Processes (or procedures) are a series of steps taken to accomplish a specific end. They can be standalone, interconnected or be part of something bigger (e.g., governance). They can be Business Processes, Information Technology (IT) processes, Systems Processes and Business Processes within IT. In organizations, there are many processes that happen sequentially and/or in parallel with other processes.
Basically, the idea of representing a process (or procedure) through a map (or diagram) is so that people can visually see what is happening. This visual representation also helps in identifying what can be improved within (and sometimes outside) the organization. Since the purpose of these maps is to convey what is going, you have to be cognizant that these maps should (1) be simple to understand, (2) help your audience connect with what they do daily to the big picture of the organization and (3) serve as a guide to what is (currently) happening and what would happen (tomorrow).
There are many ways and tools to depict a process but I have found that for most audiences the basic form of Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) works best to just get the conversation started. In regards to a free tool to draw a process, draw.io can be used which saves your process maps in your google drive or any other location that you specify.
The following is just a simplified example to illustrate how a customer may interact with Amazon.com and how this customer interaction is handled. As you would see that visually representing this process can open up a door to start a discussion for improvements. If this whole process was written and not visually represented then it would require a lot of wording and the danger that the audience might get bored or would lose interest.
Amazon Customer Process
Note that the process map:
Has numbered rectangular activity boxes so that your audience can easily follow
Numbered rectangular activity boxed need does not need to be in sequence
Is a hybrid which shows the interaction between a human (customer) and Amazon.com (online system)
Uses BPMN basics to convey a story
To start the process of creating a process map, it would be prudent to ask these questions. Keep in mind that the purpose of mapping a process is not to show how talented you are in creating complex process maps but rather as a starting point and even a collaboration point where you can actually provide these maps to the audience to “fix”. Lastly, have a repository to save these process maps so that they can be used a reference of (1) what is happening, (2) what should not happen and (3) what could happen.
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In the meeting an executive expresses his realization that the organization needs to change.
During month one, the executive starts a listening tour across the organization to understand what is going on.
This listening tour entails asking what is working, what is not working and what can be improved.
Listening
During month two, the executive tries to determine how strategy is interpreted and implemented across the various functional areas of the organization.
The functional areas include Accounting, Administration, Business Development, Customer Service, Finance, Human Resources, Information Technology, Management, Manufacturing, Marketing, Operations, Production, Research and Development Sales and others.
But the executive wants to find out more.
Strategy
During month three, the executive tries to determine how political influences result in decisions that can be useful or harmful to the entire organization.
The executive does this by finding out which people are the power players in the organization based on revenue generation, number of direct reports and expertise.
But the executive wants to find out more.
Politics
During month four, the executive tries to determine how innovation happens in the organization.
During month five, the executive tries to determine the role of culture and cultural influences across the organization.
The executive does this by understanding that culture is not only about people but it is also about processes and procedures that are put in place across the organization.
But the executive wants to find out more.
Culture
During month six, the executive tries to connect all the dots in terms of execution.
The executive does this by assessing the linkage between leadership communications, policy and implementation across human resources, operations and Information Technology with the ultimate goal of understanding what good or bad experiences the internal and external customers have.
Execution
Now the executive has a lot information. Since this information was not created/gathered in isolation, great working relationships have been developed and change agents have been activated that can make the organization a better place for everyone.
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If you have a strong understanding of how culture affects your organization’s strategy then you have better ideas of creating strategies that are truly transformative for your organization. Having said that, most organizations don’t take the time to strategize about strategy development processes and thus are not fully aware of the intended and unintended effects of their pursuits. The three main reasons for this lack of awareness are:
The fallacy that strategy should always be top-down
The lack of a holistic approach to strategy development and feedback
The half-baked idea that strategy can only be created by a few people
An organization’s overall strategy is a combination of policy and plan of action that is intended to improve the making, buying, or selling of goods and/or services for the customer. Thus, it becomes imperative for organizations to keep the customer at the center of what they do and create customer experiences that make their lives easier.
