The Culture Builders

Recap

Part 1: Legacy enterprise systems have implicit workflows. Implicit workflows are difficult to follow. They are opaque. They cause errors and losses. Operations based on implicit workflow are difficult to improve and scale.

Part 2: Explicit workflows mimic the way work is done. They overcome the challenges posed by implicit workflows. They leverage digitization and eliminate drudgery. Explicit workflows let people focus on adding value.

Spoiler alert:

Your stakeholders’ experience depends on speed, predictability, and quality of your workflows. Your workflows reflect your organization’s culture.

In the previous edition, I explained how explicit workflows change the game. Day-to-day work like handling an opportunity or allocating a resource gets done quickly. Your decisions are backed by real-time and high fidelity data. The benefits of explicit workflow go well beyond the day-to-day operations. 

Explicit workflows engender a new culture. But before I explain ‘ The Culture Builders’, let us dive into how to get there.

Getting there

Solutions like BPM software can provide explicit workflows, but it is obvious that the islands of data in the legacy systems will impact the quality of your decisions. BPM software adds another data island.  Integrating BPM software into existing systems makes the implementation heavy -if at all you achieve it in reasonable time and cost. 

A natural home to explicit workflows

A versatile PSA designed ground up to straddle the islands of automation is a natural home for explicit workflows. Such a PSA should also have a workflow engine that allows you to configure workflows by drag and drop method.

Implementing a versatile PSA with an inbuilt workflow engine.

Legacy system implementation has one very important step : mapping. This innocuous sounding word means that you must change ( reengineer) the way you work.

It is the other way round when you implement the PSA. You configure your workflows to mimic various steps you usually take. If you wish to add a step to approve project bids above a certain value or below a certain margin threshold, you configure a decision point with that logic. You can build different workflows for different categories of projects. 

The PSA and its workflow engine provide you with read-to-use workflows and a tool box should you need to alter them or build the new ones.

The cultural hurdle

Before you can build a new culture you will need to deal with a cultural hurdle. That’s for sure. People may have difficulty in formalizing their hitherto informal workflows. They may fear that they would lose flexibility.

So the key is to implement the PSA in small steps. As people start noticing the day-to-day benefits of explicit workflows they will lead the change.

The magic begins.

As I explained in the previous edition, explicit workflows empower people to focus on the value they add. When you notice the real difference you can make, you start questioning unnecessary steps. You ask ‘why I need to do this and why I am needed in this meeting’. Such discussions are important. They lead to efficient workflows.

You tried to improve your implicit work practices but that didn’t go down well. Now people on the job are initiating improvements. That’s the magic.

You need this magic. It is the foundation of a new culture.

Through many small wins, explicit workflows reach the far flung corners of your organization. They cut through its layers. 

Focus on value generation

Explicit workflows put the spotlight on finishing value generating work well and within time. They expose pockets of delays and friction. 

Track & improve

The old maxim -measure that you need to improve -is true. Explicit workflows and the data they generate - e.g. start and end time of every step in every cycle -  let you apply process improvement techniques like reducing cycle times and reducing their variances.

Let’s say, time to approve a bid’s margin varies a lot from one bid to the other. A bit of investigation can easily spot if the delay is due to, say, lack of clarity about the importance of winning specific bids. If so, you can configure the workflow to obtain the required context.

Tracking multiple cycles of a process and the steps within it can generate valuable insights in areas of value generation(improving customers’ experience, optimal use of resources, improving cash flows) and value destruction (errors, redoing, need to chase, dead zones of no activity). 

Continuous learning & improvement

The words continuous learning and improvement usually express only an intent. Despite best intentions, they are of no consequence because your legacy system doesn’t support them. PSA  lets you build your own workflows. It captures your process data, helps you find root causes of errors and delays, lets you incorporate learnings by modifying the workflows. Open up a world of AI use cases

Leveraging AI

Despite AI’s huge potential, it is limited to personal productivity ( drafting emails, automating generation of minutes of meetings, for example) or to peripheral areas. Explicit workflows and single and latest version of data open up the use of AI at every touchpoint. For example, AI can take the drudgery out by digitizing contract pdf files and populating billing milestones. AI can also  throw up patterns of project slippages. It can be used to improve risk assessment. PSA  opens up a whole new world of AI use cases. 

A common use case: Chairman’s review

Companies have period management reviews. At a company that we work with, managers used to spend days gathering data about every operational detail and preparing a presentation.  Managers would often find it difficult to answer questions related to things not presented. Managers would also find it difficult to pinpoint the sources of data and explain how current it could be. This would create doubts about the data itself.

The above picture is by no means unique.  Management reviews are essential and vital but the fact is that they drain manager’s energy and are based on potentially old or insufficient data. Worse, they might be based on obsolete information.

We could change it through our PSA. The managers can now use AI and generate a presentation quickly. Given that every piece of data is aggregated from granular data, it is now possible to provide answers to new questions.

Most companies have regular review meetings. Many of them are held every week. The scene as the above plays out in every meeting. A PSA of the kind explained above will make the meetings productive.

Conclusion of the three part series on workflow

Explicit workflows help generation of value for customers, profits for an organization, and make work worthwhile for its people. Such workflows provide means to track, learn, and improve. PSA with a workflow engine provides the means to build such workflows. Such a PSA helps you build a culture of learning and improvement 

Kytes is a PSA with an inbuilt workflow engine. It is your culture builder.

Please contact us at sales@kytes.com for more information or a demo.