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Business case analysis for clients for best practices and development of scoping and deliverables bases on operational budget constraints
What is process analysis? A process can be defined as "a logical series of related transactions that converts input to results or output" (Andersen 1999). The process we are considering is a "business process," which can be defined as "a chain of logical connected, repetitive activities that utilizes the organization's resources to refine an object for the purpose of achieving specified and measurable results or products for internal or external customers." Some examples include the processing of an application, the sales process, and the budgeting process.
Process analysis is an approach that helps managers and companies improve the performance of their business activities. It can be a milestone in continuous improvement (Trischler 1996).
An operation is composed of processes designed to add value by transforming inputs into useful outputs. Inputs may be materials, labour, energy, and capital equipment. Outputs may be a physical product (possibly used as an input to another process) or a service. Processes can have a significant impact on the performance of a business, and process improvement can improve a firm's competitiveness.
The first step to improving a process is to analyze it in order to understand the activities, their relationships, and the values of relevant metrics. Process analysis generally involves the following tasks:
Flow diagrams can be very useful in defining processes. This is a visual representation of the actual flow of information within an organisation. They can be very concise for a small company, or like the ones that we used while consulting at IBM about 150 feet long!
When constructing a flow diagram, care should be taken to avoid pitfalls that might cause the flow diagram not to represent reality. For example, if the diagram is constructed using information obtained from employees, the employees may be reluctant to disclose rework loops and other potentially embarrassing aspects of the process. Similarly, if there are illogical aspects of the process flow, employees may tend to portray it as it should be and not as it is. Even if they portray the process as they perceive it, their perception may differ from the actual process. For example, they may leave out important activities that they deem to be insignificant.
The process capacity is determined by the slowest series task in the process; that is, having the slowest throughput rate or longest cycle time. This slowest task is known as the bottleneck. Identification of the bottleneck is a critical aspect of process analysis since it not only determines the process capacity, but also provides the opportunity to increase that capacity.
In some cases, dramatic improvements can be made at minimal cost when the bottleneck activity is severely limiting the process capacity. On the other hand, in well-optimized processes, significant investment may be required to achieve a marginal operational improvement. Because of the large investment, the operational gain may not generate a sufficient rate of return. A cost-benefit analysis should be performed to determine if a process change is worth the investment. Ultimately, net present value will determine whether a process "improvement" really is an improvement.
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IBM |
Deliverables Based on the analysis of the Incentive plans for IBM EMEA Global Services (IGS) and EMEA SoftWare Group (SWG). There are some instances of other Business Unit information being included, but not as much analysis went into the other Business unit Incentive Plans. Compensation plan quota attainment can include as many as 5 measurements; some of which can be accelerators based on previous measurement attainments. A job template (role) can have as many as 12 measures for attainment Net growth for a target quota may be negative, and then it would be based on 80, 90, or 95% of previous year target. Targets may be by region, county, pillar, and business partner depending on job role and regional situation. Additional requirements Roles in tool should only have visibility to segment of employees where they have a "need to know" (managers can only view the people in their unit) Allow for the delegation of a role's function to another member of that role (e.g. delegation so that one approver or manager can backup another approver or manager) Provide that the system will only allow payment to commission eligible employees Provide for prior year plan type transactions while processing current year plan type transactions There are over 1200 items in the requirements scoping document
Engagement metrics 12 member team for discovery and detailed scope analysis- $12 million project |
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Intervention Seibel sales force compensation solution |
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Pitney Bowes |
Deliverables Pitney Bowes- the project there was the integration between the Siebel CRM product and the Siebel Call center. They were rolling out two tests sales districts with the new processes. I was there to provide the analysis and the support for the Siebel solution set. The two other areas of complexity are the integration of the automating system and the hardware layer and the integration of the Service and Sales centers with the information from the legacy systems of the organization.
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Intervention Seibel implementation analysis |
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Company Intrawest
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Deliverables Critical;
To support the sales activities of group sales and Real Estate personnel and
managers, via both onsite and remote access. To support the new National
Destination Sales (NDS) offices being set up in N. America and Europe. To support and bring together sales contacts and information from resort
operations, real estate, Club Intrawest, call center operations (inbound and
outbound), and legacy systems. To provide basic marketing research and support integration to a separate central marketing database. To support increasing efforts in outbound telesales. To support integration to primary POS and reservation systems for product inventory, pricing information, and legacy data, and to ERP system for charges, reporting, and control. To support group/business and individual consumer sales. To support a flexible technical architecture of satellite and enterprise servers Engagement Metrics 3 million proposal-3 Continents Document of understanding between PWC, IT and the user, specify what functions and data will be delivered and exclude what will not be delivered, dates, responsibilities – both IT and the user – end user tools to be provided, end-user training and who will be picking up the tab for the project, document basis for determining success of the project |
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Intervention Seibel Software Proposal 5/99 – 8/99 |
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Company Hats Inc
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Deliverables Analyze the organization's standard processes to determine areas where new technologies would be most helpful. .Identify helpful changes and determines the economics of those changes. Define the relationship of the identified best practices to the organization's standard process. Define the expected outcomes of the change qualitatively and quantitatively, as appropriate. Determine the need for piloting each potential change. .Determine the priority of the candidate new practice changes. .Document results of the analysis activities. Engagement Metrics 6 months, 2 sites, 120k, 4 + 2 client members, on budget |
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Intervention Franchise Development and Implementation 3/94 – 7/94 |
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Company BCLD
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Deliverables Help to define a strategy that addresses the organization's goals for product quality, productivity, and cycle time for product development. Help to define a strategy that addresses the customer's and end users' needs and desires, as appropriate. The end users referred to in these practices are the designated end users or representatives of the end users. Coordinate with the organization's managers in defining their goals and approaches for accomplishing the organization's strategy. .Make a commitment to the effort for technology change management that is visible throughout the organization. .Establishes long-term plans and commitments for inventory, staffing, and other resources Engagement Metrics 2 years, 1.5 Million, 45 members, Public funds budget , Multiple versioning |
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Intervention Inventory, sales, replenishment 2/87 – 9/89 |
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Company Plaza M&S (UVL)
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Deliverables Manage the project and relationship with the development team Develop and implement logistics and accounting custom package, summarize analytical processing representation of the informational business requirements Establishes long-term plans and commitments for business information, staffing, fleet requirements and warehouse utilization. Analyze and install hardware requirements on UNIX deployment. . Map business processes to company data needs
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Intervention Burroughs… logistics 6/76 –7/78 |