Digital Roadmap Series: Re-imagine the Process

Happy Kentucky Derby Day, everyone!!  Currently, I am sitting in the Las Vegas airport waiting for my extremely early flight to Nashville.   Why Nashville?  ISM 2018 is kicking off tomorrow.  Anyone else going?  If so, please connect with me.  Would love to catch up.

Ok, to onto step three.  Just to recap where we are.  In step 1, we created the problem statement and step 2, we created the actual process and identified opportunities with that process.  You should have the problem statement and the listing of opportunities up on the wall for the step 3. 

For this session, plan on another 4 hours and have the same group get back together.  This session is typically the most challenging one, as we are asking people to let go of the constraints we “have” today.  We are also going to ask them to let go of what has not worked in the past or the technology that they lack. 

To get started, place a big blank piece of paper on the wall.  It needs to be big enough to draw out your newly imagined process.  The idea here is that you, with this new process, fix the opportunities identified in the last step.  Therefore, draw the process which includes such things as:

• What if you could automate a process?
• Where could you have better data available?
• What process steps maybe are not needed anymore?
• What if you had workflow?
• What if you had a different organizational structure?
• What if you had different capabilities on the team?

Draw this wonderful process on the piece of paper on the wall.  This will take some time to do, and writing it like I did, makes it sound overly simple.  It will take a strong facilitator to keep the group unconstrained.     

Once you have it documented, jot down what investments are needed to make this happen.  For instance, it might be:

•      We need to invest in RPA.
•         We require better data visualization.
•         We need to reskill our organization with “X” skills.
•         We have to create “Y” team.
•         We need a chat bot.

The fantastic part about this approach is that you will know exactly where you would like to apply/implement these investments and the value they could deliver.

As an output of this session, have someone document the newly imagined process flow and the listing of investments that are needed for the process to work. 

And that is it for step 3.  The last step to developing your digital roadmap is to take the opportunities and investments needed and prioritize them.  There are several ways to do this so I will be giving you some options next week.

Go shine on this week and I hope to connect with you at ISM.