Category: SCO

Three Steps to Process and Customer Nirvana

Three things to focus on with immediate benefits:
1.     Define a Successful Customer Outcome for the processes you are involved with.
Watch – What is a Successful Customer Outcome (SCO) http://bit.ly/1flfSmm
Watch – Step by step guide to creating a SCO.
2.     Identify all the customer[1] touchpoints (aka Moments of Truth – MOT) in your process
Watch – What is a Moment of Truth (MOT) http://bit.ly/1fxHO8T
3.     Evaluate all the MOT’s and classify them as (a) aligned to the SCO, or (b) not aligned. For the latter identify actions to remove or improve the MOT.
These three easy and quick to do steps will lead to reductions in cost and complexity, improvements to service and delivery, and for revenue generating processes growth in income.

[1]Customer as defined within your SCO map.
Note customers can be
(a) Primary – the ones providing the revenue and paying our salaries. (b) Secondary – those folks interested in our process but not directly involved e.g. Regulators. (c) Internal – other departments/functions or across the value chain partners,

How do you start the journey to Enterprise BPM/Outside-In?

James Dodkins (far right) is the
BP Groups Chief Customer Officer

From the desk of James Dodkins

If I scan the fifteen or so new OI initiatives in large corporations I have worked closely with (in the last three years) I would say 80% of that work is through what you can think of is a 1-2-3 project cycle.

1. Start where you are – deploy, for instance the CEMMethod techniques, especially the Moments of Truth, Breakpoints and Business Rules, in whatever is your remit. Just get going.

2. On the back of that success move upstream and downstream in the particular process. You will have internal advocates at this stage who understand how to do this stuff. At this point the fun and the wildfire starts 🙂

3. Take the ‘boil the ocean’ proposition to the top team. Ask for the biggest current organization wide challenge and relate the internal benefits (Project 1&2, the external case studies, the videos of the CEO’s, the HBR articles, the Business week case studies blah blah) They will love the talk of results – reducing costs, improving revenue, enhancing service.
Whenever have you talked to a top team and somebody has turned round and said those elements were not part of this years agenda eh?

Bingo – six months in and you’re on the organization wide Outside-In transformation.

Points of Failure – How to remove and improve (3 minute video)

Upcoming events? http://www.bpgroup.org/certification-by-city.html
Amsterdam – Cape Town – Orlando – London – Bangalore – Dubai – Brisbane – Denver – Sydney – Singapore – Dubai in 2014 

Can you trust your call centre – a tale of Enterprise lies and unfulfilled expectations.

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Are you measuring and rewarding dumb stuff?

A close colleague recently arranged to move some large furniture and being aware of size constraints spent some time researching and contacting various ‘self drive hire’ firms for a suitable vehicle. The best offer was confirmed following a long discussion with sales folks in the Enterprise[1]call center which included comprehensive discussion of specific (height, breadth, width) measures to ensure a good fit. Job done or so my colleague thought.


A few days later they went to collect the vehicle. Armed with a tape measure to double check the details they were shocked to discover the actual measurements were between 15-20% less than the call center really trustworthy sales guy stated. Naturally the van hire didn’t progress however the response of the depot was even more shocking. “Oh yes they do that in the call center to make a sale.” Whoops.
That goes to a point about paying people for achieving the wrong outcomes.
Reward people for doing dumb stuff and they’ll get really smart at it. 
Many times people would be duped and accept the sales persons assurances. It is often too late in the day to change (when you are stood out in the cold and snow) so customers would have to go with it. Not so my colleague who demanded a refund. The depot staff obliged however did say it would take several days to process.
Funny how you can accept $550 one minute and refuse to give it back the next?

What about customer satisfaction?
Well if you measured my colleagues response at the point of call center confirmation using Net Promoter Score[2] it would have been 9 out of 9 (A Promoter) plus a willingness to recommend to a friend. After the depot visit 0 out of 9 and tweets to followers to avoid using Enterprise. So let’s review the measures:

Organization Measures in the call center:

·      Duration of the call – optimum

·      Call experience – excellent

·      Customer Expectations – met and exceeded

Vehicle depot:

·      Reception services – excellent

·      Processing of paperwork – optimum

·      Staff interaction with customer – excellent

·      Payment processing – optimum

·      Vehicle to specifications – Not. Zero. Nil.

How many of the 10 measures are actually aligned to achieving a Successful Customer Outcome[3]?

Perhaps one. And yet Enterprise will award their people for achieving the other nine. What sort of behavior does this create? Well whatever it certainly isn’t geared to achieving Successful Customer Outcomes.


Trust Based Management
Much of this experience comes down to trust. Four questions to ask yourself, your organization, and even perhaps your customers. 

