Business Process Data: On Dashboards and Windshields

Reading about IBM’s “Stream Computing” in Business Week magazine this week, I am reminded of a time in a meeting several years ago when I groaned: “I don’t want a better dashboard; I want a cleaner windshield. I want to know what’s coming and a dashboard can’t tell me that. Those are lagging indicators.  At best, a dashboard tells me what I have done in the recent past. I want to know what my suppliers and customers are doing as they approach…before they get here.”

On My Windshield

I never did get my Windshield. Today, we’re lucky if we have a dashboard. It would  put many of us in a small minority if we could have near-real-time indicators of what just happened  on our desk-tops. From a business process management perspective, how would life be if I could see changes in my supply chain before they affect me? If I could see my suppliers’ dashboards, would that be enough to give me an idea of what I could expect?  If, instead of relying on marketing, I relied on interoperable business data between my company and my customers, could I see their demand before they pick up the phone and place an order? That information would help me in innumerable ways.I suspect very large companies can afford supply-chain and distribution information management and reporting but what is a mid and small sized organization to do?

Is it possible that my contracts with suppliers and customers might involve strategic dashboard exchange? Of course  it is. In a business-to-business relationship, my clients might even think they were doing business with a pretty smart guy if they knew I needed to know something about their data prior to them needing to know they need me. I bet they would be happy to give me that information in small packets called “Bugs”. Throughout the day, “bugs” would hit my “windshield” and I would know what’s coming down the road. You could have a lot of fun with this metaphor. Landscape, traffic signs, intersections, accidents, traffic jams, you name it.

Operations, Finance, Marketing and Sales: Performance Metrics During the Race

Dashboards are helpful. Don’t get me wrong. I find them especially helpful once I have arrived. I can quickly look back over the course of the trip (or the day at work) and understand where I have been, what my top speed was, how many miles I covered and how much fuel I used (plug your favorite business metrics in here). A windshield, however, lets me calibrate  what is happening in the midst of a high-speed race. As a former football player, I can tell you that my stats after the game were a lot less important to me than was knowing where the line-backer was when I pulled out on a sweep. Failure to see my adversary or my teammates often caused me great pain. Successfully anticipating blows led to touchdowns.

The Importance of Anticipation: Getting Out of the Blind Spot

We are living through the negative consequences of not anticipating what lies ahead. We’ve all become so enamored with the rear-view mirror and the mounted DVD players in our SUVs that we have forgotten to simply out the window in front of us and drive defensively.

This may all seem trite and I may sound like I am beating this metaphor to death but I think we need simple reminders these days. Look outside your vehicle and assess what is happening down the road. Many companies have done this very well and managed to keep staffing levels and inventory at quite safe levels. Other companies were so busy fiddling with their dashboards and cell phones and doing their make-up while they drove that they missed their exit and went over a cliff.

What do you need to know about the road ahead and the drivers around you? What kinds of “bugs” do you want hitting your “windshield”? This is a great question for your next executive team meeting. It’s also a great question for your business analysts and your line staff.

• what would you need to know about your customers’ “demand behavior” that would allow you to do your job better?
• what would you need to know about your suppliers and supplies?
• what would you need to know about the economy?
• political changes around the state, country, world?
• currency and credit changes?
• social trends and patterns?
• legal developments?

Keep in mind that as you’re driving in LA, for example, you don’t want to know what’s happening on the roads in Brussels. Keep your expectations “close” to you. There is little true and accurate value in looking “down the road” for more than 30-60 days at a time. Conditions on the roads are changing far too quickly. Pay attention to the drivers next to you where it matters most. The next bend in the road is far more important than the bridge several hundred miles away.

Give your data needs some attention, ask your suppliers and customers for data and use it effectively. Good data makes good information. Reliable information becomes intelligence and enough intelligence used appropriately over time makes one wise.

