists. 80% of corporate processes are like this.

So to those who say BPM=automation, now I'd say its time to wake and smell the coffee"

In our rush to automate business process its sometimes easy to forget that work revolves around those funny things called "people". There seems to be a tendency to make the assumption that almost anything can be automated - but it can't. If we look at the complexity of everyday work and the decision making involved (never minding the social interaction glue that makes the business world revolve), automation is just a small part of making process work.

I believe that good process automates where possible as long as there is no negative impact to the customer experience. To me, process is the mechanism that links tasks together - it then guides the worker to complete the tasks in the best manner possible.

Process isn't all about software, it's about putting practices in place that enable the outcomes we want for our customers. Think about the millions of small businesses that do not have the luxury of software tools - they can still benefit from robust processes and procedures (I know because my cafe did!)

So when you become consumed by your quest to automate every process and every task you see, stop for a moment and consider:

• Do I need to automate the task, or the links between the tasks? • Will automation negatively impact the customer outcome? • Should I be telling or guiding the user?

There is a happy medium between manual and automated tasks in every business, and if you get that balance right that's when the magic starts to happen.

Self Service Portals - How to Get it Right or How to Get it Wrong

Maybe I'm just weird, or maybe it's my age, or maybe it's because I'm a man, but if there is the option of avoiding human interaction with a customer service person I will take that option every time.

It's more than likely due to my lack of patience with badly design IVR systems that send me around in loops then put me through to a queue which keeps me on hold for 20 minutes or my lack of faith in company contact forms and email addresses which disappear into black holes. But give me a self service customer portal and I'll be as happy as Larry - if it's done right.

Self service is all the rage - who would have thought 30 years ago we'd be checking into airlines ourselves? 50 years ago no-one thought we'd be pumping our own petrol! But today we are "outsourcing to the customer" whatever we can - and it makes sense:

The company saves money by reducing reliance on staff

The customer feels more "in control"

The customer does not have to wait in queues

Of course the company foots the bill for the development of the customer portal, but if done right customer portals can be a huge money saver whilst simultaneously improving the customer's experience (the moment of truth). But on the flip-side, if done badly, customer portals can generate more harm than good, generating increased calls from angry customers and damaging the company's image.

Here's a couple of examples of good and bad customer portals:

The Good - Alphera

Alphera is the finance arm of BMW so you'd expect that their portal would be as good as their cars - and it is! Here's why:

Easy login with well designed screen:

From here I can press on any of the large buttons to access the information I require:

There are also helpful links which will take me to some of the most common tasks.

What sets the Alphera website above others is the ability to update information i.e. rather than being a static portal. I can update my personal details, bank details and set up payment reminders. I have access to every piece of information I require and if my details change there is no need to contact the company by any other means. I have total control.

On the contrary, let's have a look at what I call the "lipstick on the pig portal" - the kind of half-baked portal the world can do without:

The Bad - Optus

After I login I see a screen with my different services:

There is adrop-down which gives me four options:

Move house (how often does anyone do this?)

View my usage

Change service ownership

View my bills

Numbers 1&3 direct me to download a form that I need to complete and post - hardly an online portal!

Number 2 links to another screen where I have to look at services individually (not in one). I click on my broadband service and I get a blank page with an error message. Lovely.

So what can I do? I can view my bills in PDF format and I can view usage on one of my services. View being the operative word: I can't update anything, can't change or cancel my service or buy any additional services. In short I have a limited, static service - lipstick on the pig. My only option if I want to do anything requiring some form of update is to call that hideous IVR and sit in a queue for 20 minutes (because I know Optus don't respond to emails or contact forms!) And at the end of my contract...I take my business elsewhere...

With customer portals we have a huge opportunity to improve the customer experience and to save money - they can even be revenue producing if done properly. But if you don't take the time (and let's be honest, money) required to get it right you may as well not bother.

Customer

Experience

Management

Forrester - The State Of Customer Experience 2010 - "Get The Entire Company Thinking Outside-In"

Forrester's Report "The State Of Customer Experience 2010" is out, and it makes compelling reading for those of us passionate about the customer experience.

Here is a summary of the report's key findings:

"Customer experience is critical. When we asked respondents how important customer experience was to their 2010 plans, 90% told us that it was very important or critical"

"Most companies have some customer experience discipline. Nearly two-thirds of respondents say that their companies have a disciplined approach to customer experience management"

"There’s a lot of effort underway. More than six out of 10 companies have a voice of the customer program and use a single set of customer feedback scores"

"Missing strategy has replaced funding as the key problem. About half of the respondents identified three areas as key issues to their customer experience efforts: lack of a strategy, lack of processes, and lack of cooperation across the organization"

"Firms need more customer experience maturity. We asked the executives whether they agreed with 12 statements that represent key competencies for Experience-Based Differentiation (EBD). Only three items got the nod from a majority of respondents"

"Brands are getting more of the attention they deserve"

"All interactions fail to deliver, especially online. Our 2010 Customer Experience Index (CxPi) shows that customers aren’t being treated well. But how do these executives think their companies are doing? Not so well either. For five of the nine interactions that we asked them to rate, less than half of the respondents thought they satisfied customers at least 75% of the time. The online channel received the lowest marks, especially when it came to customer service".

The industry customer experience scores also make interesting reading, with retailers and hotels registering the highest customer ratings versus Health insurance and TV service providers rated the lowest.

And Forrester's recommendations for gaining the most benefit from customer experience efforts?

"GET THE ENTIRE COMPANY THINKING OUTSIDE-IN"

Furthermore, they recommend two ways of doing this:

"Map the customer journey. Left to their own devices, companies will continue to operate with an internal focus. That’s why we recommend that organizations use customer journey maps — also known as touchpoint or “moment of truth” maps — to examine interactions from their customers’ points of view."

"Build a robust voice of the customer program. There’s nothing more aligning in an organization than clear feedback from customers. But most organizations don’t provide employees with that feedback in a consistent, usable form. That’s why customer experience professionals should develop strong voice of the customer programs — distributing actionable feedback to call centers, stores, merchandisers, and category managers."

Furthermore, if anyone has doubts about the effectiveness of managing the customer experience, Forrester's research has proven to be an eye-opener:

"Forrester’s previous research has shown a high correlation between customer experience and three key elements of loyal behavior: willingness to buy more, reluctance to switch, and likelihood to recommend. But how does that affect a company’s bottom line? To answer that question, we looked at the percentage of loyal customers within the customer bases of more than 100 companies. It turns out that customer experience leaders have an advantage of more than 14% over customer experience laggards across all three areas of loyalty. The annual revenue gains from a modest difference in customer experience can total $284 million on average across industries."

Outside-in thinking delivers. Need any more proof?

CEM Method - An Introduction to Customer Centric Process Design

What is the CEM Method? The CEM (Customer Experience Management) Method is a means of improving existing business processes or designing new business processes to align with customer needs. How does it work? It works by focusing each process on a specific customer outcome to be achieved, and by designing the process from the outside of the organization to the inside of the organization, hence the term commonly used “outside-in”. By the systematic analysis of three key components inherent to every process, organizations can achieve greater customer alignment. What are the three key components? The three key components are Moments of Truth (Customer interactions), Breakpoints (hand-offs)and Business Rules (decision points). We aim to eliminate or improve these three components to bring them into alignment with the process’s successful customer outcome. What does it achieve? CEM Method achieves greater customer alignment - thereby focusing the organization on its reason for existing. Through greater alignment, the experience is improved for the customer and operational costs are decreased by the elimination of redundant activities. In short we reduce costs, improve revenue and enhance the service to the customer. How is it different to other process improvement methodologies such as Lean or Six Sigma? Many other process methodologies focus on process improvement, but do not focus the improvement solely on the reason why the business process exists – the customer. Rather than “doing things right” the focus of the CEM Method is on “doing the right things”. Other methodologies start with looking at the process from an internal (inside-out) perspective, thereby creating a myopic focus which fails to consider the entire customer experience. Who currently uses the CEM Method? Many of the world’s leading companies are currently using the CEM Method.

Finance industry examples include: Zurich, Lloyds, Citi, HSBC, Santander, Barclays, American Express & NAB. How can I find out more?

More information can be found at www.bpgroup.org

Outside-in Part 1 - The Process Revolution Starts Here

Six Sigma and Lean's bodies lie smoldering and decomposing in the ashes of the 20th century. A revolution is upon us. Some are wise enough to have seen it coming, some have only recently found it and the others, well, they'll soon adapt or die.

What I am talking about is an approach that is so radically different from the ways that we have traditionally approached process improvement that it forces you to totally alter your current mindset. It is an approach that is the secret weapon of some of the world's greatest companies such as Google, Apple and Virgin.

It's called Outside-in.

On paper outside-in sounds like a "no brainer" - it's about looking at process from the customer's experience. I'm sure you think you already do that, but if you aren't using outside-in already I can categorically tell you that you aren't. Outside-in uses a method to systematically look at the customer's experience from end to end, rather than looking at improving the customer's experience by altering internal processes - this is inside-out thinking. Whereas inside-out thinking puts a bandage on the effect, it doesn't eliminate the cause - the wound still bleeds.

As organisations we have become crippled by our internal processes. We've become so entwined in what we do day to day we've forgotten why we exist - to serve our customer - to give them what they need, to give them what they want and sometimes to give them what they don't know they need yet! The customer is our reason for being, without them we cease to exist, yet through our bureaucracy and our bulk we become a bloated beast of burden - unable to move rapidly to meet the needs of the lightning fast pace of life around us. In the end, we sink and die whilst the nimble climb higher and higher.

When we use Outside-in to optimise process we achieve three things simultaneously - We reduce costs, improve the customer experience and as a result improve revenue. This we call "the triple crown".

Sounds to good to be true? Well, it's not. And here's why:

• Whilst Marks and Spencer flounder in the UK, Zara are achieving world domination

• Whilst Delta and United airlines are dying in the states, Southwestern airlines is flourishing

• Whilst Best Buy expand, their major competitors have gone bust

• Whilst Nokia try to sell outdated phones Apple kill the market with the iPhone

• Tesco has surged to be the no1 supermarket in the UK, now bidding to buy the former no 1

• Ryanair become the most profitable airline in Europe whilst BA implode • Whilst british banks go bust, bank Santander is posting huge profits

What do these victors have in common? They all use Outside-in to achieve the "triple crown".

Welcome to the revolution.

Outside-in Part 2: Successful Customer Outcomes

So we've talked about what Outside-in has done and is currently doing for some of the best organisations in the world. But how does it actually work?

Outside in, fundamentally, is about aligning the way business is done with successful customer outcomes. That may sound like a no-brainer but careful thought is required to specify what the real customer outcome is. Outside-in takes an approach that focuses on the customer experience. The part that most organisations get wrong is that their definition of the customer experience is blinkered - the way that they have run their business and approached what they think their customers want has become immobile and inflexible.

Take two contrasting examples. British Airways struggles ahead selling seats on planes. Their approach to making money is just that - bums on seats. They are stuck in the mentality that the process is simply from check-in to baggage collection. It's thinking from decades ago. They are going slowly bust because they are a dinosaur unable to be flexible enough to adapt, to learn and to align with what today's airline passengers actually want. They can cost cut 'till the cows come home - it won't save them.

Meanwhile Ryanair are steaming ahead. They've looked at the customer experience and removed the blinkers. They've used outside-in to think outside the box - to give customers what they need - to fulfill the successful customer outcomes. They don't see the process as simply check-in to baggage collection - they have seen the opportunities: e.g. online gambling, e-cigarettes and their latest innovation - removing check-in desks altogether.

So whilst traditional companies try to solve their problems by looking at their internal processes and improving them (with the misguided aim of improving their service to the customer) outside-in starts with the customer experience and builds the internal business processes to support the customer alignment.

