I ran across something from the University of California that I found interesting. They are addressing the topic of process simplification. They have identified what they believe is the foundation for process quality, improvement and innovation. They describe this foundation as having 5 'piers'.

Their 5 'pier' foundation includes: Simplified accountability, Better information, Responsive structure, Behavioral values and Leveraged technology. Building on these 5 'piers', your company can streamline their processes.

Why is this important?

They believe that streamlined processes will reduce process cycle times, improve transparency and improve quality.

Our thoughts…

As you know, I have been talking about efficiency for quite a while. Of the many definitions, I see efficiency as the ability to accomplish a job with a minimum expenditure of time and effort. I have to believe that a company’s main objective is to reduce costs, increase quality, increase revenues and, finally, increase profits.

I think it is important to discuss ‘what’s in it for you?’ - So I will make this a multi-part newsletter. I will address the following: Reduced Costs; Increased Quality; Increase Revenues; and, Increase Profits over the next several ‘Ideas’.

On the Topic of Reduced Costs

Select any process within your company. If you could simplify/reduce the time it takes to complete that process, wouldn’t that reduce the costs associated to that process. If you could do this to multiple processes, wouldn’t that reduce costs.

Let’s look at a specific example. A paper based change request process costs a company $2,500 per change request just to manage the request process. If you process 50 changes per month, your costs would be in the neighborhood of $1.5 million. Our customers are experiencing an order of magnitude reduction in the cost of managing change requests – today it costs them about $250 per change request. They are seeing a savings greater than $1 million a year.

The University of California article talks about ways you might streamline your processes. You can reduce the number of: hand-offs, steps, wait/delay intervals, signatures, decision points and pathway options. This assumes that you can dictate what steps are to be taken and how long it should take. This assumes that you can actually see where an activity is within its process – if it is late, you could do something about it.

Next topic – increased quality

Your Thoughts…