Spy: Small Business Process Improvements Based on Process Benchmarks

I have to admit to being a chronic process observer and critic. Every time I sit in a restaurant, go into a store, arrive at a hotel, go to the doctor or shop online I pay attention to what staff and managers are doing and I judge. Sometimes I am deeply fond of what I see and other times I am vicious in my critique. While I am a little obsessive about all this, there is some virtue in the exercise. As a consultant, it’s important to have had exposure to tactics and process that work especially well in order to make stronger recommendations for clients. It’s also important, working across sectors to develop a mental inventory of what doesn’t work, what can be emulated and what can be tweaked to serve cross-purposes. Frankly, I would hope that anyone aspiring to build a business, product or consultancy in this domain would be doing the same kinds of things.

Spy versus Spy: Lean Innovation

Welcome to the age of transparency, reverse engineering and piracy. Watching the equivalent of So You Think You Can Dance on Indian TV broadcast by satellite last night, my Indian friend quipped: “They copy everything we do”. Reading about the new film Duplicity in the latest issue of Fast Company I am reminded that the “leanest” forms of adaptation are mimicry and emulation. It’s called “evolution” folks.It’s the 100th Monkey Theory in blazing sound and technicolor. In some cases, it’s downright criminal so be careful where you draw the line.

I’m sure by now you’ve heard that the sum total information in the world is doubling every 3-6 months or something like that. Similarly, in an open information age, we have the capacity to observe, re-engineer, implement, measure and observe again at dizzying rates. Knowing that competitors are observing and mimicking us should serve as a catalyst for greater and faster innovation (and ever more patent filings).

How About A Small Business?

Small enterprises can’t afford teams of engineers and analysts that prowl the web and deconstruct rival products the way Toyota and Honda tore into the Saturn. There is no virtue in piracy so what’s a small business to do? Give observation and emulation a try. Watch what others do and then think in terms of business process. What process can you borrow and pilot in your own shop?

Process Benchmarking

A Benchmark is a standard and, for our purposes, the Gold Standard. The Best Practice. I want to advocate for an open process exchange that enables up-and-coming enterprises to learn from the best. This idea may never take root in the private sector but it might in government and non-profit sectors. For example, what can my library learn from the Pentagon? What can a Blood Drive learn from the Census? What can the EPA learn from Green peace?

As a small business owner, I can effectively identify the leader in my market, the highest quality product or the lowest priced competitor and I can start studying how they deliver their products and services. Similarly, I can go to the leader in a totally unrelated field and observe them in action.

Benchmarking

Rivals’ and leaders’ strengths my not be in their products (engineering, materials, quality and performance) alone. You can look for benchmarks in the following areas:

• Suppliers – supply chain, quality, ethics
• Human Resources – recruiting, hiring and retention
• Customer Service – walk-in, online and telephone, service responsiveness policies, dress code, etc
• Marketing and Sales – packaging, pricing, branding, placement, promotions, sales tactics and pitches
• Finance – pricing, financing, terms

The point is, identify some leaders, grab a pad of paper and a pen and go observe what they do and HOW they do it. Imagine how you could mimic, emulate or adopt what they do.

Keep it Simple

A final word on simple. While their algorithms are crazy complex and probably cannot ever be emulated, Google stands as the single greatest example of simplicity in customer experience. That simple one-box web page with scarcely 50 words on it – as of today – owns 64.2% of the world wide web’s search activity. They are killing their rivals with simplicity. How can you do the same?

Airlines Offer Excellent Example Of Importance Of Business Process

I’ve picked on them before and I am going to do it again. It’s just too easy. From time to time, I have to fly American Airlines and every time, my experience is abysmal. This past Sunday was no exception.  Flying out to a national healthcare conference, leaving from Southern California to arrive (with any luck) in Texas was a hopeful and optimistic experiment. Sadly, my worst fears were realized. My worst case scenario, it happens, plays itself out on a large scale for this company with great regularity. They have earned this Dunce Cap.

How Does Southwest Do It? What Makes Them So Good???

USA Today reported (Monday April 6, 2009) that most airlines performed better in the past 12 months. Consumer complaints to the Department of Transportation were down approximately 20%. Southwest Airlines had the very best performance based on consumer complaints with only 0.25 complaints per 100,000 passengers. One important measure – delays – showed, however, that American Airlines had the worst performance among 17 airlines measured with only 69.8% of flights on time.