But how do we do this I hear you scream?

Outside-in Part 3 - The Method

So I've talked about what outside-in has achieved and about successful customer outcomes - by how do we practically implement outside-in?

Outside-in is fundamentally about aligning processes with successful customer outcomes. Through workshops with little more than than sticky-notes, brown paper and the front line staff in the room we can start to radically change our thinking of organisational processes.

When we look at the customer experience we are looking for three key items within the process:

Moments of Truth – any interaction with the customer – this could be a customer to person interaction, for example or a customer to system interaction. These moments represent an opportunity in time to delight the customer or to fail!

Break points – any hand-off in the process – these represent potential points where the process can break down.

Business Rules – any decision point in the process. These can add complexity, increase effort and be a potential failure point.

When we map out the process we start to identify where these three factors occur for each step in the process. We then use these to calculate the point of failure factor for our process. This point of failure factor gives us an idea of how optimised (or non-optimised!) our processes are from a customer point of view. The point of failure factor has been proven to directly correlate to customer satisfaction – so a high level of potential failure will equal a propensity for customers to be dissatisfied (I wonder why?!)

Thinking about our process with all its moments of truth, break points and business rules for a moment it is easy to see how customer dissatisfaction can occur. You may think that having lots of moments of truth (i.e customer interaction) might be a good thing, but think of it this way: if you had to call up a company to get some information but each time you received the information it was inaccurate and had to call again, how long would it take to irk your dissatisfaction? And what if instead the company had not only given you the information, but had given you extra information that had helped you further?

So once the point of failure factor has been identified we seek to improve our processes. But how to we do this? We need to:

1. Eliminate 2. Improve

Each moment of truth, break point or business rule represents an opportunity, but the more of them we have the greater our chance of failure occurring. So to reduce our point of failure factor we seek to eliminate as many as we can. Obviously we can’t practically get rid of all of them, but we need to ensure that the ones that we leave in place are improved as much as possible and that they are aligned to successful customer outcomes.

This is a very high level overview of how outside-in works. If you’d like to find out more or to become trained in the technique I’d recommend you visit the following links:

BP Group - http://www.bpgroup.org/

BP Group on Linkedin - http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1062077&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr

Steve Tower's Blog (World Outside-in Guru) - http://successfuloutcomes.blogspot.com/

Remember, The Process Revolution Starts Here...

Outside-in Myths Debunked

Fellow BPM blogger Adam Deane has just posted two articles on his blog discussing outside-in. Whilst I appreciate Adam's attempts to share new knowledge and keep an open mind to new ideas (something that the BP Trends process academic brigade could learn from him) there are some fallacies in his post that need some serious debunking.

Whilst I agree that outside-in is a philosophy, it is more than that and I understand Adam's frustration in not being able to get a hold of "a methodology". The simple fact of the matter is that there are methodologies to outside-in approaches. Most notably the CEM Method. However the CEM method is not entirely open - you have to attend a course to learn it rather than pick up a book and teach yourself - however I believe that this will change over time.

The other myth that needs to be debunked is that outside-in is about improving customer service. Whilst I'm not saying that in certain situations it can't improve customer service, the focus is on successful customer outcomes - delivering what customers really need.

The example that keeps being discussed is that of outside-in organisation Ryanair. Ryanair are regularly pounded in the UK media for their approach to customer service e.g. For recently attempting to charge customers to use toilets. Saying that, Ryanair remain remarkably successful - why is that? Ryanair look at the customer experience and they understand what their customer really needs - and very importantly, what type of customer they actually want flying in their planes - working class man with two kids who likes to drink and gamble. As such Ryanair makes a substantial amount of their revenue by selling booze and by supplying gambling facilities on planes. These revenue streams offset the price of airfares to give others a cheap means of flying. Did you ever imagine that you would receive a flight for free? Well that may happen if airlines such as Ryanair can make enough revenue from other parts of the customer experience.

Adam goes on to say:

"Not all of the organisation’s business processes are customer related. Some are internal processes, some are required by law, and some are interactions with internal systems".

I found this statement to be astonishing. So if an organisation lost all it's customers would those purely internal or "system" processes continue to function? - of course not! A classic example is the employee payroll process.

Does it touch the customer? If you think inside-out you'd say no. But the fact of the matter is that the reason that the payroll process is in place is so employees get paid - if they don't get paid they won't work as they'll leave to go elsewhere, and without employees their roles can't be performed and the company cannot function, and if the company cannot function, it cannot serve it's customers with products or services.

If you want to destroy any credibility that you have as a process professional, just keep saying that there are processes that exist in organisations that are not customer related - because it's complete and utter nonsense. I do have to agree, though with Adam's comment regarding regulatory processes - to an extent. Sometimes organizations have to meet regulatory requirements, but I'd also add that these regulatory requirements are often in place to protect customers. With greater customer centricity organizations would be better placed to "do the right thing" and avoid the regulatory overlords - but I do admit that it is something where outside-in is somewhat restricted.

If you are ever in doubt as to why a particular process exists in your organization I'd recommend that you listen to the wise words of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi who once said:

"A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so."

I rest my case.

What Can a Tomato Teach us About Process?

A tomato is a tomato, right? They are predominantly red, round and some are tastier than others. If we take a traditional process approach to growing tomatoes we aim for a tasty tomato that looks good and which we can grow in large quantities to sell to our retailers.

Yes, that's true, if you think inside-out. But what if you think outside-in, from a customer experience point of view?

Tomato manufacturers started to do this many years ago and finally they have now developed a "non-leaking tomato" ideal for preventing soggy sandwiches (see photo of my tomato!)

If we had taken a traditional approach we'd simply have more of the same, but by looking at the customer experience and the way tomatoes are used leads to a new innovation and a competitive advantage! Will it change our lives significantly? Probably not. But one thing's for sure, my sandwich won't be soggy today and I won't have blobs of runny tomato on my shirt...that is certainly good for my customer experience.

Process

Thoughts

EVERYTHING is Process

My favourite band of all time, Oasis once sang "You're all part of the Masterplan..." and that's how I think about process.

What a lot of people seem to forget is that everything we do is a process. When you get up in the morning you follow a process, when you brush your teeth you follow a process. A lot of what we do has become routine and habit, but once upon a time they were new to you - you probably just don't remember when the switch from being a new process to being "just something you do" occurred.

How is this relevant? – well, we have to stop thinking of process as being a thing that we fix or we tweak or we control. It is all of those things, but it is so much more - process IS everything that we do, and the sooner we can make decision makers understand this way of thinking, the sooner we'll change the world.

Process is rock n' roll. They just don't know it yet.

Do Your Processes Wear Brown Cardigans?

I live my life in a constant state of battle. It's a battle against blandness, it's a battle against the kind of people who Billy Connolly would describe as "the beigeists" - the brown cardigan brigade. When it comes to process we often battle against "the beigeists" who are scared of change, who say "that's the way we do it around here", who say "no, it can't be done".

It can be a tiring battle, but it's a battle, which, as process people we need to fight - it's our job. It's our job to challenge when no-one else dares. It's our job to push change when everyone else is scared. It's our job to innovate where others prefer the status quo. It's our job to take risks when others are afraid to fail.

If we choose not to do these things, we end up creating processes in brown cardigans - bland, boring, stagnant, ineffective.

I'll end this post with a comment from Theodore Roosevelt, who put it much better than I will ever be able to:

“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checked by failure...than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”

'Till next time, keep daring to do mighty things...

Of Garbage Trucks and Process Bubbles

This morning, as I drove into the street where I park my car, I was faced with a large garbage truck blocking the street (and of course, as bin trucks are magically immune to the rules of the road, he was driving the wrong way down a one-way street). Therefore I was forced to sit stationary with my indicator on in a very busy Sydney CBD street.

Behind me, cars slowly started to back up with their indicators on. Then cars coming round the corner who wanted to go straight on got stuck in the queue. The first car behind me could see the garbage truck blocking the street, but the other cars behind me could not. It was only a matter of time before the horns started honking (about 30 seconds to be precise since Sydney drivers are not known for their patience). Who was this idiot sitting in a busy street with his indicator on for no reason? Why was he blocking the road!!!?

Thankfully, across the road from me, a van full of electricians were watching from a distance - they could see the whole line of cars and the garbage truck blocking the road. So when the cars further down the line started honking their horns they started to shout and gesticulate towards the cars indicating that there was a blockage in the street. The horns stopped honking, the bin truck eventually emerged and everyone was happy again.

The same thing happens with process - often those performing the work are living in process bubbles - they see immediately what is in front of them, but they don't see what is happening before or after them in the process. So if something goes wrong they don't have the visibility of what has gone wrong and they have no idea how to fix it. But, like our friend the electrician who can see the whole process unfolding, if we take a holistic view of the process we can not only see where the pain points are occurring, but we can communicate our message across all workers in the process.

Standing back and looking at process in its entirety is not some self-indulgent, navel gazing exercise. By the nature of functional work, workers are primarily interested in getting their piece of work done (that's why they studied so hard at the university of blah de blah - so they could sit and do that particular work for the next 45 years!) But doing work and doing it well doesn't necessarily equate to good process - it's not about doing things right, it's about doing the right things.

This is why looking at the process in its entirety (the customer experience) is so essential and why it needs to be the focus of the C-level. Otherwise we all end up honking our horns for no good reason at all.

Can Process Save the Planet?

I'm interested in sustainability, but I'm even more interested in the linkage between sustainability and process. I would imagine that sustainability is to most process people a matter of common sense, and what many of us have been practicing for years. It's all about production without the pain.

So here we are in the 21st Century and Mr. Gore has informed us about what we've done wrong - namely belching too much carbon into the atmosphere. So we need to change the process (rapidly) to stop the effects. To do this there are both short and long term improvements that can be made - let's look at those:

Short-term: Reduce the amount of power we use.

Ok, so this is a simple, quick fix, right? The less power we use, the less carbon we produce. All it relies upon is to change people's habits to reduce power consumption and wastage. For example, I should now turn off all the devices that have standby modes off at the wall socket when not in use, turn my fridge up to 4c and recycle as many products as possible.

But I'm a lazy human being. I don't really want to spend 10 minutes every day going around switching sockets on and off. I like the soft drinks in my fridge to be icy cold and I question whether my recycling has any effect if I have to rinse out all the bottles and cans with hot water (which uses power). In short, habits are hard to change and people will always gravitate to what is simplest and easiest for them. But fundamentally all of these improvements are fixing the effect, not the cause.

Long-term: Fix the cause.

If we knew that all of the power we used was clean and did not damage the planet, we wouldn't need to worry about the difficult process of changing people's behaviour - one of the hardest things to do. If we used clean sources of power such as wind and water none of this would be necessary.

The Problem

But the problem remains the upfront cost of building wind and water turbines, of giant fields of solar panels and the like. Much like bringing BPM into an organisation, we know it's the right thing to do, but when it comes to signing the cheque the powers that be stick their heads in the sand and pretend that everything is all right. Instead they invest in piecemeal solutions that continue to provide some benefit, but which fall well short of the true gains that could be made by fixing the cause and not the effect.

Let's hope that our politicians and corporations can make the right decisions - or the price of fixing the effect and not the cause may be our children's future.

The World's Worst Process?

I struggle to think of a worse process than the one I'm about to discuss. It's a worldwide process - active in almost every country in the world, if not all. Wars are fought over it, businesses built on it and from my point of view it's inefficient and unnecessary in this day and age. What is it? It's cash.

Yes, those little coins that swim around in your pocket and which you throw into fountains to make your wishes with - they have been with us for thousands of years and I now believe the time is right to get rid of them forever. Let's think about a world without cash - a cashless society.

