You can't automate a process that doesn't exist

I've been saying this for years, usually in response to this comment that comes up in meetings (generally after a trade show - see last post) :

"Hey, let's buy a great tool that will help us blah blah blah."

Look, if you're not doing something manually that meets your needs, don't expect that an automated solution will wallpaper over the problems you were having with internal relationships, bad or no processes, and lack of upper management support.

Fix all that first, then look for a tool to automate your new processes and relationships.

Comments

[Ken Lague]

Sound advice; I would add however that it doesn't make much sense to develop elaborate business processes in a vacuum! There has to be an understanding of the tools that are available that can generally satisfy the business requirements, so that a fit can be found. A continuous environmental scan is an important part of the design process.

This is where parallel design techniques come in handy- in our case designing an enterprise CRM solution with considerable automation and pizzaz for Marketing, we got assistance from the PMO in the form of Rational Unified Process (RUP). This type of software is surprisingly easy to use, even for non-tech users like myself.

Articulating all of our Marketing requirements for the CRM software up-front made the selection of the tool among multiple contending vendors far easier. It became a checklist exercise to whittle down the field.