Change or fade

Change is never easy and the challenges it poses are not evenly distributed. New market entrants have the advantage of not being encumbered by a set way of doing things, or established organisational structures with many levels of intertwined and deeply ingrained dependencies (and costs). Established companies have advantages, too. They have customers, experience, market knowledge, a track record, a brand. But these can be swiftly eroded by newcomers with smarter, more efficient operating models and IT systems. Established companies need to transform themselves to thrive in this new age.

There’s some basic stuff that EVERY COMPANY should be doing to lower their handling costs, increase service quality, reduce errors, and improve processing speed. This means doing two things well:

1. Ensure good systems/ERPs/Applications are in place to manage the core activities.

2. Adopt flexible automation technologies, such as RPA, for those areas that it doesn’t make sense to build into the system (or perhaps things that the system can’t do).

What to automate?

There are many things that can (and should) be automated – any process where you copy/paste data or enter the same information time and again is a good place to start. But how do you know? The traditional method is ’discovery’ – an investigation into a process and some of the critical data around it. It’s a good tool but it is time-heavy and contains a lot of subjectivity in the results. There are some advanced tools out there too lurking under the banner of Task and Process Mining. These apps are pocket rockets that can deliver detailed and objective assessments and provide fresh and reliable insights.

Structure.org

As low-value work is identified and automated, it changes an organisation’s structure - some roles disappear while others become more critical. This inevitable shift in workforce demographics needs to be planned for. Strategically, what does your workforce need to look like in three years to achieve your strategy? How are you positioned to handle the big events occurring in your sector? Do you need to hit the reset and reorder your company using a zero-based tool kit? Is your digital fabric woven together to provide your customers with the information, integration, and flexibility that they are demanding? And when all of this is done, how do you keep on being effective and improving?

Execution Management Systems

This is powerful kit that lets you take the real-time pulse of your administration. It gives a business manager the ability, at any point, to see how the organisation is running. Live. You can observe in real time how the changes you are making are impacting. It removes guesswork and gut feeling and replaces it with fact-based data.

Riding the push

Companies are being pushed towards better operating models that firmly integrate digital toolkits with human decision making. Getting the mix of humanware and software right requires a strategic plan. We can help with this.