Trends: Process Insights -- A Simple Approach to Complex Challenges

If you contracted me to help your business operate better, it is likely that one of the initial conversations with you or your team would start like this: “We’ve been having some challenges in ‘X’ area, and we urgently need best practices, can you help?” Of course I can help. But I need you to understand that there is no “magic wand” or panacea; we need to take some time to identify and classify those challenges. Whether they are cataloged as re-work, turnover, long lead times, slow response times, customer complaints or cyberattacks, they are the symptoms of a set of causes that ultimately manifest themselves in the departments in question. To thoroughly determine the cause, we need to evaluate the input, process and outputs of each influencer to the area in which you have been experiencing “challenges.”

My approach is not complicated. However, it requires discipline to analyze your goals, strategies, processes and controls (both performance and risk). The important thing to remember is that no matter the industry, everything should follow a process with the appropriate checkpoints or controls to avoid deviations. Eventually, too many deviations become potential challenges and ultimately could have a negative impact as a result.

[caption id="attachment_2629" align="aligncenter" width="1052"] Process Flow Chart[/caption]

Now that you’ve had a glimpse of the way we are going to address the “challenge,” the next question is: How is your process supposed to work? Most of the time, the answer is: “The system drives (or will drive) my process.” OK, let’s take a step back and recalibrate. Remember, there is no silver bullet, and your processes should be defined and adapted based on the complexities of your business and your customer’s satisfaction. We need to go back to basics. Why are you in business? What is your value-added? What is the uniqueness that you provide to your customers that allows you to be in business? We can then take those answers and outline the best scenarios for your personnel, processes and supporting technology. The goal is to understand and learn how to enhance all these to enable your team to provide the best value and services for your customers. From there, you can add supporting processes and contingencies in order to explore opportunities for improvement based on the capabilities offered by the “system” we are designing. The problem of starting with out-of-the-box solutions is that you run the risk of losing the essence of the distinctive way you do business.

Let me give you a simplistic example to clear things up. Let’s say you have youngsters always in some sort of athletic event, so the grocery store is your second home. As you can imagine, it would be ideal to make a grocery list for your weekly grocery trip and have everyone add their preferred items. To save some time, you automatically go to the online ordering platform that the supermarket offers and let someone else do the groceries for you. Perfect, isn’t it? Well, not really.

If your kids are like mine, they tend to prefer a certain cereal today and change their mind mid-week. Additionally, there are the following variables: extra hunger after physical activity, meal plan deviations, or the supermarket ran out of a certain product, so you could end up even missing some items. If you add frequent playdates and consider dietary restrictions, we can conclude that the seemingly simple process of grocery shopping has its challenges. This is called process variability.

The fix:

You still have the supermarket’s online platform, but I’ve made some adjustments to address the variability. I talked to the manager of the “Online Servicing Team” (supplier management) and asked to be notified of non-available items (reactive controls). I check with the family two times per week, on what they want to eat over the next few days (planning / preventive controls). I’ve also inserted a supermarket run mid-week to pick up anything that was not available, including “special treats.” All these improvements together, with a little encouragement (governance and change management), I not only reduced the almost-daily supermarket runs, but also reduced our expenses due to wasted items.

Looking at your business, what challenges are you facing today?

By Neysha Arcelay, Precixa, LLC, narcelay@precixa.com