The 3 common traits of optimized organizations

People and processes – Part II

At the end of the day, optimization is about getting your organization to produce results faster and at the lowest possible cost.

As I wrote in part I of this post (People and processes part I)), I believe there are three traits shared by organizations that optimize their people and processes successfully:

1. Transparency: They define processes in a practical way
2. Measurability: They define their parameters for success
3. Automatization: They use tools that help standardize processes, but at the same time, do so in a flexible and practical way

While these three prerequisites to optimization are in no way trivial, they are definitely possible with the right approach. The rest of this post offers a description of each characteristic, and some tips for how to achieve it.

Transparency: Define processes in a practical way

Many attempts to automate business processes have gotten stuck for months – or even years – at the stage of describing and defining them. You cannot, however, measure, automate and optimize processes unless you have a shared understanding of them in your organization. These definitions and descriptions are absolutely necessary.

Be familiar with your own processes, input, output and activities

Optimization typically requires a method to describe and define processes in a structured form. For example, BPMN (Business Process model and Notation) is a widely used method to describe business processes, the people involved and their interactions.

Comprehensible to both humans and computers

Comprehensibility is a prerequisite, not only for transparency, but in fact, also for the other two critical characteristics – measurability and automatization. As mentioned, you cannot measure and improve if the people involved don’t have a common understanding of the processes. Likewise, you cannot automate if the descriptions aren’t understandable to computers.

Describe at the right level of detail

Many large IT providers (Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, Accenture, for example) have developed their own models for various business areas. In my opinion, they are rarely useful in practice, however, because they’re either too high-level, too detailed or not relevant (for example, dependent on the IT provider’s own software tool).

Tip: A best practice with regard to definitions and descriptions is to start with one simple and concrete process based on some objective criteria. This could, for example, be large volume/high frequency or high quality/minimal use of time.

Measurability: your parameters for success

In order to optimize, you have to know how processes work and be able to measure them.

There are many interesting numbers in this context. For example volume (number of cases), duration (start to end), time usage in the individual steps of a process (identification of bottlenecks), costs (number of hours per person involved), quality (the case’s outcome, error rate), and so on.

Consider measuring manually

Although obviously more difficult, it is possible to measure manually. It might require extra manual registering or time measurements with a stop watch, for example. Nevertheless, it can be worthwhile, and in fact, is often used (in systems employing Lean theory, for example) – especially in the initial implementation/optimization phase.

Repeat and automate

Optimization often requires repeated measurement, and that the process is automated with the right software – one which can do the job in a cost-effective manner. Measuring the process is kay in order to achieve the optimization which typically was the reason for automating from the beginning. 

Automation: Standard, yet practical

Automation standardizes processes, but it’s important that it does so in a way that is not too rigid for the individual user. If users have difficulty using the system, then it defeats the purpose.

A concrete example

An example in the context of ScanJour is our Captia implementation for handling of Article 20 -- the so-called, §20-questions rule introduced to Danish parliament. The Captia solution for handling the associated requirements has both a well-defined process and precise requirements for process deadlines built into it.

The process is described at two levels (master-flow and sub-flow) and is driven by the Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF) with ScanJour’s ”Adaptive Process Framework” (APF) built on top of WWF as well as in Captia.

Standardized yet flexible

The system was designed to enable processes to be described and defined in a standard way (using WWF and if desired BPMN).  What’s more, the individual user doesn’t necessarily have to be familiar with all the details of the entire process.

A familiar tool

This is achieved by means of a very familiar media (the mail client in Outlook), which is used to deliver information, initiate activities and approve or reject phases of the process.

This method of automation has many advantages. One important aspect is that users can handle process information and participate in the process without having to adapt to yet another new piece of software and interface.  Furthermore, the process can be contributed to from many different devices – as long as there is a standard mail client.

What will the future bring?

We believe that in the future, more and more software will be developed with built-in process support. From ScanJour’s point of view, our R&D department is very much focused on this with regard to both our Captia and APF solutions.

We believe quite simply that the current comprehensive Captia functionality for process support can help increase the optimization of case handling and information search in the continuing digitalization of the public (and private) sector.

Learn more about Captia

Read Part I of this post

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