Transforming business processes for the new year
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It’s that time of year again. Businesses everywhere have just completed the annual “budget dance.” It’s a peppy little number and you know the steps well.
First, everyone submits their revenue and expense projections for next year to the finance department. Some models are run and, after being revived with a defibrillator, the CFO informs everyone that the numbers do not work. Everyone sharpens their pencils. Expense cuts are made. After a few rounds, a “budget we can live with” is adopted. Take a bow; the dance is complete. Now you’re wondering how you’re going to hit those revenue numbers without the resources you need.
Enter, stage left, our friend process improvement. In a sea of new hardware, enhanced software, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, the idea of traditional process improvement tools may seem antiquated, but I submit that there is no better, faster, or more cost-effective way to reduce expenses, improve cycle-times, or improve growth than the application of the DMAIC process.
For the uninitiated, DMAIC stands for Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control. It’s an elegant system, designed to make it easier to make things easier. First you define the problem you want to solve. Then you measure the performance of the current process. Next, you analyze the process and test the impact of potential changes. You then improve the process by making a change. And, lastly, you control the new process to ensure changes are maintained and increases in efficiency are observed.
It may sound easy when it’s written out like that, but the truth is, for process improvement newbies, designing a simplified process can feel, well…complicated. Here are a few practical process improvement tools to help get more out of your existing resources in the new year.
Free AI Tools Are Your Friend:
Process improvement may feel unapproachable for some because of the need for data analysis. If you aren’t a mathematician, have no fear! Did you know you can upload an Excel file to ChatGPT and ask it to analyze the data for you? Trend analysis, statistical evaluation, comparative studies, and data visualization are all possible with a simple prompt. You can even ask ChatGPT to summarize the findings and interpret the results for you.
Additionally, you can use tools like CoPilot or ChatGPT to quickly increase your understanding of nearly any topic. My favorite prompt for this uses the 80/20 rule: “I want to learn about [insert topic]. Tell me the most crucial 20% of information that will give me a solid understanding of 80% of the subject.” A word of caution – be careful when uploading data to free, online AI tools. Keep the information generic, don’t include any employee or customer data, and always protect your company’s intellectual property.
Say It Out Loud:
Have someone on your team say the steps in a process to you aloud. It’s amazing how silly some procedures sound when you hear them. Once you hear the process out loud think about the steps from the point of view of your most important stakeholders: your employees and your customers. You want to reduce the process down to as few steps as possible, so only the essential components remain. Remember, you can always add steps back in if something doesn’t work without them.
Test and Learn:
Adopt a “fail fast” mentality and develop crude models or analogs for the process you are trying to simplify. If your process involves moving through a line, use tape on the floor to help you physically experience moving through the queue. If you’re redesigning a webpage, draw the screens on sticky-notes and step through the experience. These prototypes will save you from investing a ton of time and money in building the wrong process.
Test these prototypes on employees and customers. It is critical to test your modifications on people who are not working on the project. This is the only way you’ll know if you truly built a better process or if you just built a new process. Remember, your prototype doesn’t have to be beautiful. Don’t let a lack of artistic ability or technical know-how stand in the way of improving an experience. There will be plenty of time to make it pretty later.
Despite what some would have you believe; process improvement doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t need to be a math-wiz, data nerd, or process junky to reap the benefits of refined, simplified processes. With a common-sense, methodical approach and a few simple tools you can ring in the new year by achieving better results, inspiring new approaches, and creating better experiences for both employees and clients. Who knows – maybe next year we can look into eliminating some steps in the “budget dance.”