Leading Solutions capability turnaround and realignment – Improve – Workflow and tools

You will always find a number of #processes introduced over the year as large #global #complex organizations evolve. In my experience, I have found that a stakeholder introduces a process locally to #streamline existing #collaboration and #accountability issue. Subsequently, such a process evolves to a best practice and adopted by other countries in a multi-national set-up. Not surprisingly in the intervening period, the stakeholder who first introduced the process has already improved upon the process as well as mimicked it into a collaboration workflow tool to eliminate manual tracking.

Equally, it is not quite uncommon to stakeholders in other countries introducing their own processes and workflow tools thereby resulting in a workflow tools mushroom. It is all fine as long as it is a multi-national set-up. The challenge starts when a multi-national company converges into a #global organization to either compete better in the marketplace or achieve #efficiency benefits (aka cost take-outs). When not managed properly, people use many tools in parallel which causes inefficiencies.

I therefore realised early on that I will not be able to achieve #process #improvement if I do not understand the complex workflow tools. #Management #consulting is indeed quite complex. As a functional #leader, I had the added challenge of continuing to maintain a neutral outside-in view and also remain objective.

In a similar situation, some of the key aspects you should look into are are:

- How many workflow management tools and how many overlap with each other in terms of functionality? How many are inter-connected, how many islanded, and therefore, which are the quick wins in terms of immediate rationalisation?

- How many of these required information to be populated repetitively? Do they facilitate collaboration amongst the many sub-functional units? Are these seamless or manual?

- How many of these workflow tools are enablers to pursuit wins as opposed just providing information to stakeholders?

- How many check-points in each? How many reviews & approvals? What is the room for optimization such that pursuit teams are able to focus more on fulfilling customer requirements?

- What #KPI is measured? What #analytics is possible? Do any of these promote re-usability such that future bids #optimize their efforts?

Thanks to a great team that was equally determined towards getting back to growth, I was able to get to know a lot in double-quick time.

“When people don't know what’s going on, it’s human nature for them to imagine a version that’s ten times worse than the truth!”

― Kenneth H. Blanchard, Collaboration Begins with You: Be a Silo Buster

To be continued….

About the Author

The author had first published the article on #LinkedIn on June 22, 2017

Jagadish is a Strategic Board adviser, senior Executive leader with specialisation in reimagining business models; who has been successful at building and/or turnaround Practice advisory, Presales, Sales enablement, Solution consulting capabilities for: - Applications & Enterprise applications- Modernising and Transformation to a secure hybrid Cloud- Service Integration and Management in a multi-cloud environment- Digital workplace solutions- Digital transformation using IoT, IIoT, Big Data, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Drones and Robots- IT Infrastructure services More recently, Jagadish has influenced re-imagining a digitally enabled business model for a leading enterprise#IoT, #IIoT, #Bigdata, #Analytics, #artificialintelligence, #drones, #robots, #RPA, #cloud, #hybridcloud, #sales, #presales, #salesenablement, #strategy, #managementconsulting, #boardadvisor, #nonexecutivedirector, #applications, #digitaltransformation, #mixedreality, #integration, #collaboration, #API, #microservices, #marketplace, #solutionconsulting, #servicemanagement, #governance, #riskmanagement, #cybersecurity, #saas, #CRM, #ERP, #customerexperience, #customersuccess