Sometimes the best fix is taking steps out.
Before adding technology, we look at the path the work takes: where the friction, the bottlenecks and the extra steps are. Often, what’s missing isn’t software.
We talk to the people who do the work, follow how it actually flows and map where information gets lost. It is the approach we describe in Understand before proposing.
The result is a shorter process, which can then be automated, or may not need to be.
- request by email
- print the form (step removed)
- team lead approves
- scan and resend (step removed)
- management approves
- log it in Excel (step removed)
- post it to the accounts
7 steps become 4
a typical case: the struck-out steps only existed because they always had.
When nobody knows
why it’s done that way.
- “Everyone does the same job their own way.”
- “A simple approval goes through four people.”
- “The same mistakes keep happening, always at the same point.”
- “When someone goes on holiday, the work stops.”
Design the path
before the tool.
Map what really happens
The real process, not the one in the manual: who does what, in what order, with what information, and where it waits.
Take out what adds nothing
Duplicated steps, approvals that decide nothing, copies nobody needs. Whatever doesn’t change the outcome goes.
Give every step an owner
When something fails, you know who to ask. When someone leaves, the process doesn’t leave with them.
Only then, technology
Once the path is clean, it becomes clear what is worth automating or connecting, and what is fine as it is.
We don’t put software on top of a process that doesn’t work.
Automating a step that shouldn’t exist just gets the wrong thing done faster.
Who it
makes sense for.
✓ it makes sense if
- the same work is done differently by different people;
- there are approvals, copies or records nobody can justify;
- mistakes always turn up at the same points;
- you want to tidy up before investing in software.
✗ it doesn’t if
- you’re after an assessment to file away and change nothing;
- nobody has time to change the way they work;
- you want new software before knowing what it should do.
We’ve written
about this.
One conversation
is enough to start.
Tell us what is slowing your business down. You’ll get a straight answer, usually the same day.