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The need for transparent processes

02 September 2015

1. Why worry about processes – Pt. 1


Why is it important not only to have a process blueprint somewhere but also to keep it reviewed and updated frequently? All of your employees are probably experts in their daily work (and I really mean this!) so why worry about it and spend time and money on this topic?

Imagine a meeting room full of people. 30 curious faces staring at a large projection of a computer monitor on the wall. They came for a software presentation. But not any software, the new version of their core system for product data is going to be released – the heart of their daily work is going to be upgraded! High expectations from management- as well as from user-side are put into this upgrade and today will be the day. The project team and a trainer are there to show them the enhancements and make sure all key users are committed to the release.

The trainer has prepared the session, based on a guide and workflow that was put into place as a process-blueprint when the system was introduced a few years ago. She starts enthusiastically by explaining the first step of the process and how it was improved with the new features of the system. This is when the first people in the audience start murmuring and frowning – this is not really reflecting their daily work.

A few presented process steps later, an intensive debate is taking place in the audience: although every participant is carrying out nearly the same steps, they all have different approaches and thoughts about which way is the best to achieve the result – and only users without broader working experience are sticking to the process blueprint. Something else that turns out during the discussion, is that the process blueprint still contains steps that have been automated or outsourced long ago but misses some tasks that have become relevant recently.

This definitely has the advantage of using the creativity of each involved person to find the best way to achieve the goal, but also some downsides, but we will come to those later.

2. Why worry about processes – Pt. 2

And why is it crucial to have the knowledge of how a process step is carried out not only in the head of your employees but also documented transparently, so that it can easily be  found and accessed?

Let’s jump some time in the execution of this project to a point in time about a year after the go live: During the software presentation, the project team had discovered that there was a lot of potential for process optimization and so they had started evaluating the most important and most time-consuming tasks to do a redesign. As a part of it, the phase-out process for products has been the first major goal to be optimized. One part of this process has been a double-check with a contact person in the warehouse-team about the items to be phased-out. Since this sounded obsolete to the team as all relevant master data was synchronized between ERP and warehouse management system, they decided to skip this step from now on – it just meant a dependency and unnecessary delay in the flow.

Now, after about a year, the season is about to change, and most of the offerings of the company are to be replaced by new ones. Part of the fulfillment process for all these goods is of course the in-delivery to the warehouse. As in most modern distribution centers, a computer system decides where the goods are stored and how packages are picked, shipped and what happens to customer returns. Among all these wares, there is a quantity of goods that was already bought by the product managers in the same season a year ago and after that season was phased out. During the phase out, the product manager had decided to ship all remaining stock and potential customer returns to the company’s outlet in Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, this setting had remained in the warehouse management system, and so, instead of being stored in the warehouse, the whole incoming stock was sent to that outlet destination and sold there to an extremely low price!

During the examination of the root cause for this, the project team found out that it had been a gap in the process for quite a long time – and that the contact person in the warehouse who was involved in a double check before the redesign of the process bridged this gap by keeping a list of outlet-items and removed those destination settings whenever they were appearing on a despatch advise and were to be in delivered again.

3. How a process benefits you

So, how can these situations be avoided? Well, first of all, make sure you have time and resources to analyze the existing processes in your company. Reverse engineering in process modeling is time-intensive, since you have to ensure you are capturing all the different steps and tasks your employees carry out – and also all the different ways they do it! The better way is doing a pro-active process design, possibly aligned with the implementation of a PIM or MDM-system or any other project that involves a broad change management. The involvement of external partners during these projects will also allow you to benefit from external best practices of your business sector (or even unrelated business sectors that faced similar problems). And it will help you to avoid traps like the ‘human correction for outlet products’-trap from the example above as the transparency during a design phase will help you  to identify these gaps.

The documentation of your process is as important as the awareness for complexity of the process design task. You will need to provide an internal knowledge base that is easy to use and easy to update. Build a process landscape, that shows each involved role, her or his position as well as dependencies, tasks and how they have to be carried out. Especially the latter is important, since, as we learned from the first part of the small example, there could be major differences in the ways a task is carried out, although the desired result would be the same. These differences might result in lags of quality, unnecessary delays or even dead-ends. Also, with a proper landscape and guides on how to execute these steps, new hires will have a much easier life starting their daily work and finding routines.

 

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