• Most bank branches would cease to exist - there would be no need for over the counter transactions, no more waiting in horrible banks in horrible queues

• There would be no more ATM's - no longer would you have to trudge around looking for one to get cash

• Retailers would no longer have to go through tedious cashing up processes or have to dash out to get "change" from the bank

• Billions, if not trillions of unpaid tax would be returned to the economy as there would be no way for businesses to put cash "in their back pocket"

• Cash related crime would be almost totally eliminated - who would want to steal your wallet when you could call up and freeze your card instantly? There would be very few robberies of retailers as there would be no cash to steal!

Cash transactions represent a highly inefficient process and one which adds little value from a customer experience point of view. It's a legacy thousands of years old that has come to be accepted, but which should not be tolerated any more. It's time we eradicated its use and made our lives simpler. And as for the fountains, well, they'll find something else to throw in them...

Enterprise Architecture and Process - Uncommon Bedfellows?

As a process person it is not easy to think that process is not the be-all and end-all of the world. Process is where the work within organisations is performed, but we all know that work in itself can be a misnomer. Work should be about doing the right things, not just doing things right - so work in itself needs to be guided. How do we do that?

Recently I have become more involved with Enterprise Architecture and its linkages with process. I didn't understand EA at first - I thought it was the domain of technical boffins designing technical architecture - but it's not. EA is about alignment throughout the organisation, it's about delivering business benefits.

Enterprise architecture should start with the most important person of all - the customer. The business then defines their offering to customers in the form of their business strategy. The question then is how do we make that strategy a reality? By developing the concept of business services - i.e. services provided to enable the business strategy (each with it's own lifecycle). Business services are supported by our old friend business processes - where the work happens. Business processes are a combination of manual and automated processes, supported by technology in the form of information, application and technology services.

By taking an holistic approach we bring all of the elements of enterprise architecture and process into alignment with the customer, and from the customer down we deliver upon that alignment. So rather than thinking about processes in a vacuum, we must always consider the bigger picture. Customer and business focused enterprise architecture can provide a framework by which business processes can really deliver.

So whilst EA and process might have seen to be uncommon bedfellows in the past, it's time they snuggle up together and make beautiful business benefits.

Why Organisations Need Outsiders to Succeed in BPM (The Fresh Eyes Phenomenon)

Time and again I see blindness and myopia in organisations. Time and again I see people who have closed doors, shut themselves off to opportunities and built walls around themselves. It takes courage and a willingness to change to challenge this state, so I admire those who say "can we do things another way” and take the leap of faith required to bring someone in to provide a new perspective.

Often consultants and process analysts are viewed as highly paid pains in the posterior - and sometimes we are, for we bring insight and an ethos that change is a good thing. Organisations and human beings are highly change resistant by nature. Like our favourite seat on the bus or train or that old pair of slippers we so love to wear it is more comfortable to stay with what we know and love than to look for something new. But out there in the world of so many opportunities there is always something better, always something new - you just have to open your eyes and look.

But the problem is, organisations either don't want to look or are afraid to look - and this has long-term effects on both their culture and their ability to succeed. Companies that are winning the battles against their competitors aren't afraid to look into the darkness to find the light.

So when you find yourself in a new organisation, don't be discouraged by the change fearsome non-believers - remember that "In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king".

Are Your Processes Too Predictable?

On my way to work in the morning I pass by a big issue seller. One morning he shouted at me "like the shirt mate!!". As a basic human being open to flattery I was pleased by the fact that he liked my shirt, even though being a homeless person he was probably not up with the latest industry trends. A couple of days later I actually bought a big issue from him.

A couple of days later I walked past him: "Nice shirt mate!" he said, then in quick fire succession shouted "Like the scarf love!", "Like the jeans mate!", "like the umbrella love!" to a series of people walking by. I had been manipulated! Cheated!

This is a simple example, but the same lessons apply in real life. How many times have you walked into a store and been provided with a robotic response? How many times have you called up a company to get a lifeless voice saying "your call is important to us"? The standardisation of processes has created a stagnant customer experience that only benefits the sterile, internally focused organisation.

Whilst the standardisation of process is important, making processes too rigid impacts negatively upon the customer experience...and we are forced to deal with robots. The way to improve upon this is to embrace "freedom within boundaries" and to create processes that cultivate empowerment. So next time you are writing those call centre scripts, or find yourself down in the depths of murky detail, put yourself in the shoes of the customer and imagine how you would like to be treated.

It's simple and effective.

Process Amnesia or (That's the way we do It because that's the way we do it)

"Sorry Sir, that's our process". How many times have you heard this said? And how many times have you thought, "Well, your process is DUMB!" And how many times would you be right about that? A lot.

What I call process amnesia is when an organisation puts a process in place which over time becomes "the norm" or "just the way we do things". The danger in this is that over time organisations forget why they put the process in place in the first place and just blindly follow it. It remains unchallenged and starts to cripple the organisation. It's like having termites eat the wood that holds up your house.

I experienced an organisation's process amnesia only yesterday. Having realised that my train ticket was faulty I went to the counter at the train station to have it checked. Yes it was faulty they said. Could I have it replaced then, said I. No said they, but if I could bring my receipt in they would replace it. In the meantime they suggested I write a number 19 in a circle on the back of the ticket as this was apparently the secret code which would allow me to bypass the station guards never mind the fact that legally it was a receipt for taxation purposes. Luckily I did have my receipt so I brought the ticket back the next day. I took my receipt and ticket to the counter and was passed an A4 sized form (double sided no less) to which I had to complete and give back to them. So I filled in the form and handed back all the details. At the end of much filling in of forms, stapling and abstract fussing around I was handed a "General Purpose Ticket" - a piece of paper. "What's this for?" I said. "Oh you have to keep that until your new ticket arrives" she explained. "Can't I just have a new ticket now?" I asked. "Oh no" she said, "We have to send all this paperwork off to the audit department in the city who will check the ticket, process the form and send the new ticket back to us within 14 days. If you don't want to do that you can keep your faulty ticket and if you write a number 19 on the back..."

So now I have a piece of paper and a wait of up to 14 days to receive a new ticket. Somewhere back in the deep, dark mists of time there was a reason for this process, but it has been unchallenged for so long it costs cityrail, time and money and endless customer frustration. In any other retail business in the land you'd take your product back with your receipt and get a replacement. Not here.

Cityrail has forgotten why this process exists and until they overcome their process amnesia the customer and the organisation will continue to suffer.

UML Must Die

One of the few things in this world that causes me to break into a cold sweat is UML.

UML stands for "Unified Modelling Language" and by the mere fact that it mentions the word "language" you can understand that is a tool deeply loved by those up to their armpits in RAM, ROM and other technical pleasures. Like most things evil in the world of process it crawled out of an engineering environment - this time a software one.

Quite simply UML needs to crawl back up the cavity it came from. I'm sure there are software engineers out there that worship it, but when it comes to process it needs to die a quick death. The reason for this is quite simple - no-one understands it. No, not me, not the enterprise architects, not the BA's and above all else the business certainly do not understand it. And if we fail with the business's understanding of THEIR OWN PROCESS, we simply fail altogether.

If you want to create cohesive, understandable processes that will give the business confidence in your ability; keep it simple, keep it clear, keep it concise and keep well clear of UML.

Why Speed and Flexibility Will Be The New Process Essentials

We are in the midst of a process revolution. At no time in our history have businesses been so prone to the speed of change. Technology today has changed the game plan and the field is becoming more level. Big businesses no longer have the advantage they previously had. New media has turned things on its head.

But it’s also a consumer revolution – never have we had the ability to express ourselves so rapidly or as effectively as consumers. What does this mean for organisations? It’s a case of adapt or die. Social media tools such as Twitter are meaning that customers are venting like never before (both good and bad), but mostly bad. They are now able to be heard by the world – and heard instantly.

Those blundering corporations that don’t return calls, don’t respond to e-mails and don’t give the service that they spend so much money advertising are going to have a wake-up call. They have never been at risk of such consumer erosion in their history. They are at risk from upstarts, from small business, from competitors who “get it”.

In the last 30 years or so we’ve become accustomed as customers to being disappointed. We’ve gotten used to “press 1 for blah, press 2 for blah…” and being shunted around in circles, our problems being passed around like hot potatoes until we give up. Not any more. Consumers now have the power and they’re using it. We are entering an age where they will expect a higher standard of service than ever before (and so they should). Remember “good old fashioned service”, well it isn’t old fashioned anymore.

As a result Business processes now need to be flexible enough to change to rapidly respond to customers’ needs and wants.

If ever there was a time for BPM to prove its worth, that time is now.

Is BPM A Dirty Word?

It has become increasingly popular these days to bash BPM and, in particular, to propose that BPM is dead. Whilst not wishing to sit in my glass house and throw stones after my Lean Six Sigma obituary post I don't think that BPM is dead. It does, however have a major image problem.

Part of the problem is that for want of a better reason we've given it a name - BPM. What do you mean? I hear you cry...well BPM isn't really about BPM is it? It's about what BPM achieves that is the important thing. Managing processes for the sake of managing processes isn't what it's about - it's all about making businesses make more money at the end of the day (unless you are public sector or charity of course). But making money requires looking after customers and looking after costs which is where our old friend BPM comes in.

The problem with a three-letter acronym comes with the association that every three-letter acronym requires an IT solution and a six-figure software package. BPM or whatever we decide to call it next doesn't have to be so complicated that we have to spend millions on software solutions. Don't get me wrong I am not knocking IT completely, just saying that there are simpler and more flexible ways to get started without shelling out your hard-earned company dollars. Start simple, prove the concepts, get some quick wins on the table THEN sell the six-figure software solution to your company!

So whilst BPM may be starting to become a dirty word to some, it's really an irrelevant discussion as BPM to all extents and purposes is just about doing business and doing it well. The names will change but essentially the overall concepts will remain the same.

So what I'd like to suggest is that while the process academics waste their time arguing over what to call BPM next you should be quietly getting those post-it notes, brown paper and highlighters out. It's time to get back to basics and prove what we're doing can be both simple and effective.

Eat Your Own Dog Food

I worked for an IT Company that had an IT helpdesk that was beyond helpless. I worked for a Telecommunications company where the boss created an atmosphere of fear and hatred. I worked for an insurance company where the staff would burst into tears. I worked for a bank with a stationery cupboard with no stationery in it.

If this is the way we treat our employees, how do you think our customers will feel? But no, we treat our customers like kings, right? But if we look upon our employees, no matter where they sit in an organisation, they all have (or must have) an end impact on the customer experience – we are all part of the chain that leads to the customer. Break that chain or pass the wrong message down the line and we do damage.

So when you come to work for a company that earns billions of dollars profit a year and you don’t have paper to write on, don’t have a cup to drink out of and the printer has been broken for a week, what is the impact? Do you turn up at work full of the joys of spring? Or do you brood and fester your discontent until it spreads like a slow poison?

For too long now businesses have been treating their staff like disposable assets, and in the last year or so [2009] employees have been taken advantage of more and more. Whilst many organisations have suffered, many still continue to reap huge harvests – but that doesn’t stop them from cancelling xmas parties and forcing “imposed leave”. So when you talk in fuzzy Marketing speak about how you are going to look after your customers, remember that it all starts within your gilded doors. If you can’t eat your own dog food then how do you expect anyone else to?

The tide is turning, the boats are waiting on the shore.

Are you going to be one of “them” or one of us…?

The Church Of BPM

I see a lot of "Process Evangelists" out there on LinkedIn. Some of these guys seem to have almost cult-like following. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that's a bad thing at all - in fact it gave me an idea.

A few weeks ago I had a coffee with a fellow BPM enthusiast - a recent convert to the process way of thinking. After he was finished with his enthusiastic speech I said to him "Finding Process must be a bit like finding God..." - he agreed. We'd both had that lightning bolt moment when suddenly the way that we saw business had changed forever - and it was a powerful moment.

