A key factor in the success or failure of a business is the quality and consistency of its processes.

If a company produces the best widget on the market but its fulfillment process is broken or its customer service department cannot effectively resolve issues, how likely is it that the company’s new customers will become repeat customers?

Given the importance of effective, repeatable processes, we might expect companies would be laser focused on ensuring the quality of their processes.  It’s surprising to learn that this is often not the case.  Many times, what a company’s management believes is going on – and what is actually happening in the trenches – are sometimes two very different things.  The hard truth is that left to themselves, even carefully designed and implemented processes tend to morph over time in response to an evolving business environment.
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So how can your organization get and keep a handle on its processes?

You’ve done your due diligence; you compared platforms and features, figured out the licensing, landed the budget and maybe even defined your team, created the project plan and set a deadline.  Nothing left to do but to do it, right?  Maybe.  How would you answer the following questions?

• Do you know why the business is changing platforms (hopefully)? Does everyone else?  (Hint: 'We want to move to the cloud' is not a solid reason)
• In the age of too many tools, have you created your strategy for training and governance around what tools will be used for which tasks?
• Have you taken a good look at current processes to identify gaps and redundancies?
• Do you have a solid strategy to get your Help Desk ready to support employees?

If you don’t like all your responses to those questions, you’re not alone.  Below are some of the more common assumptions that we’ve witnessed trip up the best intended roll outs.