1.     Can you trust your people to do the right thing by the customer?

2.     Can you trust your fellow employees – or are they prepared to lie and deceive for their own self interest?

3.     Do you award for Successful Customer Outcomes (SCO’s)?

4.     What measures could you put in place to evolve more towards (3).

Final thought:
Enterprise’s kicker is “We’ll pick you up” Perhaps it should now be “We’ll let you down”

Business Process Management – what is it? How can it help? (4 min video)

BPM – A view Outside-In

Upcoming events? http://www.bpgroup.org/certification-by-city.html
Amsterdam – Cape Town – Orlando – London – Bangalore – Dubai – Brisbane – Denver – Sydney – Singapore – Dubai in 2014

6 Tips for Understanding Customer Needs, even when they don’t know themselves (with 4 min video and Guide)

6 Tips for Understanding Customer Needs, even when they don’t know themselves

Get your hands on SCO’s. What are they? How can they help?

Need a handy Guide? Download the SCO101 : http://bit.ly/SCO101


Certified Process Professional Masters (CPP-Master) Program
(Orlando US Jan 22-23, Denver US Jan 26-30, London UK Mar 2-6)
www.bpgroup.org/certification-by-city.html

An internationally recognised program with proven track record delivered by been there and done it coaches more than 130 times, in 52 cities with delegates from 105 countries.
The program, now in its tenth year, utilizes the BP Groups approaches and framework to help you and your organization win the triple crown – simultaneously reduce costs, grow revenues and enhance service. Producing Immediate and sustainable business results across any industry and sector.

Become a qualified CPP-Master and demonstrate your professionalism.www.bpgroup.org/certification-by-city.html

What Business are you really In?

From the desk of James Dodkins..

Part 4 of 4: There are four distinctly Outside-In ways that you can rethink process and in doing so achieve Triple Crown benefits.

The previous three articles in this four part theme we reviewed ‘Understand and applying Process diagnostics’ , the ‘Successful Customer Outcome’ and ‘Reframing Process for an Outside-In world’.

Now finally we move our attention to the fourth way we can rethink process forever.

Rethinking the Business you are in.

In the Southwest airlines example reviewed earlier we referred to the different viewpoints of the Œbusiness¹ you are in. The two views ­ one the organizations, regarded as inside-out reflect the activities and functions undertaken. So British Airways see themselves in the business of flying airplanes and approach the customer with that product/service in mind. They set about marketing and selling the flights and hope to pull the customers to the product through pricing, availability and placement. In a slowly changing world where customers have little choice this strategy can provide a route to success.

As we have already seen the tables have turned and the enlightened customer demands so much more. Southwest and other Outside-In companies understand this challenge and take a customer viewpoint.

What business would you say these six companies are in: Hallmark Cards, Disney, Zara, AOL, OTIS elevators, China Mobile?  Try it from the customers perspective and you¹ll arrive at a very different answer ­ try these, expression, joy, style and comfort, community, moving people, connectivity.

Yes they are very different and will reframe the way you think of the service and products you provide. Go further and look inside your existing company.

Are you still separated into functional specialist areas providing specific outputs to other departments in the so called Œvalue chain¹? Do you have internal Œservice level agreements¹ that specify what you¹ll deliver and when? How much of our internal interaction adds ultimate value for the customer?

This way of organizing work imposes limitations on our ability to truly deliver successful customer outcomes. The Inside-out viewpoint is inefficient, prone to red tape, is extremely risk adverse (checkers checking checkers) and slow in delivering product and service.

Many inside-out organizations actually regard customers as an inconvenience rather than the reason why they exist.

What business are you REALLY in?

Part 3 of 4: There are four distinctly Outside-In ways that you can rethink process and in doing so achieve Triple Crown benefits.

From the desk of James Dodkins, CCO BP Group.

In the first two articles in this four part theme we reviewed ‘Understand and applying Process diagnostics’ and the ‘Successful Customer Outcome’ map. We now move our attention to the third way we can rethink process forever

Re-framing process for an Outside-In world

A fundamental principle of Outside-In is the understanding of where your process starts and ends.

In the 20th century many techniques and approaches developed to better understand and create processes. In its earliest form pioneering work undertaken by the United States Airforce created modelling approaches based on the Structured Analysis and Design Technique (SADT) that produced iDEF (Integrate DEFinition Methods).

iDEF became recognised as a global standard as a method designed to model the decisions, actions, and activities of an organization or system[1].  iDEF as a method has now reached iDEF14 [i] and embraces a wide range of process based modelling ideas. Concurrent with the development of iDEF technology providers created proprietary modelling approaches, and subsequently developed into modelling language standards, used by many organisations to represent their systems and ways of working.

