2007, The Year Of Efficiency

I am totally amazed by the number of people talking about improving efficiency in 2007. It is as if someone has launched a campaign and everyone is on the bandwagon. It is a good thing I think.

Companies for so long have been told that if they buy a certain software, or adopt a certain program, the will become efficient. I think the honeymoon is over. Companies have realized that it is people, not software, that needs to become more efficient. Software and programs are only tools. There has to be a commitment and a recognition of steps that improve efficiency. It is really more a journey than a goal.

We are working with new customers that have made a commitment to be more efficient in how they operate. It is making them look at processes and procedures, methods and culture to find how to do things better. Faster used to be a goal, but faster sometimes means lower quality. Get the product out the door, we will fix any problems later! Consumers are no longer willing to put up with that. Consumers expect that companies can deliver products and services with more features faster than before, with higher quality. That expectation has been driven by the ad campaigns of companies trying to sell software and services. The consumer sees and add that says companies running so-and-so's software is faster, better, etc. they will assume that products developed by that company are also better.

This is where efficency comes into play. Companies must not simply be faster and cheaper, but also better. By managing more aspects of the business, companies can do just that. Our customers have found surprising benefits to using our software. Originally purchased to get a single process and related documents under control, as they worked with the process management component, they discovered a powerful tool for process improvement that could take them far beyond creating and approving documents. They could manage tasks as part of a process, and then see what was (or wasn't) happening, and how long it took to happen (or not happen). This visibility changes everything.

The old addage, "You don't know what you don't know." applies here. If you could never see the HOW behind a process, then you would never know what to do to improve it. It would simply be an exercise done in simulation by a process "expert". But if you could see the tasks in a process, and know how long it was taking to complete the tasks, and also have the information to tell you about problems that impacted completion of thoses tasks, then you could effectively correct those problems and become more efficient. Visibility changes everything.

Can you "see" your processes well enough to make meaningful changes that improve efficiency? If not, maybe its time you could.