Contributing towards improving a customers Business Process

Organizations are always in the mode of fine tuning their processes to cut the last bit of dead time or even to improve the quality by just a small percent. It can be called the Kaizen syndrome. Increasingly, BA/Consultants are expected to come up with new processes or workarounds to improve their business processes.  After addressing the problems faced by analysts in various organizations my observations on process improvement haven’t really changed but are still very fundamental.

1. Identify Critical Success Factors (CSFs) :

One of the methods which I have always employed in my assignments irrespective of  the scope of the assignment is to identify the CSFs  of the business/business process/department as the case may be. Aim at contributing towards helping the client to improve his business performance on critical factors like cycle time, utilization, etc.. Such a focus invariably leads to a process transformation as in BPR.

2. Critical Constraints :

Critical Constraints are a special type of a CSF.  For example a Truck /Wagon / Container in the transport sector or an Arc Furnace in a steel company are examples of what a critical constraint might be.  The ability of the BA to identify critical constraints of a business and then design systems which will enable the organization to fully leverage these critical constraints paves a path for dramatic process improvement.

3. Challenging Business Rules :

Business rules in organizations exist in the form of Policies/guidelines/norms /decision rules/practices

For instance at my institute faculty are expected to mentor up to 5 students to ensure quality of interaction. This is of course known to us as Cardinality in the OOA sense.

Most BAs miss the point that merely challenging such a rule -> why should faculty  mentor only 5 students -> leads to several alternate solutions – one which could be to have e-mentoring thereby increasing the bandwidth of the faculty. You can imagine the number of cardinality rules which we come across every day – what a huge potential we have to change the way the process is defined!

4. Simplifying  Business rules :

Business Rules Diagrams are increasingly being used to analyze and document Business Rules.  The diagram uses AND/OR Gates to represent the input and resulting state. The visual nature of the diagram stimulates thought about how we can strengthen the rule (which is to add more conditions to the AND gates or add more AND gates) or to simplify/dilute the rule by using OR gates.   Simplifying rules has a deep impact on the design of the process.

5. Leveraging fundamental Benefits offered by Information technology :

We are all aware of the benefits which Information Technology offers such as Integration,  Disintermediation, opportunities to provide self-help to users etc  Not all  BAs consciously leverage these benefits while visualizing solutions.

6. Eliminating MUDA or waste of any kind :

MUDA is a Japanese word for waste. This could be in the form of waiting time etc
While most BAs tend to identify the process stages and map them, the wait states often go unnoticed. Worst still the solutions offered usually focus on improving the process stages which can be very expensive. My submission is that you can get an improvement in process performance by merely minimizing the MUDAs what is most important to note is that these improvements usually come without much investment!

7. Exploiting States of Key Objects :

BAs and Designers use State Transition Diagrams. For example if we identify some of the key states of a Shopper at a Mall –
• Is window shopping
• Is confused (does not know where to go )
• Is tired
• Is waiting in the queue for billing

Identifying these states provides tremendous opportunity for creating unique customer experiences and yet enhancing value for business– for example:

• Arrangement for seating can help a tired person – Digital displays facing the seating arrangement can help flash business messages and exploit his wait state
• Faster billing processes and smart-shopping carts are of course solutions to address the problem of queues while displays facing the queue and merchandise near the billing counter enhance spontaneous buying by the shopper.

You may wonder what this has got to do with IT. As a BA/Consultant you are expected to help improve the Business process not merely design IT solutions!
The important message which I wish to convey is – ‘use the already familiar tools not merely as a means of documenting but as means of visualizing better solutions’ 

Process improvement can then be very easy!

Pradeep Pendse
Dean – IT/e-Business, Welingkar Institute of Management, Research and Development.

Comments

[Rajesh R. Naik]

Good Article!

In my opinion, Challenging and simplifying business rules is the key. Some of the techniques I found useful are:
- 5Ws and 1H of method study - What, Why, When, Who, Where and How
- PRA - Problem, Rule and Assumption technique by Hammer
- SCAMPER - Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to other use, Eliminate, Rearrange

Thanks,

[BPO Services]

Can you able to give outsourcing as a category along with these points?

regards
SBL - BPO Services