What do you think of when people say data?

To me I go through the following thoughts: What isn't data, every interaction, every breath is data, every draught, we don't capture everything So if we are not capturing everything what are we capturing? So if we are capturing data, are we capturing the right data? What data are we capturing? How do we know this is the right data and why are we capturing it?

Now, getting to see if we are capturing the right data is a question of what processes we perform or should perform to generate and/or support our goals. How do we know our processes? We can either monitor and audit for a while till we start to see patterns -- or -We can look at what output and inputs we currently use for each action and process. We are now beginning to build up a template for understanding, and through understanding we can move to improvement (though improvement is still undefined)

The Bare Bones Template: High level Analysis (HLA) What are the key business deliverables for your company. We should include any business process that incurs significant time, cost or generates profits. The caveat here is that since we haven't yet quantified the data, it is all perception. What are the side business processes, We should look at any minor projects and lines that don't really raise their profile but are still performed What are the changes you'd like to see and why By seeing what processes the company chooses to change will reveal a lot about the perception and agenda of the company For each of these processes, how did you arrive at these in particular classifications At the high level we need to understand what the senior executives perceive as the assets, losses and millstones or the business

Once we have the high level processes, we can start to fill out the next part of the template (the above questions help us set the playing field and gives us the bios of the players) From the above questions we have a list of processes and means to prioritize them. For each process we find out the following:

Process Level Analysis (PLA) (Who, What, Where, When, Why and How, W5H) Who is responsible for this process? Who is accountable? (RACI) What is the goal of the process? What are the additional goals of each process? Each process should have one main goal, it can also have side goals. How do we know the goal has been achieved or that the ball has been dropped (KAISEN)? By understanding the process in this way we know what information is needed to track and how it is being or potentially can be used. What are the process starting point, intermediate points and end point(s)? This helps us understand the length of each process, ideally processes should be short quick and robust. What are the discrete stages for each process? and who is responsible? These are important to understand every transfer and every stage can and might introduce transmission errors. Who are the actors at each stage? For each actor what is their role and zone of influence. What information is passed at each stage? and how? This logs the inputs and outputs for each stage and how information is shared down the line. Some companies will have process that create transmission errors, which lead to losses at all stages. What are the financial breakdowns for the process and for each stage? Any financial information will be helpful, raw costs, bill of goods, final mark up, salaries, depreciation etc.

Review Once each process analysis has been captured, we now need to sit back and review. You'll notice that we haven't yet really talked about data, data can be a distraction and can lead people to silly decisions such as "Bob has a ERP systems, I really like Bob so want to copy him, We NEED a ERP system" and so on. To best help anyone we should always try to understand what the goals are, and where they are comping from. The data is purely a side effect of this movement from start to end, and provides us a means to monitor and understand the movement. Now as we sit back and look at our notes we can begin to see patterns and flows, we look at the stages and see which ones lead to waste and which ones pull in the wrong direction. Now I know some readers will say how can you analyze this with out the domain exposure or experience, now my answers is you can't, you do need domain knowledge, but not as much as you think. If we pay attention during the gathering of information comments would be made, ideas and thoughts will be raised; these items need to be captured, this is our data that as helps us guide the business. Now we have an idea of which processes need refinement, which ones require massaging and which ones have no hope of successful monitoring. "Come again!" I hear you say "how do can you say that?"

Breaking it down; Now looking at the list of processes classified by the high level analysis (HLA), we can see which ones the leaders of the business believe to be important and which ones aren't, and by looking at the individual processes and marrying them to the available financials we can see how clear this HLA vision is. We can break each process down in how much do we know about it, how much does the business know about it and what gaps we have (for the gaps we really need to draw on the domain knowledge, savings in one stage might adversely affect later stage costs). From the this we can now start to get down and strategic with the business, and begin to turn the HLAs into a viable tactical deliverable project (VTDP). Over the coming weeks I will turn this into more templates and present easy ways to help you turn your business round, or provide means to say I am successful, what else can I achieve.