So maybe what we need to do is not to educate the world in BPM, not to send out white papers, not to hold conferences - maybe what we need is to be fundamentalists, preachers and pilgrims. Maybe we need to start shouting, singing and clapping our hands and saying "praise be" to the church of BPM. So what I say to all of you out there that feel the need to spread the word - let's stop being timid and let's start making some noise.

If the brothers out there aren't a listenin' yet, then they'll be a hearin' the callin' a real soon...

Process For Small Business - The Undiscovered Country?

One of the biggest issues I have with BPM is it's focus on big business. We all sit in our shiny office blocks buying our big, expensive BPM tools and talking about governance, etc. But outside our freshly cleaned windows is a little world filled with shop and cafes, butchers and bakers - small businesses "the lifeblood of the economy".

What use is ARIS or BPMN to them? How can they implement SOA? They can't - it's totally unfeasible - but does that mean that we should designate small businesses as process free zones? Of course not! There are still practical process solutions to help small businesses.

I once owned a cafe - when I bought it all the knowledge was in the previous owner's head - I sucked all this information out and documented the entire business - I made the knowledge transferrable. I turned the little cafe into a totally process centric business (and it worked!) Let's not forget how McDonalds started - once it was just one restaurant until they developed it into a process centric business (a franchise!)

But this isn't to say that every small business should aim to be a global giant - process can help small business owners to build better businesses. It can help them become more efficient, save money, improve customer service, improve standards - all the things we want for big business.

So the next time you think about BPM, spare a thought for the little guys - they need our help too.

Stop Making BPM More Complicated than it actually is

There was a recent discussion on "What do you think business process management is?" on the BP Group linkedin discussion board.

Firstly, do we actually care about the semantics of what it actually is? Why do we always need to come to some sort of consensus on what BPM is? Is it really that complicated?

I'm concerned by the number of process professionals trying to turn BPM into some sort of pseudo science. I'm concerned by BPM textbooks, I'm concerned with academic studies with ludicrously long names and diagrams the size of an office block - but most of all I'm continually concerned that we are making our own lives as process people more complex than they need to be.

In my eyes, process is the purest, simplest component of human behaviour. Process in an organisation can become complex but it can always be stripped back to a few simple things:

• Meeting a need effectively • keeping the customer happy (relationship) • Doing things efficiently and productively (costs)

Doing the simple things right is the cornerstone of BPM and is the cornerstone of business.

To me, BPM is the active management and continual enhancement of all processes within an organisation.

Does it really need to be any more complicated than that?

The Concept of "Dead Time" in Processes

When I was at University I studied the classic Human Resources stuff - Maslow's hierarchy of needs, etc. One of the classic studies always sticks in my mind.

The experiment measured how workers in a factory worked most productively. It essentially discovered that those who worked rapidly could only keep up the rapid work for a certain amount of time before they "burned out" whilst those that were most productive worked at a steady pace throughout.

What this shows is that the "fast" workers were probably operating near to 100% productivity, while the others were operating at, say 70%. When the fast workers burnt out they (for example) dropped to 30% productivity - so overall their productivity was less over the piece.

Where I am going with this is what I call the concept of "dead time". In any process where human beings are involved you will rarely or never have 100% productivity - it's just not our nature. "Dead time" is the gap between 100% productivity and actual productivity.

So why is this important? Well it needs to be considered when looking at processes. This is because it is a waste of effort, time, money, etc. to improve process steps that fall into "dead time". For example is it worth installing new lifts in a building that are super fast to enable employees to get to their desks quicker? I'd say probably not as this period of time may fall into "dead time". Is it worth spending money on a super fast coffee machine in the kitchen? Probably not because people will still stand around and talk to whoever is in the kitchen at the time.

These are simplistic examples, but it is always important to realise that there will always be percentage of "dead time" in every process - it isn't always worth optimising every stage of the process - making the judgment call of what fits into "dead time" is the tricky part.

10 Things I Hate About BPM

I bet you never thought you'd hear me say it, but here we go. I hate:

• The fact that it's reduced to yet another boring acronym - it's so much more interesting than that

• The fact that people are still arguing about what BPM / Process improvement and all the other phrases including process actually mean (it doesn't matter!!!)

• Boring, elongated articles on process that try to turn it into a science - please people, go back to university and leave us alone!

• People arguing over their tools "my tool is better than your tool!" - stop it - you're all tools!

• People jumping on and off process methodology bandwagons "Ooooh Six Sigma was so 2007" - it's not fashion, so get over it

• Lumbering software giants that charge a squillion dollars for poor installations that give process a bad name

• People that write process blogs, but who can't write • Senior Managers who can't see the value of process (go die you

dinosaurs!) • People who think because you've drawn a process map you've solved

world peace • Those who cannot see "THE GOAL"

How to Spot a Process Dinosaur

In the world of process, you have to watch out for the dinosaurs. There are many of them around. They may try to eat you up but typically they are old, slow moving and toothless. Here's how to spot them (and avoid them!)

Characteristics of the Processicus Ancestricus Dinosauricus:

• Says loudly "I'm a black belt" • Talks about "re-engineering" • Thinks that "Social BPM" involves having a drink at the pub • Owns a book about the Toyota Production System • Never uses the word "customer" • Sticks rigidly to "their methods" • Likes "Waterfall" • Loves use cases • Thinks BPM is technology • Draws processes in PowerPoint • Views processes in isolation • Continually says "I'm still documenting the as-is" • Creates phone book sized documents • Talks about "actors"

and their most obvious characteristic…

Delivers nothing of value to the business or the customer

Building Sandcastles: Why The World Needs Process Analysts, Not Business Analysts

I'm not a BA and I'm glad I'm not. But why do agencies still call me about every BA job under the sun?

If you are not aware there is a huge difference between a BA and a Process Analyst:

BA: Scoping, requirements gathering & documenting, testing, training, etc

Process Analyst: As-is and to-be analysis, mapping of process, gap analysis, recommendations, change management, communication.

To me, the roles are chalk and cheese. A BA is down and dirty with all the intricate details. A BA is a car mechanic tinkering with nuts and bolts. The Process Analyst looks at the car and identifies its flaws or they design the car.

So why are there so many BA's and so few Process Analyst roles? To me it's basic ignorance. Most companies think a BA can do the job of a process analyst as well as the job of a BA. Judging by a lot of the process maps I've seen, that's not the case. Process is a speciality, a skill, a mindset. You wouldn't get a handyman to build you a house, you'd get a builder.

The good process people I've seen aren't focused on the nuts and bolts - they see the big picture. For me, the ideal combination is a BA and a process analyst working in unison. The Process Analyst painting the picture of the landscape and the BA focusing on the process analyst's recommendations.

But time and again I see projects filled with BA's, and time and again I see projects doomed to fail. BA's fill a very important role, but without a process perspective those projects are merely building castles of sand.

Business Process Improvement and Business Process Management Explained (by Jamie Oliver)

Imagine you are sitting down watching an episode of Jamie at Home with my favourite TV chef, Jamie Oliver. "Cor Blimey Gov" says Jamie, "I've got a problem...me missus has just popped out another little 'un and I don't have enough food in the garden to feed all these little stavin' urchins". Jamie has a problem that needs to be solved.

Thankfully Jamie has already established his garden. He has put up fences to keep rabbits out, he has cultivated the soil, hoed it and everything is ready. He has even communicated to his gardener the rules about how the garden is to be kept. This is Jamie’s Business Process Management Governance. He has set up the framework and rules to monitor the garden on an ongoing basis.

However, Jamie still has a problem - not enough food. Jamie needs to make some process improvements to the garden. So he identifies that he needs to plants some carrots and some potatoes to feed the little nippers as well as some new fertiliser to get everything going. So he sets up a new little project to plant what he needs, engages with the gardener to get things going and they proceed along their garden process improvement project. Lovely jubbly.

In saying that Jamie still keeps his BPM Governance going - he maintains his fences, tills the soil and monitors the garden for any other problems or issues where process improvement initiatives might need to be kicked off to keep things operating in tip top condition.

In essence Jamie's governance structure sets the rules for his BPM initiatives on an ongoing, proactive basis. It picks up any issues and addresses these through ongoing management. Process improvement initiatives form a sub-set of the ongoing BPM activity.

So in the end as long as Jamie keeps looking after his garden (BPM), he will continually identify improvements to be made which will result in less re-active, knee jerk improvement initiatives. All his little mouths will continue to be fed and he will sit back with a nice, icy cold beer and a steak and admire his little centre of excellence. Pukka.

Mr. Potato Head Explains SOA & BPM

Having had no previous knowledge or involvement with SOA I was pretty keen to understand it. Not being a textbook kind of guy I am always looking for a metaphor, analogy or image to help myself to understand things and bizarrely enough when I learned about SOA and BPM my analogy was clear:

Mr Potato Head.

Why? Well SOA is all about providing flexibility. It’s all about having a modular structure of architecture that is “as flexible as the business needs it to be”. It is in contrast to the “old” IT ways of building rigid systems that are slow and costly to change. If we think about Mr. Potato head as our offering to the customer, the business decides what Mr. Potato head looks like (services). Now imagine that each one of Mr. Potato head’s bits (ears, eyes, hats, etc.) is a business process. These processes make up the offering or service to the customer. So the business decides what he looks like and IT plug together his individual processes out of their big box of ears, eyes, mouths, etc.

If the business decide that the want to change their offering to the customer and hence the processes involved they simply tell IT what they want and IT go back to their big box of Mr Potato head parts and pick out a new process (ear, eye, etc!). Mr potato head now looks different as they have changed the process and the customer receives a new service or offering from the company.

If we look at how this would have worked in the old days the business would have come to IT with their request and IT would have told them that all Mr. Potato head’s parts were glued together and that to change their processes they’d have to e.g. cut off an arm, build a new one and glue it on. This would take time, money and a lot of effort.

But with our new SOA oriented business Mr. Potato head can take on the world! We simply plug in our new processes to provide the business with what they need. Thus the business can respond rapidly. The Business and IT are in complete alignment.

Has The Time Come To Fix Your Band-Aid Processes?

We have one of those hot water taps at work where you press the button and you get instant hot water.

Well this week it broke and after 3 days no-one seems to be able to fix it. In the meantime half of the floor have to trudge to the kitchen on the other side of the floor every time they want a cup of tea or lunch, etc. I set about calculating the productivity cost of this and it goes like this:

• 50 Staff • 3 visits to the kitchen per day on average • $50 per hour average staff cost • 3 days of no tap • 15 seconds extra time (each way) or half a minute.

Total cost = $189 over 3 days. Now this isn't a lot of money, but it shows how a simple break in normal process can add extra cost. Over time we often find breaks in process that are patched up. These "workarounds" or "Band-Aid" solutions often are simply adopted as long-term solutions. What if we never fixed the hot water tap? What would it cost per year? $15,750. Now just think about all those Band-Aid solutions that your company might have put in place over the years that have remained - and think about the true cost to your organisation. Is it time to peel back those temporary fixes and fix the processes for good?

Investing in Process

It's nice to see a company willing to put their money where their mouth is and splash the cash to make things better. Woolworths are doing this.

Now I'm not a huge fan of the money being wasted in their new logo and branding (but good work to whoever cashed in on that one), but I am a fan when I see improvements to stores.

As you may know I'm a bit tragic when it comes to the weekly supermarket shop. I have a supermarket template that helps me to do the shopping more efficiently. I estimate it saves me up to 50% of the time it would normally take me. So when I see process improvements happening at my local store (West Ryde) I'm a happy man. So not only have Woolies replaced floors, roofs and tiles to re-brand I was excited to see that they've given time, thought and money to how efficiently the store operates. This is what they did:

• Introduced 6 Self service checkouts • Removed unnecessary aisles • Removed an awkward section of the store and moved more checkouts

into this area • Moved the customer service & cigarettes kiosk to the centre of the

storefront

Now I'm sure all of this cost a lot of money, but let's look at what this will result in:

• Self service checkouts will reduce the need for 2-3 staff on the express checkouts and provides an additional speedy service for customers that would usually use express checkouts

• Removal of aisles has allowed better flow through of traffic and actually makes it easier to see what you're looking for - particularly at the entry point to the store.

