The Best Process Excellence Person

Membangun sebuah proses, bukanlah hal yang glamour.

 

Membangun proses adalah memastikan bahwa kondisi kita selalu berada di kondisi terbaik, dan memastikan bahwa di masa depan kita selalu siap.

 

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A Choice between Discrete and Continuous

Almost always, You have option whether to use discrete data or continuous data, when measuring your process’ performance.

For instance, if your account opening process’ Turn Around Time is 30 minutes : you can either measure it as  a binomial discrete data (as a percentage of those processed below 30 minutes vs above 30 minutes), or alternatively, you can measure the total number of days it took to open an account (i.e. as a continuous data).

Start with Data Collection Plan

To establish procedure to calculate your process performance’s metrics, you will need a proper set of tools. I would recommend this : start from creating a data collection plan (DCP).

A comprehensive DCP will consist of the following : Voices of Customer (this in turn, will be adopted as the key measurement, the metrics), Critical Customer Requirement, Operational Definition (of each CCR), Formula to calculate the current base line (of each CCR), the type of the data to be collected (i.e. discrete vs continuous), last but not least : how much data to be collected, from where, when, and by who.

Measure the rhythm of your process

As an operation manager, you will measure the rhythm of your process, by defining the metrics of your Service Level.
 
Illustration : If you run an operation of delivering documents (for instance, the delivery of your customer’s billing statements), you need to measure how much are sent successfully (by employing the success rate, or reject rate). Further, for those successfully sent, you will want to measure the average days of delivery.

Take away : employ the following 2 metrics, if you run a billing-statement delivery operation.

1. Return (of undelivered mail) rate.
2. Average days of delivery (for those successfully delivered).

Define the most important Core Processes

The first step toward your department's / unit's operational excellence is to go through 3 stages, as follows :

1. Define what your core processes are, and among them, the most important ones.
2. Choose the 3 most important Core Processes, and identify how you are going to measure their performance, i.e. the attribute of the output of the processes.
3. From point no.2 above, create  Data Collection Plan document. Tell the nature of the data (e.g. continuous vs discrete), how frequent the measurement will be, and who will conduct the measurement & who will interpret them for you.

Without defining first what's most important, you might end up measuring trivial things.

 

If a department head fails to measure what's important, chances are, he/she will fail to continuously improve his/her operation.

 

Key takeaway : use Data Collection Plan

Measure The Moment of Truth

If you're a branch manager, you are in charge of providing your bank's branch banking services. There are lot of them. And there's no room for error,since you handle your customers' financial transaction. Here are some tips to ensure excellent service :  

1. Have predetermined skills set in place. Ensure that every customer facing employee, is well trained and posseses the knowledge & skill required.
2. Identify the points of interaction between your customers and your branch's service. Those are the moment of truths for your customers. Be it customer service, security officer, parking guy, wash room, elevator, ATM, transfer slip, lounge, inbound call, etc.
3. Identify which moment of truths are the most important to your CUSTOMER (not to YOU), and measure them rigorously. By measuring and feeding them back to your staff, you are in a sure path of continuously improving your customer's satisfaction.

Fill in the gaps of your staff's skill set, identify your customers' moment of truth, measure the moment of truth rigorously and feed it back to your staff. These are some simple points hat every branch manager can consider, to improve their operational excellence.

The mapping of processes and job function

You have your processes in place, and you have your people who run the processes. But have you map it properly ? Please ensure that you have a proper mapping of which job function runs which process.

It is always a good idea to have the map in place, for some reasons :

1. It will eliminate ambiguity, of who will be responsible to which process.
2. It will identify the scope of work of a job function, and therefore will make it easier for you to define the "Operational Definition" of his KPI (key performance indicator).
3. You will be able to balance the workload of a job function, against the others.

Point no. 3 above, is particularly important.

Because we know that ecosystem changes, we should assume that processes will change and evolve, too.

Without a proper mapping of job function vs process, You and your successor will find it difficult to manage your operation, over time.