Pain In The Butt (the PG rating)

Over the years many organizations have asked me to automate their processes in order to be more efficient and enable their employees to ultimately make more money or service more clients. After all, that should be the goal of any organization, to service more clients better.


When an organization wants to automate a process, they may have their own outlook on how it should be done and that outlook is usually to handle it exactly the way it is currently handled. Now, I know that everyone's processes are handled exactly the way they should be. Well that just may be the case, but more times than not there are efficiencies that are completely overlooked. This is not saying the stake holders are wrong or misguided; it is just a case of being too close to the issue.


When my automation consulting starts, I look for what is going smoothly and I try to quantify the Pain In The @$$ (butt or whatever), or PITA processes. These are the ones that when you automate them will make the people charged with carrying them out very happy. That translates to more excitement to handle the other work required. Now, the PITA processes can take a little longer to automate, but the end result is a process no one is dreading to start. The other processes will benefit.



Your organization may be using an office software suite. Or you may have bought some specialized software to handle some tasks. Those are positive things, but if you are not storing those documents or sharing that data with the rest of your organization (where appropriate) then you are missing some very important and probably unseen advantages. You need a Business Process Consultant (that is me!) to get the best bang for your dollar. You will be very pleased with the end result and when you see a positive return on your investment, you will keep investing and make more gains.