• The customer service section is now easier to find (good for the customer) and the positioning at the centre of the entrance will lead to increased cigarette sales (good for the customer's disgusting cancer inducing habits!)

So all up Woolies have improved customer service, saved staff costs and have re-arranged the store which will result in improved sales. OK, they had to spend a bit of money to do so, but it's clear that this will be a good investment. In these times of doom and gloom it's refreshing to see a company willing to spend money to improve processes rather than the narrow-minded

short-term belt tightening we're so used to. They've made at least one process tragic customer very happy!

Are You Becoming Obsolete or Giving Your Customers What They Need?

When I was a student one of my favourite pastimes was browsing through CD shops. I would spend many a spare hour doing so. Fast forward 15 years and CD shops are now almost complete a relic of a former age. But despite the fact that they're gone I don't miss them at all.

I now buy all my music via itunes and I can sit in the comfort of my own home, browsing my ipad, listening to samples of the music then purchasing and downloading the music instantly. The outcome of the process essentially remains the same over 15 years - buy music. But the process itself has become simpler, faster and more enjoyable. Technology has acted as an enabler, but this also required some customer centric thinking to get the mix right.

Soon we'll see the demise of bookshops (iPads and kindles will take care of that), Retail & Rental DVD shops (itunes and netflix will cream that) as well as post offices (dwindling postage numbers & prepaid options will kill them). And I won't miss those either. Sure we might all end up couch potatoes that don't have any need to move, but it will also free up all that wasted time traveling to retail stores so that we can do some exercise!

So what are the lessons from a process point of view?

• Think about what the outcome is for the customer - did they want to buy a CD? No they wanted to buy music (think itunes)

• Think about how you can make their life easier - they don't need to travel to a store where there is limited stock (think amazon)

• Think about how you can make things faster - they don't need to spend time browsing a store or fumbling to pay, they want it now!

The outcome may remain the same, but if we focus on the customer experience of the process, the customer gets what they really need, not what we think they want - or as Henry Ford once put it...

"If I'd asked people what they wanted they'd have said a faster horse".

Van Halen - Making Process Improvement The New Rock n' Roll

I'm currently reading "Diamond" Dave Lee Roth's authobiography "Crazy from the Heat", and would you believe it, Van Halen have just become my new process improvement icons.

When Van Halen started out they did covers. They played at little school parties in people's back gardens. They rented a little PA system. They practiced, they got better, they played more and more. They made a little money. Now they could have spent that money on beer or whatever, but they invested it in their process - the process of creating music, of creating a show. They bought a bigger PA, they bought some fireworks - they bought LOTS of fireworks. They continually tweaked their output, continually improved their show day-by-day, week-by-week.

After some time they looked at themselves and realised that they had to take the next step up. They moved onto playing clubs, tweaked their act some more and continued their rise onward and upward. They started to play their own music - they grew, evolved, changed - but they always realised that to stop would be to stagnate - they had to keep investing in what they did to keep improving their product. The rest, as they say, is history.

So what can we learn from Van Halen?

• Invest in improvement • Invest in innovation • Make it continuous

See, I told you process was the new Rock n' Roll...

Some Process Wisdom from My Dad

My dad's a very smart guy - he's an accountant. Don't hold that against him. He's worked for a ton of top firms around the world and occasionally throws me a nugget of wisdom like he did today: "Just remembered something from the days when I managed Budget-rent-a-Car for Appleyard 35 years ago. The UK MD of Budget used to talk about the telephone being the "money machine". The call was an enquiry about the product - car rental. The call had to be handled properly and turned into a rental. There was no point in the phone ringing if some Dumbo answered it and lost the potential client. It might have been less costly for it not to ring in the first place. Today's equivalent is wider than the phone - it still includes the phone, but is much wider. Anyway the moral of the story is that enquiries have to be handled timeously and correctly to turn someone's interest into a sale". What dad is saying, essentially, is that there is no point in having a million ways that the customer can easily communicate with you if you don't get your entire sales process correct. Think about it. If you have a shop in the busiest street in the busiest town, you'll still sell nothing if your salespersons stand around chewing gum and talking. So think long and hard about communication methods in your company, but don't think that's the be-all and end-all. Making a sale is still making a sale, whether that's an automated system or someone in the flesh - there is no margin for error.

Why I hate outsourcing - The Responsibility Gap

I will admit that there is a time and a place for outsourcing, but I still hate it. Why? Because it adds an additional complexity, and I hate making things more complicated than they need to be. It typically adds extra steps to process which cause interrupted communication and loss of responsibility. It's what I call "the responsibility gap".

What this means, for example, is when you are in contact with an outsourced provider and they are dealing with you and you get the feeling that they just don't give a shit. You're an inconvenience to them. They've done the deal, signed the contract and oh god now they actually have to meet the obligations of the contract. There is a perception that you aren't their customer and that there is a safe wall of Bureaucracy between you and them that will protect them.

Outsourcing is also a cop out. I've seen plenty of companies that could do it better themselves but they are just too lazy to do it or whom are so keen on penny pinching they shaft their staff or customers with appalling outsourced providers.

I've rarely had a good experience with outsourced providers. I've rarely seen companies who use outsourcing and it works well for them. It always ends up costing more than they think and they are more often than not unhappy with the service levels.

Whatever happened to taking care of your own customers - both internal and external?

What have we become?

How To Save Money And Reduce Time Spent At The Supermarket

In the past my wife and I were terrible shoppers – we would simply amble around the supermarket throwing whatever we fancied in our trolley. We ended up spending staggering amounts on food that sat in cupboards for all eternity and fruit and veg that ended up in the bin. By following a few simple steps we have not only slashed our grocery bills, but we save time at the supermarket so we can spend it in better ways!

Planning

Every week my wife and I have a quick chat about what we'd like to eat for the week. We only plan dinners as I take my food to work (another good way to save money) and my wife usually makes something at home. As we are a busy family with 4 kids (and two cats!) we try to identify dinners that are easy to make.

Note: We have found a great book called 4 ingredients, which I highly recommend for busy people.

We plan our dinners Mon-Fri as on Sat we usually have take-away and by Sunday we find that there are usually leftovers from take-away or dinners from the last few days.

This planning helps us to focus on exactly what we need for the week. It also helps us to focus on expenditure - when you lay it all out on paper you might see that having salmon then lamb then prawns in one week might be a bit expensive, so we usually have a more expensive type of meat once a week and no more. We do love a bit of meat, but we mix it up each week (no not literally!) with fish, chicken and a vegetarian dish or two.

We check the recipes and check in the cupboards to see what ingredients we need and these ingredients are added to the shopping template...this way we only buy what we need.

The Shopping Template

I got so familiar by going to the supermarket every week that I found myself remembering visually where the items were in the store. However, when I wrote my lists I didn’t always get the order right and I found myself having to go back to other aisles to pick things up – very inefficient! However I noticed that at the end of each aisle at the supermarket there was a little index card that listed all

the aisles and their contents. When I went home I e-mailed the supermarket and asked them if it was possible to send me a copy of it. Lo and behold they sent me a copy in excel format that I was able to reformat so that I had a list of products in aisle order. I then went through this list and added all the products that we usually buy to create a list that would act as a template. So when we run out of something we really need or when we plan our menus it gets written straight onto the supermarket template – then it’s off to the shops…

At the supermarket

Now that I am armed with my completed template I simply cross off the items as I pick them up. As everything is in the correct order there is no doubling back (wasted time) to pick things up. Having a list also helps to stop impulse shopping (our rule is only to buy what’s on the list) – so this also saves money.

When I buy items I rarely stick to specific brands (except maybe for Heinz tomato ketchup!) as this allows more flexibility to pick things up on special. I usually try to scan for specials but I am always wary that even though an item is on special it may not be the cheapest option (saying that sometimes it can be a false economy to buy the cheapest). If you can – use unit based pricing to do a more accurate analysis. However I am always wary of “buy 2 for X$” offers. Remember – only buy what you need. Ask yourself – “if I buy this special offer this week will it save me from buying it next week”.

I also stack similar items in my trolley together each time. This means that similar items e.g. frozen goods stay together when they are placed onto the checkout, which means that they will be together in the same bag when I get home which makes it faster to unpack them and put them away.

Make it a habit

Try to go to the supermarket a few different times before you settle upon a regular time to go. Items usually go on special at particular times of the week. If you can identify when this happens then you can save yourself some more money (talk to the staff at the meat and bread counters – they may provide some inside knowledge!)

I go to the supermarket once a week. I choose this period because my fruit and veg will stay good for up to a week. I spend about an hour doing it which I think

is pretty good for a whole family. This process may seem a bit extreme to some people but it saves me money, time and gets me back to where I want to be – with my family.

What a chef can teach you about process and efficiency

In a previous incarnation I used to own a cafe. I never ceased to be amazed by the chefs that worked for me. Here we would be on a Saturday lunchtime, packed to the gunnels and one chef would be churning out food for all these people. So what did I learn from them?

Preparation:

From when they came in in the morning, if they weren't cooking food they were preparing the ingredients for the dishes.

Forecasting:

The chefs were always planning ahead - what will I need to order next? What is running out?

Quality:

The chefs were the first to tell me if an ingredient wasn't good enough or if a staff member wasn't pulling his / her weight.

Co-ordination:

As a chef you need to have multiple dishes ready at the same time. They did this by having all their ingredients ready and then starting the longest cooking dish first. It's like they had multiple egg timers in their heads!

Economies of scale:

By using the same ingredient across the menu in different dishes we were able to save money by ordering bigger quantities and reduce wastage by using up ingredients quicker.

Procedures:

When a new chef came on board they used our operations manual to transfer knowledge to the new chef quickly and to maintain consistency.

Discipline:

Chefs are born into hard working almost military environments where they learn to have a tough skin, take orders and do what they are told. The kind of whinging and crying that goes on in offices would not be tolerated in a kitchen. Chefs learn discipline and hard work from day 1.

Now ask yourself - how do your staff match up to these characteristics and (more importantly) if they don't match up, what are you going to do about it?

The Danger Of

"Getting Used To It"

I was installing a new tumble dryer in the laundry yesterday. After our old 3.5kg tumble dryer died we bought a new jumbo 6kg one, but not before we had to spend a week hanging out the washing.

Over time we had gotten used to using this tiny little dryer. We jam packed it full of all of the family's clothes including a million items of the kids clothes, bibs, etc. It used to take FOREVER to dry anything as we crammed it so full and we used to use it excessively as it was just easier to throw everything in the tumbler rather than to walk around the house and hang the washing on the line.

But looking at this lovely shiny new beast yesterday I realised that we had been forced into a change that would improve our lives and change our habits. We had gotten used to using the machine even though it was too small. We had also gotten used to being lazy and not hanging out the washing. When we were forced to hang out the washing we realised it wasn't so bad - it dried quickly, saved us money and saved the environment to boot.

We also realised that rather than running our current 1 star machine for two hours we could probably run the new 2 star machine for 1 hour - saving more money and more of the planet. Also, with the machine being bigger we could run two loads at once without cramming it all in. That way it is more efficient and also the clothes come out less crumpled, which means less ironing (and again less energy usage). We also decided that we will continue to hang out the clothes when we can in order to save money.

OK, so here's the process moral of the story. It's easy getting used to something not being quite right, but we have to continually challenge and question the way things are done. Continuous improvement is all about setting up regular reviews where we need to ask some hard questions. Don't be afraid to tear up a process and start again. A lot of the time companies are forced into process change by a disruptive event, but this can be avoided by making a commitment to continually challenging the way things are done - even if it's just your laundry process...

