Leveraging Digital Assets
Increase ROI by leveraging your existing digital assets
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Execs are constantly being introduced to new digital “solutions” to improve the competitiveness and innovation levels in their organizations. Despite well-intended investments in technology companies still have excel spreadsheets, small access databases, as well as late and error-filled data. This impacts workflows and your staff negatively by adding wasteful steps and activities.
“EXCEL SPREADSHEETS ARE EVERYWHERE DESPITE MULTIMILLION ERP IMPLEMENTATIONS”
I have been amazed as I have worked with many clients on how pervasive end-user solutions like Excel, Access, are used in mission-critical workflows despite the implementation of multimillion ERP systems. A financial service client had critical daily interest rates that drove pricing in an excel spreadsheet on the C drive of PC. In addition, even more manual tools like notebooks and Outlook are used to prioritize and escalate key issues. The amount of time that staff need to handle data, massage data, do analysis and maintain end-user solutions is very high and takes time away from high value-added tasks. On top of that data is another problem. Data can have errors that need to be cleaned. You might only want a subset of the data provided or you need to modify the data in some way. Data even arrives too late and slows down processing. The adjustments needed to overcome digital waste are usually manual workarounds that reduce the capacity for value-added tasks.
“TAKE AN INTEGRATED VIEW TO WORKFLOW REDESING INCLUDING RESOURCES, ACTIVITIES, DATA, & APPLICATIONS (RADA)”
The difficult part is that digital waste is sort of hidden and does not become apparent using typical workflow improvement techniques. When companies want to improve their capacity, efficiency, and effectiveness they usually use process mapping tools that focus on activities and look at systems and data separately. You need an integrated workflow view including Resources, Activities, Data, and Applications (RADA MAP). This allows you to identify digital waste and understand the impact on resources and process time. Just like process waste you can develop checklists for digital waste.
So how do you fix this digital waste problem? Well, there are a number of different solutions to consider. Modifications or improvements to your existing main systems and applications, substitute more robust no code or low code solutions, improve your data strategies and execution. We have been able to improve mission-critical processes without revamping entire systems and with short payback periods. Cycle time improvements have been as high as 40%. Contact us to see how we can reduce Digital Waste and improve execution in your company.
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