7 Wastes - Process Time

As tempting as it is to say "well this one's the killer" because it is so fundamental I will try and avoid singling Process time out as all 7 wastes are waste and can be equally detrimental to the efficiency of the business or the satisfaction of the customer experience. However it is this one that has caused me most work recently.

My notes on 'Process Time' as a waste highlight a few causes of the problem. These include, Inadequate IT, Lengthy Procedures and Manual Processes. Like anyone who has ever looked at a process, I have experienced bizarre but true examples of each of these. Fun stories, each of which could enable me to fill a book (mm now there's a thought!). But for now just one or two:

Inadequate IT: I recently delivered a project in a law firm where not only is the application (case management) software cumbersome, but the IT architecture is flakey. The system needs to be re-booted on a regular basis in the middle of the day. If it's off for 15 minutes and there are just 16 people working at the time, that's 4 hours productivity lost that day. When this time is multiplied by the number of times it happens, or they system fails altogether, then corporate productivity is affected. (Morale too is dented with staff loyalty and customer satisfaction tested).

Lengthy Procedures: I was in a local authority a while ago and they had so many sign-offs in the process for staff pay, to ensure that no mistakes were made, they occassionally misssed deadlines when management were not available to sign the forms. Authorisation is important, and check points in the process need to be there, but how many and how often can make the process overly cumbersome. We can lose sight of the objective of whole process and focus on the objective of the activity.

Manual Processes: IT may be that the whole of your business processes are not manual and that automation is creeping in. However for too many industry sectors are also running the manual processes in parallel. This is evident in legal services where process automation is creating files and standard documents quickly, but all information retrieval is too often back to the paper. This means that customer experience is a mixed one where cases can be started well, but updates are hard to get. It is a work in progress.

How fast are your processes? What causes delays? If you document everything you do from start to end of a process, and how well every activity meets the customer's requirements, you will delivery greater efficiency, drive down cost and probably increase your market share!

If you would like to look at this, our open training in Liverpool on Januray 20th is the ideal way to start. We demonstrate the power and importance of process time on customer satisfaction and retention.