Bad Habits Are Simply Bad Processes

I was walking to the train today and saw a chap lingering on the last draws of his cigarette before he entered the train station. He took a deep draw, threw the cigarette to the ground, stamped it out and walked off. This made me think. If I drank my morning coffee and threw the cup away like that - would I get away with it? Probably not...

Why did he think it was OK to do this? Well, it's not OK, but to him it's normal, it's a habit that has become accepted by society (although not for long!). When you think about it, a habit is just a process that has become part of a person's ingrained behaviour. Often these habits are bad ones, just like our cancer-sucking friend.

The same is true for organisations. Often bad habits come from bad processes that have developed over time and have become "the way things are done". Habits are notoriously hard to break, but the best way to stop them is to prevent them from happening in the first place, which is why it is important to continually improve and examine processes, rather than to spend time and money later trying to kick a habit. Also, the longer a bad habit continues in an organisation the more it is accepted as the norm (just like society tolerating the smoking man's littering). Everything can be changed for the better but the longer you leave a bad habit the more difficult it becomes.

Broken

Processes

Process Black Holes

We've all experienced them. Customers loathe them. Companies don't realise they exist. They suck good sentiment out of your customers and suck money out of your company coffers. I call them "Process Black Holes".

Process black holes are where a process black spot occurs where one of two things happens:

The process becomes like a pass the parcel game where the passing never stops. It goes round and round passing the piece of work between multiple teams utilising company time and money until the customer gives up (and takes their business elsewhere) or...

The process becomes like a magicians act - POOF! It's gone. Unresolved, uncontactable, unknown - except to your customers - who are building themselves into a frenzy of discontent. "They're USELESS!" you hear customers say - and they are right. My recent experience with AAMI is a classic example of this.

Process black holes exist because companies don't understand their processes, don't have visibility and dare I say it "management” of their processes. They are more prevalent in organisations where there are processes that cross more functions (hence more breakpoints) - more opportunities for the process to fail.

So what can we do to rid our organisations of Process Black Holes?

• Understand where breakpoints exist (visibility of process) • Eliminate or improve them (redesign functional teams, automate

where possible) • Align processes to the customer (eliminate unnecessary activities) • Measure process failure - where are the pain points? • Continually improve - track successes, cost savings and

improvement for the customer

Listen to your customers. Listen to your employees. Close those black holes.

Why BPM and Governments Don't Work

I've worked in Australian government departments a couple of times in my career. Each time I have been shocked.

Shocked by the wastage, shocked by the red tape, shocked by the inability to deliver.

BPM in government is like putting lipstick on a pig. This is because the concept of government as a support service for the paying customers (yes, the members of the public) is fundamentally flawed.

Government receives large bundles of money to spend in the taxpayers best interests. What happens? They spend it - but not in the taxpayers best interests. OK, so some of it is spent appropriately, but the crippling bureaucracy of government means that huge amounts of money are poured down the drain on a daily basis. The reason for this is not complex, it is down to a few simple factors:

- Governance. Governance is important, but government take governance to a crippling level where no-one is able to get anything done. Staff spend an infinitely longer time trying to get things done than in the private sector. Then they give up. After that they'll get in a team of highly paid consultants to do the job, who of course won't deliver anything because they know there will be no repercussions. After that another team of consultants will come in to check the consultant’s work, and after that...

- Accountability. Unless you're in the public spotlight the chances of anyone giving you the sack are infinitely small. So why even bother trying to deliver? Why bust your hump when you can sit snoozing at your desk - for the next 30 years.

- Restrictions. Chances are in government if you want to buy anything you will only be allowed to buy from an "approved" supplier. And the suppliers know that. Hence you'll be paying 10x more than anyone in the private sector. But then again, your boss won't care (see Accountability).

- Inflexibility. Government's rigid ways of doing things and total resistance to change means that you can bring BPM in as long as you aren't intending to change anything. Nothing. You can sit around and talk about it for 12 months - they'll be happy with that. Just don't change anything. In particular don't deliver anything that might be considered adding value.

So whilst fat, lazy, government "public servants" sit around pondering how they are going to manage to spend this year’s budget and you are working hard to

earn a living, just think about that big slice of tax you are paying sliding into oblivion.

I never really understood Margaret Thatcher until now, and I've never been a fan of politics, but if I had my way today I'd privatise as much of government as I possibly could - like she did in the 1980's in the UK. I'd get rid of the unions that perpetuate this slovenly public sector culture and I'd give the responsibility over to private sector companies under a strict series of mandates and KPI's.

In short, I'd run government like a business, not as an employment charity for the inept and wasteful.

Until that day comes (and in NSW in particular it looks like it's coming soon), BPM in government is largely a huge waste of time, money and effort.

Antiquated Business Rules - A Tale of Two Insurance Claims

I recently had a run of bad luck. Not only did I lose my iPod, I dropped my digital camera and broke the lense. Luckily I'm with AAMI Insurance, and luckily I chose to take out their personal valuables cover. This allowed me to claim both items on my insurance.

What followed is a tale of process that will astound you!

I checked online to see if I could lodge an online claim - no such luck. Although AAMI has an online policy manager, there is no portal to submit an online claim. So I call AAMI and I am promptly put through to the claims section. The friendly lady takes the details of my claims. Note the plural - claims. She then advises me that my two claims will be handled by two separate case managers and provides me with their contact details.

Wait a minute - two claims managers - why?

The friendly lady explains that as one is a loss and the other is a damage claim they are under two different policies and this must be handled by two different departments and hence two different claims managers. I bite my tongue. She then asks me to forward proof of purchase for the iPod to one claim manager (via email) and to obtain a quote for repair for the camera claim and send this quote (via e-mail) to the other claim manager. I informed them that it may be a few weeks until I was able to obtain the quote for repair.

A couple of days later I e-mailed the purchase receipt for the iPod to the e-mail address provided and put the camera into the repair shop to obtain a quote for repair. Unfortunately they advised that this would take around 3 weeks.

On the 2nd of August I e-mailed the proof of purchase of my iPod to AAMI for processing of my claim.

About two weeks later I received 2 voicemails on my mobile asking me to call AAMI, then a couple of days later two letters through the post. Strange given that I had sent the details via e-mail and also had advised of the delay in receiving the quote for repair.

On the 3rd of September I received the quote for repair and e-mailed it through to the other claims manager. I heard nothing so on the 16th of September (6 weeks after my initial contact) I called AAMI to ask what was going on.

"We're waiting on your information Mr. Reid" said the confused lady.

"But I sent it several weeks ago to the e-mail you provided" I said

"Oh because we are a phone based business we rely on you to call us up to tell us that you've sent the e-mail so we can check for it" said the lady, matter-of-factly.

At this point my head was filled with images of the 1950's - the last time any business on this planet was "phone based". At this point I also went on an irate diatribe about the benefits of process and basic workflow systems to which she replied impotently

"I'm very sorry Mr. Reid but I can see your e-mail now, I'll just process that repair and we will send you the money".

"Can't you just refund it to the credit card you have on file for me or just process it as a credit on my account?" I said.

"No sorry Mr. Reid we have to refund it as cash - can I have your bank details and that will be processed in 5-7 working days..."

So I did, but what about my other claim?

"Oh I'll just transfer you to the other account manager Mr Reid..." said she.

"But can't you just refund that along with the transaction you are about to process?" I said in amazement.

"No Mr. Reid, I'm sorry but that's a different type of claim handled by a different area - I have to transfer you to your claim manager". And so she did.

"Hello this is AAMI, how can I help you?"

Cue repeat of previous long winded story. Needless to say she also was a convert to the new revolution in phone-based businesses and had also chosen to ignore my e-mail until I called in an irate condition.

"I will process that for you now Mr. Reid and someone from the store you bought it from will be contacting you within 5-7 working days" she said.

"What? Can't I just have a cash refund like the other claim I just made?" I spluttered.

"No I'm sorry Mr. Reid, this is a different type of claim and we aren't allowed to provide you with cash - it has to be in the form of a voucher for the store you bought it from".

Eventually I was called by the store, was posted a voucher and the rest is history, but think of the pain involved for both sides:

• A truly horrible and time consuming customer experience • A time consuming process for AAMI staff • Duplication of effort • Antiquated business rules causing more problems than they

solve • Outdated technology that helps neither staff nor customer

Take the time and cost of two almost identical processes and the manual effort required and multiply this by the thousands of claims processed in a year and you quickly see millions of dollars going down the drain.

But here's how to fix it:

• Look at the process from the customer's experience • Improve the customer experience and reduce moments of truth

with a self-serve claims portal • Automate manual steps (breakpoints) • Challenge antiquated business rules that make no sense • Empower and cross-skill staff to handle different types of claims

(if they are actually different!)

It's really not that hard or that complicated, but some people really have a talent for making it seem that way.

Continuous Improvement - Because Stupid Stuff Happens All The Time

If anyone is in doubt as to why improvement has to be continuous, the simple explanation is that stupid stuff happens all the time: mistakes are made, things are rushed, ideas badly conceived, ideas even more badly executed and then there are those people things - they keep making mistakes because for some unknown reason they aren't perfect. This doesn't even take into account the numerous amount of organisational activities that are going on on a daily basis that contribute absolutely nothing.

I stumbled upon a classic example today from my car insurer youi. I have been quite impressed by Youi, so when I came across this classic example of "stupid stuff" I was surprised.

Youi were proactive enough to send me a text this morning asking me to log into my online policy manager to update my credit card details as the card was due to expire. Great!

So I go to the Youi website to login:

Like most people in the universe I neither know nor carry around the unmemorisable three million digit insurance policy number. But why should I have to? Why can't I log in with my e-mail address i.e. something that I can easily remember? (And as an aside, why are insurance policy numbers always so long?) This serves only to create extra work for Youi staff who have to respond to e-mail or phone enquiries.

But wait! There's an "I've forgotten my policy number" link - fabulous!

So I click on the link and it takes me to a little form:

Everything is wonderful until I get to the field that says "Please enter a valid policy number". I try to skip it - after all isn't that why I'm filling in the form - to get my policy number? No! It's a mandatory field and I can't submit the form without it!

So to obtain the policy number that I don't know, I have to fill in a policy number that I don't know. Genius.

So if you or anyone else you work with ever doubts the need for constant vigilance, feedback mechanisms and a cycle of continuous improvement - just tell them about the multi-million dollar insurance company that was creating needless cost for itself.

If stupidity is the illness, continuous improvement is the cure.

A Tale of Two Processes - Apple Vs. Optus

Last week I had a problem with my iPhone so I called Optus whom I bought the phone from. After going through a series of tests the technical support chappy suggested that the problem related to either the sim card or the phone itself and suggested that I take it to an Optus store. So I went to their store on the weekend to have it checked out.

To test the sim all I needed to do was to put the sim into a different iPhone on the Optus network to see whether the problem was the sim or the phone. So after waiting 5 minutes at the Optus store while staff did abstract busy things I was finally served. I explained the situation to which the surly lady told me she would give me a new sim card. "But how do you know the sim card is the problem?" quoth I. To which she replied that she didn't but she would give me one to try. "Can't I just put my sim in an iPhone you have here?" I said rather surprised. No she said, we don't have any iPhones here that you can try it in.

Wait a minute? A phone store with no iPhones? Staff that have no iPhones? The most popular new phone in the history of phones and I am in a phone store and no-one has one. I don't think so.

So I put the sim into the phone and am told...uhhh...it says connect to itunes...do you have it backed up. Yes I did, but no I did not want them to wipe the phone at this present moment in time. So I am told that I should go home, sync the phone and if there is still a problem with the 3G access I should bring the phone back along with the proof of purchase.

