Jim Sinur

One of the large banks just changed their process for overdraft situations. Instead of honoring the financial event and charging a horrendous fee for every transaction thereafter, they now reject the offending event and events thereafter. This eliminates heavy fees on those who can least afford them and it is a good idea. This idea came from focus groups that included traditional sources as well untraditional sources including the collective.

The above story illustrates that the collective opinion is another great source for process improvement ideas. Organizations can get myopic if they do not reach out to others for ideas (see the figure below for sources of process ideas). Traditionally process projects are pretty focused on management wishes with contributions from key employees. While this may work fine when looking for cost cutting improvements only, but the economy will turn positive again and gain momentum.

This will put pressure on organizations to serve their clients better with their processes to gain momentum and to increase their revenue potential. It’s not just clients. It’s also partners and suppliers and potential prospects in the collective. Hopefully you won’t have to play catch up the competition, but if it is you can only hope that your organizational agility can play a role. The collective should be factored in on process improvement if you expect to grow your business and not alienate your current and future constituents. We need people pleasing processes with ideas from all constituent sources. See the following for worst practices I’ve observed. I’m sure you have more

http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2009/08/11/escaping-the-zombie-zoo-with-better-customer-facing-processes/

http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2009/09/21/the-saga-of-broken-processes-continues/

Now if I could only get that bank to pay me some decent interest instead of just keeping all the interest charges they are gouging from their credit card division. That is not likely to happen. Well there is always inflation that will change the game. As the economy turns and too many dollars, euros etc chase too few goods (manufacturing lag and resources scarcity), my interest rates will increase. Of course my interest rate will lag bank profits and “Wall Street” bonuses.

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Category: BPM Business Process Improvement Business Rules Green Optimization Simulation     Tags: BPM, Business Rules, Optimization

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