SharePoint: How Can Companies Kill the Things that Kill Productivity?
Guest Author: Steve Russell
http://www.global360.com
When the financial markets fell apart, the party ended almost overnight. Companies slashed payrolls and those who remained were left to deal with the balance of the work. Doing more with less (i.e. improving productivity) is the only answer we had. And, in fact, productivity has increased 6.3 percent over the past four quarters, the biggest 12-month increase since 1962. Yet, the productivity increase in the last quarter was the smallest in a year, showing companies are reaching the limits on efficiency. *Is your company reaching its limits on efficiency? Perhaps it seems that way – but what if you are still not efficient enough? I try to answer this question by looking at how to use SharePoint to “Kill the Things the Kill Productivity” in your company.
Through a series of postings, I will present a set of “productivity killers” and strategies for leveraging SharePoint to address them. There are two common themes underlying these strategies. The first is adoption of SharePoint as something much more than a platform for collaboration and knowledge sharing with enterprise documents. While collaboration and document sharing has been central to the growth of SharePoint, SharePoint is quickly becoming a platform for core business applications. This isn’t to say that all business applications should be re-implemented on SharePoint. That may make sense in some situations but most of the productivity killers inherent in business applications today can be addressed by integrating existing business applications with SharePoint.
The second theme is that when looking at productivity killers, it is important to take a process approach to analyzing and addressing the problem. Adopting a process-centric view of your business is essential for evaluating productivity issues in the right perspective. Through a process lens, you can see redundancies, bottlenecks, gaps, mistakes, and other inefficiencies in business processes. Solutions for these “opportunities” can then be assimilated into the design and implementation of your SharePoint applications. SharePoint 2010 offers improved workflow capabilities for basic, procedural types of activities, and it integrates well with SharePoint-friendly BPM platforms for more complex business process automation.
I will build on these themes in the “productivity killer” posts and explore key productivity challenges and ways to address them. Below are the posts that I am planning.
- Repetitious Work – Doing the Same Thing Over and Over: From one customer, transaction, or event to another, automating the operational steps in your processes enhances productivity.
- Missing/Incomplete Information – Playing the Waiting Game: Everyone in an organization is connected through business processes, and the information dependencies between processes link your productivity together.
- Dated Processes and Procedures – That’s Not What We Do (Anymore): Subtle, continuous change creates extra steps and work-arounds that can only be managed when users have the ability to maintain and enhance their work environments.
- Low Morale – “Did You See That?”: Outstanding performance needs to be recognized and rewarded in order to motivate everyone to do their best. Low morale and lack of motivation drain productivity.
- Rework/Poor Quality Work – Something Went Wrong: When mistakes are made, the additional effort to fix things multiplies the work effort by two to three times. Getting the job done right the first time, and avoiding repeated mistakes are essential to improved productivity.
- Lack of Expertise – “A Little Help Here!”: You can’t know everything all of the time, and when the odd situation comes up, you need to know where to get answers. Collaborating with your peers and knowing who the experts are avoids the productivity pitfall of getting stuck.
I will be posting on each of these over the coming days. Let me know your thoughts throughout this series of postings. I’m interested in hearing about your experiences, and other ideas, thoughts, comments as to what impacts productivity in your organizations and how SharePoint can be the platform for business applications.
*Chandra, Shobhana and Homan, Timothy R. (2010). U.S. Economy: Productivity Holds Up, Claims Decrease (Update1). Retrieved 11 May 2010 from Bloomberg Businessweek: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-06/u-s-economy-productivity-holds-up-claims-decrease-update1-.html
Guest Author: Steve Russell
http://www.global360.com
Steve Russell is the SVP of Research and Development and CTO for Global 360 Inc., based in Dallas Texas. He has over 25 years of experience as a technologist developing enterprise process and document management software platforms. Steve has extensive experience with large, mission critical systems development and deployment within Fortune 2000 companies.
- SharePoint: How Can Companies Kill the Things that Kill Productivity?
- SharePoint: How Can Companies Kill the Things that Kill Productivity? - Part 1: Doing the Same Thing Over and Over
- SharePoint: How Can Companies Kill the Things that Kill Productivity? - Part 2: Playing the Waiting Game
- SharePoint: How Can Companies Kill the Things that Kill Productivity? - Part 3: That’s Not What We Do (Anymore)
- SharePoint: How Can Companies Kill the Things that Kill Productivity? - Part 4: Did You See That?
- SharePoint: How Can Companies Kill the Things that Kill Productivity? - Part 5: Something Went Wrong
- SharePoint: How Can Companies Kill the Things that Kill Productivity? - Part 6: “A Little Help Here!”
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Steve,
I look forward to reading the follow-up posts in this series. This actually walks right down the path of a discussion I was having with another EUSP reader over on my blog, regarding the benefits of tight integration between SharePoint and the business process.
As you point out, in the environment we’re operating today (both from an economic perspective and a workload perspective) companies really can’t afford to overlook these things. With the budgets shrinking and the workload increasing (as the workforce shrinks), doing more with less isn’t really a saying anymore, it’s a way of life. Proving savings through system modernization is one of the only ways to secure funding for new projects.
I’m looking forward to reading this series as it comes out!
Mike
Good point. I get the comment a lot about trying to squeeze more water out of a stone. The last couple of years have really pushed the doing more with less strategy unless you back it up with doing things differently.
This type of thinking is exactly what is needed upfront for a corporation to really embrace SharePoint. Collectively we have come to a consensus at our company that we really need to streamline our processes. As a result, we have put a team together to do just that. We are now analyzing our practices and make them MAKE SENSE with SharePoint. This series should definitely give us insight as to how to do just that.
Thanks!
