Moving Outside-In. 4 steps to redefining business processes forever.

From the desk of James Dodkins

Part 1 of 4: There are four distinctly Outside-In ways that you can rethinkprocess and in doing so achieve Triple Crown benefits.

Let’s take them in bite sized chunks.

1.     Understand and applying Process diagnostics

2.     Identify and aligning to Successful Customer Outcomes

3.     Re-frame where the process starts and ends

4.     Rethink the business you are in

Let’s start with…1. Understand and applying Process diagnostics:

Earlier we have mentioned Moments of Truth, those all important interactionswith customers. Let¹s take that discussion further and include other closelyrelated techniques for uncovering the real nature of process ­ breakpointsand business rules.

Firstly Moments of Truth (MOT) were first identified by Swedish managementguru Richard Normann (1946-2003) in his doctoral thesis ³ Management andStatesmanship² (1975).In 1989 Jan Carlson, the CEO of Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) immortalized thephrase with his book Moments of Truth¹. He clearly linked all customerinteraction as the Causes of Work for the airline and set about eradicatingnon value added MOT¹s and then improving those he couldn¹t remove.a)    Moments of Truth are a Process Diagnosticb)    They occur ANYWHERE a customer ³touches² a processc)    They can be people-to-people, people-to-system, systems-to-people,system-to-system, and people-to-productd)    ANY interaction with a customer is a Moment of Truthe)    Moments of Truth are both process Points of Failure and Causes of Work

Carlson transformed the fortunes of SAS with this straightforward insight ­all work in our organizations is ultimately caused by the Moment of Truth.Fix them and you fix everything else.All Moments of Truth should be eradicated and those remaining improved. Indoing so the customer experience is improved, costs are reduced andproductivity maximized.

Next let¹s review Breakpoints. Breakpoints (BP¹s) are the direct consequenceof MOT¹s and are all the internal interactions that take place as we managethe processes caused by the customer interactions.a) Any place that a hand-off occurs in the process is a Break Pointb) Break Points can be person to person, person to system, system to personor system to systemc) Break Points are both process Points of Failure and Causes of Work

By identifying BP¹s we can set about uncovering actions that would in turnremove them, or if not improve them. BP¹s are especially evident wereinternal customer supplier relationships have been established say betweenInformation Systems departments and Operations. Empirical research suggeststhat for every Moment of Truth there are an average of 3 to 4 Breakpoints.In other words a process with ten MOT¹s will typically yield 30-40Breakpoints.All Breakpoints should be eradicated and if not at the very least improved.In doing so we get more done with less, red tape is reduced, controlimproves and the cost of work comes down.

The third in our triad of useful Outside-In techniques is Business Rules.Business Rules are points within a process where decisions are made.a)    Some Business Rules are obvious while others must be ³found²b)    Business Rules can be operational, strategic or regulatory and theycan be system-based or manualc)    Business Rules control the ³behavior² of the process and shape the³experience² of those who touch itd)    Business Rules are highly prone to obsolescencee)    We must find and make explicit the Business Rules in the process

Business Rules (BR¹s) are especially pernicious in that they are created forspecific reasons however over time their origin is forgotten but theireffect remains. For instance one Life insurance company had a delay of eightdays before issuing a policy once all the initial underwriting work wascomplete. This has a serious impact on competitiveness as newcomers wereable to issue policies in days rather than weeks. After some investigationit was discovered that the 8 day storage¹ rule was related to the length oftime it takes ink to dry on parchment paper. This rule hadn¹t surfaced untilthe customer expectations changed. There are many examples of previouslyuseful rules evading 21st century logic and blocking the achievement ofsuccessful customer outcomes. All Business Rules should be made explicit andchallenged in todays context.

Next time we’ll take a look at the second way to radically redefine process:

Identify and aligning to Successful Customer Outcomes

The post Moving Outside-In. 4 steps to redefining business processes forever. first appeared on CX Obsession - for Process & Experience Professionals.

The post Moving Outside-In. 4 steps to redefining business processes forever. appeared first on CX Obsession - for Process & Experience Professionals.