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What's Your Process

By Bob Larrivee posted 07-23-2012 09:54

  

Hi there, it’s time to play What's Your Process; the fun new way to increase and enhance your operational efficiency. I know what you are thinking. Bob is once again falling off the deep end. Not true. In fact it is the total opposite, I am telling you that it is time to take a step back and look at how your business operates, identify the processes within and work to improve them. This is something I have spoken about many times, especially when I worked in the reseller channel. (Here is a shameless plug for all of you Resellers out there. I will be speaking about BPM and process improvement at the upcoming AIIM DMSPEF event in November.)

The idea is simple. In order to become more proficient at what you do you must first understand how you do it. This means you must map the processes, analyze them and make determinations about how they can be improved. At the same time, you should also look at the way information inter-relates to those processes. How does information and content enter and exit a process? This is especially important in relation to capture. How does information and content get captured and where in the process does this happen? The follow-up questions are typically, why does it happen here and could it happen at another point? In some cases, the simple act of changing where information is captured, can make a significant improvement and have huge impact on operations and profitability.

In my view, process and in particular process in relation to content and information, is one of the most overlooked areas of business today. It is also my view that this is one of the areas where benefit can be gained quickly through process improvement and in many cases, process automation. The question is one of knowing how your business operates and how you want it to operate. In order to make improvements, you must know what it is. Once you have this in hand, you can analyze, improve and automate. There are many opportunities out there for businesses to streamline and automate processes ranging from the simplest to the most complex.

If you are ready to move forward and are finding yourself stuck or unfocused and are not sure where to begin or what to do next, seek professional assistance and/or training to get you started.

What say you? Do you have a story to tell? What are your thoughts on this topic? Do you have a topic of interest you would like discussed in this forum? Let me know.

 

Bob Larrivee, Director and Industry Advisor – AIIM

Email me: blarrivee@aiim.org   

Follow me on Twitter – BobLarrivee

www.aiim.org/training     

 



#Mapping #content #process #ScanningandCapture #BusinessProcessManagement
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Comments

07-27-2012 13:45

Bob, I could not agree more that process, and most importantly process in relation to content and information is sadly overlooked as a significant opportunity to improve business, reduce costs and overall improve business outcomes. In the end, when you've cut all that you can from the budget in lean times, you then go to round 2 and cut some more. But the impact of a good content management strategy can undoubtedly help reduce costs but also make a long term impact on so many different facets of a business. I see hesitancy to upset the status quo and no time to do the work needed to get there as two of the most prominent reasons why organizations don't do it. Those clients of ours who have done it, with our help, are always glad they put the work in once they see the impact. The ROI can be astounding.