The convergence of business process modelling and business process management (BPM) has now produced a rich set of tools and techniques able to model and ideally manage an organisation. In fact one of the more accepted definitions of BPM (based on the British Journal of Management): “Business process management (BPM) is a management approach focused on aligning all aspects of an organisation with the wants and needs of clients. It is a holistic management approach”

Until a few years ago process management approaches looked within the boundaries of the organisation and the combination of modelling and management approaches were adequate to understand the enterprise. The impact of process management in improving organisation performance has been profound however we now face a different reality driven by the customer.

As a consequence both disciplines now present a series of problems that include

(a)    understanding the beginning and end of the process,

(b)   the techniques used to model process are inadequate and focused  on the wrong things

Strangely customer involvement in a process often appears as an afterthought and the actual representation systems (left to right, top to bottom) create an illusion that fosters the belief that “the customer isn’t my job”.

Let’s deal with each in turn by example:
a.     The beginning and end of process

To aid the discussion let’s look at two airlines, British Airways and Southwest, and we’ll review how they ‘think’ about their business through the eyes of process. If you sit down with British Airways executives and asked the question “where does your process start and end?” the response reflects the main source of revenue, seat sales.

So the answer “the process is from the ticket purchase to the collecting the bags off the carousel” is no great surprise. In fact that is the way we have mostly thought about process in that it starts when it crosses into organisation, and finishes when it leaves. We can easily model that, identify efficiency improvements, improve throughput and optimise apparent value add.

As far as British Airways is concerned what you do outside of that process is no concern of theirs, after all they are an airline and that’s what they do. Now let’s change our perspective and visit Love Field in Texas and meet the executive team of Southwest. Ask the guys the same question “where does your process start and end?” and the answer is a whole different viewpoint.

The process begins when the potential customer thinks of the need for a flight, and only ends when they are back at home following the journey. The scope of this process is defined by the phrase “the customer experience is the process”. That’s an Outside-In perspective and creates opportunities across the whole customer experience.

More than that it raises the prospect of additional revenue streams, spreads the risk associated with a dependency on seat sales, reinforces the customer relationship and develops an entirely different way of doing business.  So let’s ask another question of our friends at Southwest “guys, what business are you in?”, and the answer changes everything you ever thought about airlines forever “we’re in the business of moving people”.

Downstream Southwest may well turn the industry further on its head as they move from being the low cost airline to the ‘no cost airline’ and give their seats free of charge. What would that do to your business model if 95% of your revenues, as with British Airways, comes from seat sales?

The business challenge for Southwest becomes one of controlling the process to benefit and maximise the customer experience. That involves partnering, sharing information and doing all necessary to make customers lives easier, simpler and more successful.

Now how do you model that?

b.     The techniques used to model process are inadequate and focused on the wrong things

We have reviewed the ultimate cause of work for all organisations is the customer. Organisations exist to serve the customer though the provision of products and services and in this way develops revenue that goes to the profit and onward distribution to the stockholders.

In other organisations without the profit motivation, for instance the public sector, then the effective delivery of services is measured by citizens and stakeholders.  Accordingly it stands to reason that everything happening within the organisation should be organised and aligned to deliver customer success and anything that isn’t is potentially ‘dumb stuff’. The techniques we use to ‘capture’ process are however not suitable to understanding the causes of work and focus attention instead on the visible tasks and activities that are perceived to create value for customers. In the context of the enlightened customer this is at best misleading and at its worst actually part of the broader problem. In Outside-In companies the focus has shifted to understanding the causes of work, and then engineering those causes to minimize negative effects.

Once more to go Outside-In we need a perspective shift and we can achieve this by identifying those three causes of work and then set out to reveal them and their negative impact.

How big is the size of the prize? Efficiency and productivity gains of 30% to 60% are common. Cost reduction of services by 50% is not unusual.

Cause elimination is a seek and destroy mission. It’s the challenge to weed out the “dumb stuff” in our organizations.

By truly fixing the Causes of Work, rather than messing around with the Effects (a bit like moving the chairs on the deck of the Titanic) we will all find our customers and employees life simpler, easier and more successful. Are you ready to challenge your assumptions and start eliminating those causes of work? Fix the Cause, remove the effect.

Delivering success… achieving consensus?!

I was stuck by three of congruences this weekend.
 
One was Seth Godins nearly always excellent blog.

He covers the theme of extremes. See it here.

That reminded me of the wisdom from George Bernard Shaw:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” 

And the third quote was from pioneer and political reformist (she scrapped socialism) Margaret Thatcher.

“To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.“

So what are you up to this week? Maintaining the status quo? Keeping a balance? Achieving consensus? Or are you changing the world to be a better place? Challenging the flat landers and helping refocus business for a new age?

Think on that over the cornflakes because if you are not part of the solution you may just be the problem!