"Can't you just look up the phone on your system?" I ask again most surprised. No says she, we don't have that information on our system. Alternatively she says, I can go to the apple store where I don't need to bring anything other than the phone.

So I have the choice - dig through 2 years of paperwork and slog back to Optus to deal with the surly girl at the phone shop with no usable iPhones, or I can go to the apple store and they will simply replace it. I choose Apple, and whilst I'm there I may play with all their working products, maybe buy some accessories; using up all that time I would have wasted digging through paperwork...

But in the end it's all about the customer experience - and there is only one of these guys answering the call.

A Triage for Hospital Processes

I recently had the pleasure of visiting lovely Ryde Hospital with a rather painful stomach. It was an interesting experience in process. What amazed me most about it was the incredible levels of duplication of effort and the vast inefficiency caused by needless bureaucracy. I have great sympathy for those having to work in such conditions and those that are left waiting in pain whilst healthcare professionals fill in endless forms - a waste of their skills and time.

Before I left for the hospital I was actually intent on seeing a GP. I remembered that Ryde hospital had a late night GP clinic so I googled it to see the opening hours. Great - it was open until 10pm (ideal at 9pm at night!) So off I went, parked the car a short distance away and went to the reception desk.

"Oh there's no GP clinic here anymore" said the lady behind the desk - you'll have to see an emergency doctor. Not a big deal but I couldn't help but think of all the people that must turn up with minor ailments taking up the time of emergency doctors who could be spending their time on more serious things.

So I stand at the desk for 5 minutes filling in details about who I am and being asked "what's wrong with you". I am amazed that I can turn up at hospital with just a Medicare card and my DOB and get free medical treatment. I could have given my Medicare card to anyone and they could easily use it. I wonder how many people sell healthcare on the black market this way.

Next I am sent to the triage nurse who fills in more details and asks "what's wrong with you" and "what medications are you taking". Triage - a concept invented in WW1 and still with us. (Can you think of anything else from 1914 that might be useful???)

She asks me to wait until I am called. About 15 mins later a nurse calls me in and asks "what's wrong with you" and "what medications are you taking". He takes blood (after butchering both of my hands) and prods my stomach. He then asks me to wait outside.

Another 15 minutes later a doctor appears and asks me to come back in. He asks "what's wrong with you" and "what medications are you taking" and I tell him the story again and he prods my stomach. Eventually he scribbles something down and says that he will inject me with some drug.

15 minutes later another person turns up to inject me. He doesn't tell me what it is until I ask, but he can't actually tell me what it does. Apparently he's just "the

injecting guy". Nice job. The doctor then returns. I ask him what the stuff I have been injected with actually does. He's nice enough to actually tell me.

Another 15 minutes of sitting on the bed and I am sent on my way. Guts still sore and thinking that I should have gone to see my GP the next day...

So what could they have done better?

For a start it seems bonkers to me in this day and age that Australia doesn't have a centralised healthcare database. I find it bewildering that I have to go through entering and checking details every time I go to a hospital or doctor. The time spent doing data entry is staggering. What is more staggering is the reliance on bits of paper that travel here, there and everywhere in a hospital. Enter the data once and pass it on electronically - that's the trick. It would eliminate data entry, duplication of effort and improve the quality of healthcare - after all, we are talking about people's lives here. Just one small piece of information could cost a life (and the current system is like Russian roulette).

And what about the customer experience?

Well, how wonderful would it be to log onto the Internet and be able to see real-time wait times to see doctors, or even to register at the hospital before you leave the house. So much better to be able to enter accurate details of your ailments rather than have someone interpreting them for you. And how much better would it be if there was more than a scratchy TV in the waiting room that no-one can hear. And before anyone says it, it's not free - we all pay taxes so that we receive theses service - we are paying customers!

Unfortunately hospitals (like their triage system) are stuck in Edwardian England. It is a case of we do it this way because we do it this way. Hospitals deserve to have adequate supplies of money to provide services, but we also need to make them work productively, efficiently and improve the customer experience.

The system is sick, let's make it better.

Process Ineptitude Personified

Insurance as a concept is not a difficult thing to grasp - so why do so many companies make a complete mess of it?

Yesterday I called around to get some quotes on a fairly niche insurance product - landlord insurance for a holiday rental property. Most insurance companies couldn't (or rather wouldn't) provide cover. But one who did was one of the major banks. Happily I used their online quote tool. After entering only my address details it instantly spat me back a quote.

Hmm...something not right there. Knowing what I do know about insurance and having completed other online quotes I knew that there was something wrong. Nonetheless I pressed on and was greeted with a screen which said something along the lines of "Oh you want an insurance quote, great, but this is all too difficult for our system to grasp so you're going to have to fill in a crappy form and someone will call you sometime in the future".

Confidence dwindling - but as their product looked good I pressed on and completed the online form. It gave me the option to enter my customer number (I have an account with this bank) which I thought was smart as it would streamline the application process.

A few hours later I had already signed up for another insurance provider (Ray White Insurance) who had provided me with some really good service. Still I was curious to see what our inept banking friends would do next.

At 11:30 am the next day (a mere 24 hours later! - too slow!) I received a call from the bank who proceeded to grill me about my account details: "what is your card number? What is your limit? What is your address? Do you have any regular payments? Where did you collect the card from?"

"Wait, is all of this necessary? - I just want to get an insurance quote" I replied to which I was told that it was necessary as the bank had called me and they needed to verify my ID (which I had no idea why they had trouble doing this since I knew very well what my address, card number and other details were). "What you'll need to do is to call us back."

"What????" I replied "But what if I wasn't a customer? How would I get a quote"

"Oh, you'd have to call us, we wouldn't call you".

So I take down the number I am supposed to call her back on and throw it in the bin. Or should I say, the "too hard basket".

So by all accounts this bank doesn’t call people back to give them quotes. They also don't make it easy for current customers to take out insurance. They also don't have an online quote tool that works. They have created a process that suits themselves and not their customers, and the equation is therefore very simple - the customers will not buy - and that includes me.

Do Your Processes Give Your Customers Away?

Today I was given away. Not expensively, not cheaply, but freely. I was tossed into the garbage like an empty milkshake.

But I wasn't an empty milkshake, I was full. I had plenty of juicy, milky goodness. So why was I thrown away? Because they didn't care and they didn't ask so I wasn't given an opportunity to tell them so that they had the opportunity to try to keep me.

Today I called AAMI to let them know that I wanted to cancel my home contents insurance with them. After a few confirmations and a few clicks I was told "that's all done for you, you'll receive a refund of your policy by mail...thank-you for calling AAMI..."

There was no "why are you leaving?" There was no "how can we help you to stay?" There wasn't even the slightest hint of curiosity as to why a customer with three AAMI policies would suddenly cancel one of them. Here was as obvious a moment of truth as you can find, and AAMI failed spectacularly.

The reasons for this are clear - staff are disconnected from the customer experience. They have become robotic and unable to think. They have no incentive to try to keep a customer. They just do their job and think "it's not my problem".

In an age where big business throws millions of dollars around trying to persuade us to join them, I find it a tragedy when they give us away for nothing.

Planes, Pains & Automobiles

I recently flew to Perth on Holiday and I was surprised how poorly both Virgin Blue and Sydney Airport performed. After all these years of aviation, why do we still follow the same process of checking in and bag handling that we have done for decades? Little has evolved since I flew on my first flight as an excited 3 year old in 1976.

First let’s talk about Sydney Airport: Firstly it’s a pain to get to from just about anywhere. From where I live (only 15ks from the CBD) it’s too expensive by taxi, too inconvenient by train and shuttle buses don’t take kids under 4. That leaves me the only option of parking in long term parking for $140 a week. So I have to drive 40 mins to the airport, dump the wife and kids at the front of the terminal, drive to long term parking and take the bus back. All in all, about 15-20 minutes. Not family friendly, in fact not anybody friendly.

Then there is Virgin Blue: of course being a process guy I have already checked in online. My thoughts of dropping my bag down a big chute and speeding off onto the plane are dealt a mammoth blow when I see that the queue for the “bag drop” is triple the queue for check-in. When I do finally get through to the desk after a 15 min wait we are told that we are late and that we can’t take the baby buggy to the gate. We have to drag it across the terminal to the oversized baggage drop before we struggle with 3 kids and 3 pieces of hand luggage down to the gate where we get on the plane just in time.

But we do get to Perth, quickly collect our bags and set off for the AVIS car hire desk. The empty desk that is. We have to use a phone on the desk to call AVIS who ask us to trek over to the other side of the terminal because they only have one staff member on (not my bloody problem!). So the Reid entourage sets off again looking like something out of the Beverly Hillbillies – our trolley stacked up to head height with small children hanging off of it with the occasional suitcase flapping onto the floor like a fat man doing a bellyflop into a swimming pool. So eventually we make it over to AVIS, get things processed quickly and go off and collect our car. However, they fail to spot a dent on the car which I have to have rectified with the rep who has to call back to the desk and have the paperwork changed. Other than that the process is very efficient.

On the way back from Perth we drop off the hire car (again, very fast and efficient). Neither Perth airport or AVIS have thought that people dropping off cars may actually need trolleys to get luggage to check-in but we fossick around and eventually find one.

Our check-in process is as equally painful as the first time. The “Bag drop” process seems to be identical to check-in so I fail to see what time or cost

savings it provides to either Virgin Blue or the customer (unless you don’t have any bags to check-in). The bag drop people stand in the queue huffing and puffing and shaking their heads wondering why they didn’t go into the much shorter check-in queue. Again we are unable to take the buggy to the gate (as we were told we could by the Virgin Blue call centre).

We eventually make our flight and arrive at the hellhole that is Sydney Airport on a Sat night. After again battling to get trolleys and bags I go off to collect the car from long-term parking. I wait for the bus to arrive. And wait. And wait. So do about 200 other people. After about 20 minutes the bus finally arrives. It leaves looking like the train to New Delhi – about 10 people per square metre. Heads wedged in armpits – you know how it is. I finally pick up the car, pay, head back to the airport (almost getting lost on the way as there are no signs from the parking to the airport) – and try to pick up my wife and kids. Funnily enough even though I am allowed to drop them off outside the airport I am not allowed to pick them up outside the airport (do terrorists only bomb arrivals?) so I am funneled into a 10 min free parking area where thankfully my little entourage are waiting for me.

However I have to take a taxi home so I queue up to be able to take a taxi home at a higher price than I would have paid getting one anywhere else in Sydney.

So my reflections:

After 30 years of incredible technology improvements, why does going to the airport seem like going back in time?

• Why is it so difficult to get to the airport, and so costly? • Why can’t I pick up my wife and kids at the door? • Why do I have to pay more for a cab at the airport? • Why should I bother checking in online when it’s quicker to check

in at the airport than it is to drop a bag?

Here we have a situation where it seems like every effort is made to make the customer experience worse! Because we have no other choice in airport we have to accept what we are given! Of course we have a choice to choose airlines, so pay attention Mr Branson!

The disappointing part in all of this is the inability to embrace change and to think of new ways of doing things. Airports have been doing things the same way for so long they can’t think of any other way of doing it. We need to

challenge this thinking by approaching it from the customer experience and by not accepting that it is good enough.

How (And How Not) To Throw Money Down The Drain With Process

You'd think that in the midst of the "GFC" companies would be looking at ways to make their processes more efficient, yet there are still many companies out there that like to throw money away hand over fist.

One of these companies is a furniture chain called Fantastic Furniture ("The package deal kings"). I like fantastic furniture. I don't like all their products, but I get what they are trying to do. They are the budget furniture company and they've pretty much got hold of their target market by the short and curlies. Now this isn't a story about customer service - it's a story of internal process. I'm not going to whinge about them from a personal point of view as when you buy something cheap you often get cheap service - I can live with that if the price is right. But what I find amazing is when a company like theirs wastes money. OK, here's the story...