If you want the strategy to be something that is shelf-ware that looks pretty on an executives’ file cabinet and it is cool to the only talk about it then don’t read ahead. For those, if you want the strategy to be more than just an exercise then I would invite you to ask the following questions about strategy and strategy development processes within your own organization:
Strategic Perspectives on Strategy:
Today
Tomorrow
1.
Who is incentivized at the executive level to create a strategy?
Who should be incentivized at the executive level to create a strategy?
2.
What governance structures are in place for transforming how strategy is created?
What governance structures should be in place for transforming how strategy is created?
3.
Where is the technology used to help strategy?
Where should technology be used to help strategy?
4.
When and how often strategic objectives are communicated?
When and how often strategic objectives should be communicated?
5.
Why holistic strategy development processes are critical to achieving strategic objectives?
Why holistic strategy development processes should be critical to achieving strategic objectives?
Tactical Perspectives on Strategy:
Today
Tomorrow
1.
Who is incentivized at the middle management level to give feedback on strategy?
Who should be incentivized at the middle management level to give feedback on strategy?
2.
What business units, functional areas, and teams are included to develop a strategy?
What business units, functional areas, and teams should be included to create a strategy?
3.
Where technology hinders strategy development processes?
Where technology might hinder strategy development processes?
4.
When is the start and end of meeting strategic objectives communicated?
When should the start and end of meeting strategic objectives communicated?
5.
Why strategy development processes are critical to achieving tactical objectives?
Why strategy development processes should be critical to achieving tactical objectives?
Operational Perspectives on Strategy:
Today
Tomorrow
1.
Who sees strategy development processes as an obstacle?
Who might see strategy development processes as an obstacle?
2.
What business processes provide views on the organization’s actual vs. perceived strategy?
What business processes should provide views on the organization’s actual vs. perceived strategy?
3.
Where is the technology part of your understanding of the organization’s strategy?
Where should technology be a part of understanding the organization’s strategy?
4.
When were you informed about the strategic objectives and strategy development processes?
When should you have been informed about the strategic objectives and strategy development processes?
5.
Why strategic objectives are critical to achieving your daily tasks?
Why strategic objectives should be critical to achieving your daily tasks?
To be clear, strategy and strategy development affects everyone inside and outside your organization which includes executives, middle management, front lines employees as well as the customers you are trying to acquire. Thus, your organization’s strategy development processes should be robust enough that they take long-term holistic views but also flexible enough to cater for bumps and take advantage of technological advancement.
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Business is “the activity of making, buying, or selling goods or providing services in exchange for…”
Corporations –> Money
Non-profits –> Social Causes
Education –> Knowledge
Government –> Citizen Services
Military –> National Defense
Agility is the “ability to move quickly and easily.”
Business Agility is the ability to move quickly and easily to:
Make products and services
Buy products and services
Sell products and services
Provide products and services
to employees and customers along with the ability to effectively and efficiently collaborate with partners and vendors.
What is Digital Transformation?
Digital is “electronic and especially computerized technology.”
Transformation is “an act, process, or instance of transforming or being transformed.”
Digital Transformation is the process of transforming:
How things are made
How things are bought
How things are sold
How products and services are provided
through electronic and especially computerized technology.
What are the Relationships between Business Agility and Digital Transformation?
All organizations are digital in one way or another. Some are more digital and some are less but fundamentally they utilize a mix of the following to achieve their desired outcomes and capabilities:
Determine if current capture of KPIs, SLAs and other metrics (e.g., employee incentives) are just for collection or are these measurements truly bringing change within the organization
While it is great to imagine and document your future, but any shortcuts you take in the assessing your present will come back to haunt you in the future!