What Role Do Employees Play?

American Airlines, in a related story, is unable to conduct talks with its unions. No agreements in the past year. USA Today reports that American Airlines’ pilots union has said its members will disrupt (delay) flights to pressure the company until they get a contract. Their bag handlers and mechanics have launched an ad campaign ridiculing American Airlines executive bonuses! Their own VP of HR states: “No one in the industry believes airlines are in a position of financial strength.” What is going on here?!

If you’re not in a position of financial strength, American Airlines, don’t pay out executive bonuses so obscene that your bag handlers(!) are provoked to run ads nationally. If you’re scoring lowest in terms of flight times, negotiate new contracts with your pilots (AA is the only airline NOT to have done so since 9/11).

Bringing all of this back around to the personal level, my flight out was delayed by 90 minutes on the tarmac at the gate. Why? “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re delayed because the crew landing this plane on the previous flight noticed a mechanical problem so we’re waiting for a mechanic and can’t find one.” They knew about the issue BEFORE loading us into the plane, had no mechanic in sight and boarded us anyway. My flight to Dallas ended with 30 minutes on the tarmac while they waited for an open gate. Arriving at my final destination (2 hours late) we waited at the gate 30 more minutes while they tried to find (!) someone who could open the door(!) and hook us up to the jet-way. No crew to be found for literally 30 minutes. This is a mockery of the way a business should be run. Is it any wonder the lead story in USA Today the following morning blasted this joke of an airline? I think not.

What does this have to do with you?

If you run a business or operational area and have anything to learn from this series of blunders, by all means, please apply the lessons. Lessons learned include:

1. Apply BPM to produce superior customer experience
2. Be on time – eliminate time wasting steps and take a “zero tolerance” stance
3. Score high in consumer ratings
4. Get good press
5. Perform well and pay people appropriately
6. Learn from your competitor – especially when it’s Southwest Airlines (King of Process Innovation among airlines)
7. If a product needs mechanical work, take care of it before involving your customer
8. If you suck, make sure you make amends with your customers
9. Don’t pay big bonuses if your performance is in the toilet

Seriously folks, apply what you learn from others’ mistakes. Bring those lessons into your shop and apply them before you become your own achilles heel.

Business Process Re-Engineering: The Enemy of Inertia, Waste and Consensus Complacency

Working with several governmental and non-profit agencies recently, I noticed a pattern emerging that is at once counter-productive and based entirely in fear. What I used to think of as intellectual sloth is giving way to wasteful complacency and what I choose to call a “consensus trance” resulting from fear of losing one’s job and identity. Who would have ever thought the BPM field would awaken so many strange psycho-social bedfellows?

Snap out of it!

I find that the best response to this trance is a tactic long employed by carnival hypnotists: snap people out of it. As an outside consultant, I have a responsibility to identify waste and recommend alternatives and solutions. In order to pull that off in an atmosphere of fear and economic uncertainty, I am resorting to a heightened assertiveness, directness and tough love. I have to point out that it is not simply a matter of process but a matter of organizational dynamics causing my clients pain. Morale is taking a direct hit as it often does when people aren’t performing in ways they know they could (given the opportunity) however, coddling people and enabling even sicker patterns to take root is not the answer.

“Will” the change you want to see in your organization

I am encouraging (if not demanding) that mid-level people and directors seek out more definitive executive sponsorship and greater political will power to enforce change initiatives. Slowly, it’s working. I am documenting decisions like never before so that I can hold people accountable. I am measuring project status at every turn. I am amending contracts wherever possible. None of this is fun but it is all so necessary. If you haven’t already done so, push hard on your Project Charter and Executive Sponsor. Then push even harder on Project Management and then hold people accountable with actual consequences.

Failure is not the end of the world

If your project fails, your process re-engineering efforts produce the wrong outcome, or people on your team fail to meet expectations, act accordingly and appropriately and move on. Dwelling on the fall-out right now will not help anyone. What we need is will, speed, and efficacy.

Let me know what works!