COMPANY CONNECTEDNESS

“Show me a successful complex system and I will show you a system that has evolved through trial and error” - Tim Harford

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A system is a methodical way that you provide specific goods or services to customers. Your system is the “what.” As in, what value do you provide the customer?

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Likewise,  your processes are the “how.” How do all the activities inside your company work together to provide that value?

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Your systems and processes are the essential building blocks of your company. Every facet of your business – on the shop floor, in the warehouse or the office – is part of a system that can be managed or improved by applying correct principles.

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Culture can make it easy for you to develop blind spots when it comes to improving processes, you often get the response - “this is the way we do things around here.”

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When systems are designed they can be too rigid. This rigidity does not allow for some flexibility to do things “your way” and can cause problems later by not being scalable.

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This rigidity can lead to disengagement and promotes passing the decision to an employees boss or upwards delegation thereby absolving the employee of any responsibility (company culture issue). This type of system is flawed as it makes your company slow and cumbersome – precisely the opposite of what we are trying to achieve – we need to be agile.

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Not everybody thinks the same way and will arrive at the same outcome via different routes so your systems and processes require flexibility and having  clear decision-making points allows employees to utilize them in the way they see fit to get the job done but also to have some checks and balances.

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By designing a system to track an inquiry to sale which will allow each team to interrogate the system, allowing them to complete tasks or answer questions they may have. A good system will also allow you to have one source and location of any documentation (costings, proposal documents, contracts, etc.) allowing teams to find the relevant information or document rather than sending an interdepartmental email information request, this ability to find the answer is highly efficient.

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Systems also need to have a central clean data source. Since data is the backbone of your systems and the systems are the backbone of your company, you need to look at systems and data in parallel.

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You need to have consistent central data sources. Data sources can be many and varied and as such you need to decide what source will feed the systems to enable you to support decision making, made faster, and more confidently to boost your company's performance.

e.g.

- Revenue numbers need to come from a well-designed SOP (Sales Order Processing) system

- Management accounting reports – you need to have a robust accounting package in place