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First Things First -- Process BEFORE Technology

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Here's a brief story I encountered while leaving Newark International Airport following a recent business trip. Hard to believe, but true.

After a long flight home from the West Coast, I took a short train ride to the long term parking facility, located my car (which is becoming more difficult with age it seems), and proceeded to the parking exit. Note that it's been a while since I've used the long term parking facility, as I normally use a car or taxi service, so I was largely unfamiliar with their new "high tech" customer solutions.

As I pulled up to the pay station (expecting the attendant to inform me of my charge), she immediately looked at me with the gaze of a very frustrated woman who's obviously done this before. In a short tone, she barked out an instruction suggesting that I had passed an automated ticket booth, from which I should have inserted my ticket and noted the charge. I complied with the instruction, quietly wondering why this woman was in the booth at all, given the fact that the machine and I pretty much had this thing licked. I concluded of course that she must be there to collect the money, so I proceeded to pay her. Not a good assumption as she pointed me back to the machine to insert my payment. OK, I get it, I interact with the machine for this too...no problem, thinking that this is a pretty good solution. I wait for the machine to give me my receipt, an obvious assumption given how the first two steps went. Nope...wrong again. This time she wants me to drive to her and pick up my receipt, at which point she presses a button, lifts the gate, and I'm on my merry way.

I can't help thinking about all the time and money went into implementing this slick new solution, that probably cost an arm and a leg, had little to no impact on cost savings, destroyed customer satisfaction, and obviously put the employee in a perpetual stae of 'grumpy'. No...what this was, is yet another example of "technology for technology's sake".

When I work with organizations on business impovement, one of the most important themes I try to drill home is PROCESS FIRST, then technology. You don't implement technology on top of a broken process. Nor do you attempt to fix a broken brocess with technology only.

The right path is to measure the effectiveness of the process before you begin. Establish a baseline. Understand how the process works today ('As Is' State). Look for places to improve the process. Define changes. Examine the effect of each potential change on overall performance. Then, and only then, define the technology, systems, skills, and organization needed to support the new process. Develop cost benefits and business cases. Re-examine the degree to which performance will be improved over baseline. And then your almost ready for implementation.

It's a simple principle, but one that often get overlooked. Try to pay some attention to this in your everyday life and you'll probably see many similar examples. Then, use these as lessons learned, and start living by the mantra- "First Things First"- process first, technology later.

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