Analysis
Today (Where you are)
Create a list of roles and responsibilities for everyone in your organization, partners, and vendors
Map hybrid business processes that show people-technology interactions
Determine what data is being captured, managed and disseminated during people-technology interactions
Determine the relevancy of the data for informed decision-making
Assign a cost to each business process
Assess how quickly and easily your organization can respond to employee and customer needs
Determine the various obstacles that result in poor execution of strategy
Understand organizational and individual biases
Tomorrow (Where you want to be)
Eliminate overlapping and redundant roles and responsibilities that don’t provide value to your organization
Create governance, functions, teams and business processes that optimize the use of data across people and technologies
Create metrics that result in effective decision-making and lessons learned to improve those metrics
Communicate effectively to eliminate any preconceived notions of your transformation journeys
Create test labs for all employees to test business models, enhance current capabilities and new capabilities
Create a new culture through norms, standards, communications, and incentives and know that not everyone is motivated by the same things
Continuously self-evaluate your maturity level and make use of lessons learned
Asking Questions
Strategy
Who is affected by transformation?
What siloed/outdated/imaginary/undocumented processes are affecting strategic execution?
What technology and non-technology tools are used to make a strategic decision?
Politics
Who is distorting transformation communications?
What processes and data are leading to transformation easily being vetoed?
What technologies’ decisions are empowering transformation?
Innovation
Who is assessing frontline employees, external customers, similar industries and different industries to bring innovation to the organization?
What processes are in place to raise people’s ability to contribute?
Are there technologies to test out new capabilities and business models?
Culture
Who is motivated to participate in transformation journeys?
What kind of processes are in place to encourage culture change?
What kinds of technologies are used to assess culture and changes?
Execution
Who is setting the expectation at all levels for the transformation journeys?
What processes are in place that obstructs strategic execution?
What technologies are in place that obstructs strategic execution?
Transitions
Organizational Structures
Optimize organizational structures based on a mix of functions, products, services, and geography
Create formal and informal strategic linking through processes and coordination
Governance and Processes
Create governance structures and processes to evaluate how data can be captured, managed, modeled, assembled and deployed
People
Find people from top, middle, and frontlines to champion transformation journeys
Show how transformation actually makes people’s lives easier
Program Mission
Views transformation journeys as an investment portfolio of multiple projects and operations
Connects business and technical operations to business capabilities and outcomes
Measures relevant metrics and abandon irrelevant metrics that cannot be connected to business value
Creates alignment of IT with non-IT functions (e.g., Accounting, Administration, Business Development, Customer Service, Finance, HR, Management, Manufacturing, Operations, Productions, R&D, Sales, etc.)
Creates effective feedback loops across the organization
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The term Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is used to describe the strategies, methods, and tools to produce, share and capture information in organizations. Humans and/or computer systems use this structured (e.g., data in databases), semi-structured (e.g., social media) and unstructured (e.g., emails) information to make decisions that can improve the organization. Since every individual/team/group/unit/department produces and consumes information thus it becomes imperative that organizations start thinking about how to provide the right information to the right audience at the right time by taking into account how information flows holistically across the organization.
Organizations need to create the right balance between humans and/or computer systems to leverage information from internal and external sources. This balance comes from the understanding that humans and computer systems are both influenced by experiences and biases. The experiences and biases in computer systems emerge when humans decide (1) which data should be used, (2) how algorithms should use the data and (3) when to accept or reject the recommendations of the computer systems.
In today’s world, Big Data has captured the imagination of most organizations and how it can help improve them. Organizations are collecting more and more data every day, writing algorithms and mining for patterns to use this data for descriptive analytics, predictive analytics, prescriptive analytics, and even Artificial Intelligence. However, if an organization’s Big Data strategy lacks an ECM mindset and does not have mature data management governance processes in place then organizations would not be able to fully release the true potential of the information they continue to produce, share and capture.
To start having an ECM mindset for Big Data, organizations need to (1) identify the different structured, semi-structured and unstructured internal/external information sources consumed and produced by the organization, (2) identify all the obstacles in the smooth flow of information and (3) train all individuals to see all data as assets to be leveraged.