I looked online at their website and found a bed and cabinets that I wanted to buy. Actually I'd already seen it in the store. I would have loved to have bought online, but alas, no online store.

Mistake no 1: no online store.

So I call my local store and ask if it's in stock. Yes the bed is in stock he tells me but the cabinets will take longer. OK, says I, can I buy the bed now and collect the cabinets later? Yes, says he. All I need to do is pay a deposit over the phone go to the store, pay for the bed and then go and collect it at the warehouse?

Excuse me? says I. Can't I just pay for it over the phone and collect it from the warehouse? No says the man.

Mistake no 2: Poor process design fed by bureaucracy.

So I go to the store they look me up in the computer and alas I'm not there. We spend 10 minutes wrestling with the system and several calls to a mystery voice of god that tells them that that particular till doesn't work. They then find me and I actually get to pay for my bed.

Mistake no 3: Poor communication & IT support processes.

They then tell me that my items are all in stock - but wait didn't they tell me that my bedside cabinets were out of stock only 2 days ago?

Mistake no 4: Poor stock control and inventory processes

So I finally complete my transaction. Or at least I think so. The staff then take a manual docket pad and write out my receipt. Let me repeat that - THEY WRITE OUT MY RECEIPT. What on earth does their system do if it can't track stock and it can't print a receipt?

Mistake 4: Manual processes due to poor system functionality

So I take my hand written docket and drive to the warehouse. They give me an inaccurate map which gets me lost before I eventually find it. I get there and give my receipt to the chap at the warehouse. He looks at it and asks why I don't have a green slip. I tell him that's all they gave me. He grumbles that as they didn't write it out fully it will take longer to find the stock. He then proceeds to look up the computer and...write out another receipt. Did you get that HE WRITES OUT ANOTHER RECEIPT and gives that to me.

Mistake 5: lack of quality controls to ensure processes are followed

I eventually get all my stuff. It only took me 1.5 hours. But what did it cost Fantastic?

• Phone call - 5 mins • Staff computer error - 5 mins • Writing Docket - 2 mins • Looking up system & re-writing docket - 5 mins

Total "lost" time = 17mins FOR ONE CUSTOMER AND ONE TRANSACTION!!!!

If you think about this in terms of the cost for 17 minutes of staff time multiplied by thousands of transactions you can envisage the amount of money fantastic are throwing away. Of course they could have avoided this entire 17 minute cost if they had an online system. But even if they didn't all they need is to update their system to be able to track stock in real-time and to eliminate the inefficient paper based system that they have become accustomed to. This would allow online tracking, reduce admin costs, control stock flow more efficiently and reduce customer touch time to allow their staff to concentrate on selling rather than performing labourious admin.

Fantastic, the Ninja has spoken. Please stop throwing your money away.

A Tale of Two (Sales) Processes - Why You Must Adapt or Die

I'd like to share with you a couple of examples of sales processes. One that works, another that doesn't. Together they beautifully demonstrate the gap that can be bridged by solid process.

First let's talk about the broken process...

Grosby are an Australian based manufacturer of shoes and slippers (owned by the evil pacific brands empire). I love their slippers having had a lovely pair of leather slippers that I bought last year. However a rather tragic washing machine incident ended the life of my beloved slippers. So, thinks I, I will simply go to the website, buy another pair and in a few days I will be reunited with my beloved slippers. But alas, the Grosby website has no option to buy online. Instead of investing in the technology to sell direct, they choose simply to sell via retailers and make less money. Go figure. Maybe this is one of the reasons they are making bugger all money.

So anyway, my next step is to look on their website to find a retailer, which I do and I trek off down Pitt St to get them. Three shops later (one of which is a women's footwear store), I find that none of them actually stock any Grosby slippers so I return to the office empty handed. In desperation I use the "contact us" option on their website and send them a long e-mail, pouring out my unbridled love for their rare, sacred slippers. I just want to buy their product!

In the midst of the global financial crisis Grosby must be doing amazingly well! Not only do they not care that the information on their website doesn't actually lead you to their product but that they are doing so well that they don't even need to respond to a poor consumer desperately wanting to give them his money!

Now let's talk about a process that works...

When I went to buy a new pair of glasses the other week I looked at a lot of retail stores. After realising that I'd have to sell a kidney to afford anything other than a giant pair of blue plastic glasses that would make me look like a children's TV presenter from 1984 I decided to look online.

After a bit of googling for glasses I found a website called "Clearly Contacts". Turns out that they are a global company, but very cleverly they have a web prescence in every country. They have also had the smarts to market themselves online as selling multiple products. So on I go, order my glasses online and I'm done in a few minutes. Well actually I'm not because the

advertising on the website gets me thinking and before I know it I've bought a 6 month supply of contact lenses too! So I complete my transaction and am happy before I realise that I have not put in the code to get a 10% first time customer discount and free fedex shipping (for orders over $200). So I e-mail their customer service who refund my 10% and upgrade my shipping within a couple of hours - no questions asked.

So what's the message here?

• Look at your sales processes - are you going the whole way? • Cherish every customer inquiry as an opportunity to make money • Use automation - why sell in a store when you can make more money

selling online? • If you have a website, for god's sake make sure it is accurate • If you don't respond quickly to customers, there is a competitor who will

But the bottom line is that YOU MUST invest time and effort (and gosh, maybe even some money) to keep your processes and systems competitive. Maybe a website with information was enough in 1999, but in today's environment no-one can afford to be complacent - there is always a hungry upstart snapping at your heels.

Heed my words people - adapt or die.

Ozymandias and eBay’s Evil Process Empire

I do love buying things on eBay. Most of the time you get a good deal and the people are pretty nice. I've also sold quite a few things with similarly good experiences.

The experience sours, however, whenever I have to deal with anyone from eBay. eBay exemplify in my mind everything that is wrong with modern day businesses. When you try to contact eBay you find that there is no contact number, their e-mail address is hidden within hundreds of pages of help text and it is generally a horrible experience that screams "fix it yourself, don't contact us". When you do get a reply via e-mail it is simply a cut and paste of some generic blurb from their help text. They don't listen and they don't care.

Take my situation. I am setting up an online store for my parent's underfloor heating business. I've been trying to do this for 3 weeks now. I've filled in all the forms, jumped through hoops, finally got my PayPal working and then it says that they need to call and give us a verification code to activate the business account. So we wait, and wait, and wait. A week goes by - nothing. So I try to contact eBay. Oh, but wait when I click on the help button it asks me to log in...so I do and I get to a screen which asks me for a...verification code.

So here I am unable to log in and unable to get help. The only option the screen gives me is to re-request the code - which I do for a week solid. Eventually we get a call and enter the code - hooray - it works. It then asks me to log into PayPal which proceeds to crash. So I go back to eBay and log in again and....it asks me for a verification code, which I enter and...it doesn't work.

At this point I am ready to scream, but instead I write.

OK, so eBay are huge and they don't want to deal with scummy little customers. But at least design systems that allow customers to get help quickly and easily! But at the end of the day the sad fact is that eBay just don't care. As someone who runs a small business I find it really painful that companies have such low regard for the people who are paying their wages. They may be sitting on high now but like the statue of Ozymandias, the sands of change are always blowing - and when those winds change for the worse I hope that eBay will rue their appalling lack of customer focus.

I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: `My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away".

- Percey Bysshe Shelley

Cityrail shows its process ineptitude once again with Process non-value add

My friends at Cityrail, whom I rely on for my daily unpleasant ride to the city are at it once again. Their latest and greatest idea to speed up the disembarkation and embarkation of passengers at trains is to have (at every set of train doors) a guy with a a bright orange jacket and hat (with a penguin on it). The penguin is supposed to symbolise people not "huddling together".

City rail say "Improving the flow of customers on our platforms means everyone can get on and off the trains more easily, ensuring customer safety and allowing trains to run on-time".

No shit Sherlock. So how do they plan to get a guy with a penguin hat to do this?

"As part of the test, CityRail staff will be positioned along the platform close to each set of train doors and will be asking customers:

• to wait behind the yellow line • to move well inside the train and asking them to stand clear of the

doors • not to board the train when it is due to depart • to spread along the platform.

Wow! Of course this is what everybody does anyway. The fact of the matter is that the woefully inept Town hall station with it's ancient facilities can't meet the capacity requirements. There is nothing wrong with the customers (in general) other than there aren't enough trains, nor capacity on the trains.

Upon observing the new penguin police I can categorically state that apart from saying "stand back" they add NO VALUE to the process. Cityrail’s claims of a more comfortable journey as "more comfortable because of the more even spread of customers throughout the carriages" is ridiculous. How can a guy standing outside saying "stand back" contribute to an even spread of commuters throughout the train? When we consider the cost of 8-10 staff and their stupid uniforms this is a pathetic waste of taxpayer money (even if it is intended to be used only for special events).

Whoever thought this one up deserves to be forced to commute on these scummy trains with the rest of us!

Why Cityrail's processes fail on a daily basis...

Today I had to complete a long form to buy a train ticket. Of course, I had to fill in a paper based form, take it to a station where I held up the already long queue whilst a little man typed my details into his system and manually swiped my credit card through one of those old non-electronic crunching machines that kill your credit card.

If I was to buy a plane ticket I'd simply go online, punch in my details and turn up at the airport and collect my ticket. Why should it be so hard to buy a train ticket?

Some thoughts...

1. Why do I need to fill in a form for a ticket anyway? Why can't I just buy a 30 day ticket like I buy a 7 or 14 day ticket? No-one asks me to fill in a form then...

2. If I do need to fill in a form, why can't I do it over the web and have the ticket posted to me or collect it at a station?

3. In this day and age why don't all stations have electronic credit card facilities?

Why?

Well unfortunately the reasons are simple. No investment - either financially or from a process point of view. There is also no competition, so why bother trying to make the customer happy? So we have to put up with long queues, crap trains and overcrowding until it becomes the next politician's platform (excuse the pun) for election.

If only Cityrail was run like a business.

If It Seems Too Hard, It Is Too Hard

In those moments where you throw up your hands and say “why is it so hard?!!!” I am thinking of you. And if you are really lucky, somewhere there is a company on the cutting edge thinking about it too.

Unfortunately there are many that aren’t. I had one such “why is it so hard?!!” moment last weekend. This moment came when I stood in front of an aisle in Bunnings Warehouse (hardware store), light fitting in hand staring at the thousands of lightbulbs in front of me. All I wanted was a BW22. How hard could that be? Well as the lightbulbs were arranged by brand rather than type and as most of the boxes were the same size, it was like trying to find a raindrop in a swimming pool. Not only this, but the light bulb code was written on the boxes in tiny print, so walking along the rows and reading the codes took forever. Of course as they were organised by brand I had to find each BW22 in a different section so that I could compare the price. Then, of course I had to find out which BW22 had the Edison screw, not the bayonet.

Then I gave up.

I’ll just ask someone, I thought. 10 minutes later, after wandering to the other side of the store I finally found a little helper who cheerfully advised me on lightbulb types.

So in the end, I got what I wanted, but why did I have to spend 30 minutes to buy a lightbulb? Is this a good customer experience? Of course not!

Is it too complex to think that the store could be organised so that a small quantity of light globes (a few of each brand) could be placed next to the applicable light fittings? Wouldn’t that provide a better customer experience whilst saving the store money on staff costs due to continual customer enquiries?

And in the event a customer needs to ask a question, is it a good experience that they have to wander around looking for staff? Is it so hard to have a button to press to get help, or for the store to be monitored by cameras where customers looking for help to be spotted and quickly assisted?

It’s not that hard. But when it seems too hard, you know what to do: take your business elsewhere.

The Process Revolution

Starts At:

www.theprocessninja.com