Whether it’s a full-scale ERP implementation or citizen developed bots, technology implementations require extensive investments. These investments include the hidden expenses of time by employees for training, customization, and the ever-challenging buy-in and adoption.
So, for something so resource intensive, organizations need to get their technology implementations right the first time.
This means that organizations need to leverage a systematic approach to implement technologies that goes beyond feature requirements. Even the best technology won’t deliver desired benefits without also considering governance and foundational process management activities (e.g., process design).
Hence supporting technology implementations is one way process teams can support business goals and improvements. In fact, almost half of process teams (49%) already support technology implementations through their analysis, design, and people skills.
The Intersection of Process and Technology
Organizations will also often implement new technologies with the goal of improving performance or scaling resources. This ultimately requires balanced collaboration between these three key stakeholders:
- IT—provides the technical skills and systems to ensure that solutions are best fit for the organization’s needs. Responsibilities include vendor assessments, system development, maintenance and integration, and security management.
- Process management—provides process expertise, change management methodologies, and facilitation and scoping skills. Responsibilities include managing the improvement opportunities pipeline, project scope development, and process documentation and/or re-engineering, and hand off back to the business.
- The business—provides subject matter expertise and change champions. Responsibilities include expertise on the problem and business needs, and ownership and adoption of the solution.
Process Teams in Action
As organizations emphasize the replacement of legacy systems and streamlined work, process teams help elucidate the current state, identify the future state, translate features to needs, and support the implementation of a range of technologies from ERP systems to AI and automation.
For example, Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan combined Lean Six Sigma, Agile, and Kotter change management model for implementation and adoption of its web-based pension management system. The team used Lean Six Sigma to dig into root cause analysis on impediments to adoption and Agile to realize quick wins for the implementation. For example, the team found issues on the back end of the system—employees had to wait to proceed to the next screen while the data entered was processed in the background. By enabling employees to immediately proceed to the next screen, they were able to shave 12 seconds off every transaction—saving over 300 hours per year.
The Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco (FHLBSF) understands that automation is a collaborative effort. Consequently, it expanded its automation work from the purview of IT to a collective endeavor that includes process management and the business. There were two drivers behind this shift:
- Ownership and Governance—the business ultimately needs to not only provide insights, so automation solves business problems, but to be responsible for the output of the bots for their department.
- Focus on Improvement—automation is a tool for improvement—particularly around reducing risk or FTE hours on transactional or low value work. Which means that automation projects require understanding the current state and redesigning processes for execution by bots.
Leading organizations do not implement technology for its own sake but do so to address specific issues or scale resources in carefully selected areas. To ensure that new technologies work effectively and sustainably, these organizations begin not with the technology itself, but by building a strong process foundation.
For more information on this topic check out: Technology Implementations: Process Supporting the Business
Next time we will discuss process teams and their role in mergers & acquisitions.
For more process and performance management research and insights, follow me on Twitter at @hlykehogland or connect with me on LinkedIn.