First, let’s identify some of the internal and external information sources. Here is a non-exhaustive list to get started:
Databases, Data Warehouses, Data Marts and Data Lakes
Decision-Making Software and Systems
Delivery Software and Systems
Document Management (DM) Software and Systems
Document Software and Systems
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
Electronic Data Processing (EDP) Software and Systems
Emails, Instant Messages (IM), Web Chats and Mobile Chats
Expert Software and Systems
Enterprise Architecture (EA) Repositories
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Software and Systems
Extensible Markup Language (XML)
Financial Software and Systems
General Administration Software and Systems
Global economic trends and reports
Governments, Colleges, Universities, and Internal R&D Departments
Handprint Character Recognition (HCR) Software and Systems
Human Resources (HR) Software and Systems
Images and videos
Industry, Competitor, Partner and Vendor reports
Information Technology (IT) Software and Systems
Innovation and R&D Software and Systems
Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) Software and Systems
Internet of Things (IoT) Software and Systems
Inventory Software and Systems
Investment Software and Systems
Legal and Insurance Software and Systems
Learning Management Software and Systems
Lessons Learned Software and Systems
Log Files and Incident Report Software and Systems
Manufacturing Software and Systems
Marketing Software and Systems
Network Software and Systems
Operations Software and Systems
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Software and Systems
Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) Software and Systems
Paper and Electronic Documents
Paper and Electronic Forms
Partners, Vendors and Consumer Electronics
Payroll Software and Systems
Phone Software and Systems
Procurement Software and Systems
Procurement Software and Systems
Production Software and Systems
Production Support Software and Systems
Program and Project Management Software and Systems
Records Management (RM) Software and Systems
Retail Software and Systems
Robots, Software Robots and Robotic Systems
Sales Software and Systems
Social Media and Forums
Software Development Software and Systems
Supply Chain Software and Systems
Version Control and Release Software and Systems
Warehouse Software and Systems
Web and mobile applications
Websites, Portals, Intranets, and Extranets
Workflow Management Software and Systems
Second, let’s look at some of the obstacles to smooth information flows across organizations:
Self-Preservation – People think that sharing information makes them vulnerable.
Doubt – People are unsure of how much importance others would pay to their information.
Repetition – Processes are not in place to know how many times the same data field is created, captured and shared.
Awareness – Processes created in a vacuum don’t take into account why they were created in the first place and if they have run out of their usefulness.
Imbalance – Too many or too few technology systems to capture information.
Black Hole – Technology systems continue to ingest massive amounts of data without providing any direct and relevant benefits to the organization.
Lastly, to help individuals in considering the importance of data, (1) a culture of data as leverage needs to be created, (2) individuals should be empowered to use data to enhance and challenge the business models, (3) every individuals’ data success and failures should be encouraged and shared so that lessons can be learned and (4) there should be quicker and easier ways for individuals to sift through historical and new incoming data.
For an ECM mindset lets understand the complexities, intricacies, and subtleties of data –> information –> knowledge by asking the following questions:
Today
Tomorrow
Who is incentivized at the executive, middle management and frontline individuals’ levels for making information-based decisions?
Who should be incentivized at the executive, middle management and frontline individuals’ levels for making information-based decisions?
What happens to information when it is produced and consumed?
What should happen to information when it is produced and consumed?
Where are the entry and exit points of data?
Where should be the entry and exit points of data?
When does information become irrelevant?
When should information become irrelevant?
Why all information is important?
Why all the information should be important?
When you are asking yourself the above questions, keep in mind a survey of data scientists that revealed that 80% of the time in data is spent on collecting data sets, cleaning the data and organizing data. The reason for this is (1) there are no comprehensive lists of all the relevant data sets available inside and/or outside organizations, (2) there are no agreed-upon consistent international standards on how data sets should be published and/or obtained, (3) there are no substantially automated ways (yet) of how to get rid of all junk data and (4) holistic global data exchange standards across industries don’t exist. Now, imagine if your organization had an ECM mindset, what benefits would you reveal?
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