As a new contractor w/a hi-tech firm in St. Louis, Missouri, I’m seeing once again the horrible chain of redundancies that can grow before anyone realizes what is going on. Very simple example…my firm is tracking/planning/implementing business trips/conferences in about 5 different forms. All of it exactly the same information, but this is what happens when no one stops to say “we will now track travel THIS WAY AND THIS WAY ONLY.” Sure that sounds a little aggressive, but right now I update 5 different forms every time there is a change. Viably the only form ANYone needs is the itinerary from the 3rd Party Travel company! Alongside that you’d of course have a schedule/itinerary of proprietary info like conferences/calendar meetings etc – but there’s no reason to have 5 layouts across 3 programs. This really is a mistakenly sunken but nevertheless significant cost once a business just lets this go on. The time an admin staff member spends planning travel etc, is money in the bank no matter how you look at it. Freeing up that admin to assist with PR help or budgeting that is overloading the other team members in the PR & Finance departments for example, is a great way to boost morale by having the admin reach out a bit on special projects and by letting the overloaded staff get a bit of a break on some of their workload.
Great example! Unfortunately this probably isn’t unique. One article in the series is going to dig into this topic alone. Thanks for sharing this.
One of the biggest hurdles is proving that ’soft’ cost savings and pushing for end-users to learn to use the tool. They can see it when I create the solution for them, but when I put it in their hands and they have to learn it, the initial reaction is “I don’t have time for this.” I have to agree with them, we have been using Lean to make our processes more efficient for years, we are already near top production. Using Sharepoint absolutely increases efficiency, there is no doubt about it, but it doesn’t create itself. Finding the Sharepoint “thinkers” that have time to learn and create their own solutions is one of my biggest challenges. Looking forward to your series.
Excellent post. IT is currently beginning a significant reorganization at my current client’s organization. Despite the fact that it’s outside my purview (for now), I’m pushing them hard to move from a couple of business analysts working with their favourite customers to an enterprise focused Business Process Management team. There are so many processes that cross boundries and the redundancy is mind boggling yet no one, in IT or otherwise, can see the big picture.
looking forward to future posts as well. Customers/Business staff don’t typically disagree that a SharePoint feature could improve productivity, but without calling out the pain point that they currently experience, there is limited motivation to stop doing what is being done today and invest energy to using the SharePoint complement.
Sharepoint is great if you are architector and you know what waiting for from your users. I started use Sharepoint (better to say WSS 3.0) like the developing system with management of lists (structured and indexed like databases to achieve tasks for automation user’s life ).
I did lowest right for my users and added my own roles to let them use Sharepoint’s sites like applications where they do some analyse, control, checking and verification some steps from their job technology integrated with another systems of plant (usually by web services).
Sharepoint is useful if it is integrated with the existing enterprise processes: accounting, stocking, personalisation, verification and location. But if you will try use Sharepoint only for 5 tasks what added by default you will get strange reaction from users – they may said “we don’t need it, because we have it in more convenient way by only MOSS”. And you will try waste a lot of time to explain and show how it is useful for net (only links, but no a lot files in emails and so on) and you will show the version mechanism for all files, you will show the web explorer features, workspaces possibilities and so on and even you will show how works on-line Anti-virus to protect your database and net from future viruses.
But after all that presentations you will get again oldest answer “no time to study it and use it”. BUT if you show them how they will NEVER put data manually from one system to another because your program’s part in Sharepoint will do it automatically in background process (you must put your sharepoint into the cross-road of your business services into your organization) and you show them that AD with CA (placed in controller) let them never put their passwords to start work instantly in any moment (especially when boss is hot) regards their certificates i suppose this way will catch their interest and attention to your perspectives technologies and you may be get turn on into your side and may be start write all they want.
Sincerely, LukCAD.
Steve,
This is a fantastic series so far, and I’m looking forward to your insight on the rest of the topics in this series.
All too often we see such redundant work being performed – even within our own organizations – and we overlook it because “that’s just the way we’ve always done it.” More than most, I don’t like that statement. :-)
It’s important (as you point out) to take a look at the obviously redundant work we perform each day, as well as the not-so-obvious redundancies. Many people don’t realize that even manual tasks (such as counting Office Supply Inventory, or approval of orders, expenses, or other repetitive items can easily translate into an automated task (or set of tasks).
What I think many businesses are still struggling with, as they embrace the “concept” of BPM, is that BPM is a cultural change. BPM is not just the act of applying technological advances to your existing business processes. BPM is also not simply identifying inefficiencies in existing processes and improving them. Rather, BPM is the act of embracing and affecting cultural change.
Normally, you want to build process automation in such a way that it “works the way you work”. However, there are times when we need to re-think “the way you work”. For a company to truly embrace BPM as a strategic weapon, they need to evaluate how they do things, culturally, and identify ways to change the culture such that it becomes more conducive to incremental improvement.
So, for those of you who are experiencing push-back from your users when trying to introduce SharePoint-based BPM solutions, think about WHY your users are pushing back. It may be that they don’t want to learn a new system to do what they already do today. However, it may be that they just don’t want to learn anything new.
If you approach process automation by looking at functional and cultural criteria, you make the transition to new technology much easier for the end-users to swallow. Remember, driving user adoption is, ultimately, what drives the success of your solution.
When you can show users the value of changing their perspective, and translate that to making their jobs easier, you can improve productivity, decrease operating costs, improve morale, and positively change your company’s culture.
Again, excellent article, Steve! Looking forward to the rest of the series!
Brett
> It may be that they don’t want to learn a new system to do what they already do today. However, it may be that they just don’t want to learn anything new.
Or it might be that the incentive to use the new system is not strong enough to warrant emotional buy in. It all comes down to incentive: the incentive to change an existing process, one that is perceived to be working, has to be strong enough to override the emotional and habitual patterns that people have become accustomed to.