Are your data workflows and systems as streamlined as they could be? Or are they leaking inefficiencies – slowing down lead times and draining your resources?
If so, it’s time to review your processes and pinpoint common causes of frustration for your people.
Let’s look at how you can leverage the TIMWOOD evaluation tool. To examine your data ecosystem with a critical eye. Keep your teams engaged. And re-ignite your business to fire on all cylinders.
From construction sites to business excellence
As an engineer by trade, I know my way around construction sites. Yet all too often I see these projects plagued by predictable waste areas, identified by the TIMWOOD evaluation tool – transportation, inventory, motion, waiting, over-production, over-processing and defects.
Now, as I’ve helped more organisations achieve business efficiency, I’ve seen that this tool has much broader potential in streamlining data and analytics processes.
It’s time for TIMWOOD to be unshackled to minimise low-value data activities across all organisations.
So I reshaped it. And now I’m going to share it with you to:
- Boost your efficiencies
- Remove unnecessary costs
- Elevate stakeholders and clients satisfaction
- Eliminate common frustrations
Evaluate your data processes with TIMWOOD
1. Translating messages: You could produce the most insight-rich report that’s ever existed. But if it isn’t relevant to your audience, it’s going to fall on deaf ears. The solution? Ensure the right ideas reach the right people.
2. Integrating data: Isolated data is a risk for your business. Because if your finance system isn’t cross-referencing with your operational reports, you won’t gain an accurate picture of your project. Instead, form connections between your information sources to foster a dynamic data ecosystem that’s greater than the sum of its parts.
3. Multiple silos: Too often, I see data sitting stagnant in one departmental silo, when it could be enriching and supporting other areas. So embrace a unified platform, to connect the dots and create a central source of truth for your organisation.
4. Waiting times: Manual processes. Items sitting in queues. Time-draining monthly tasks. Are these concerns all too common in slowing down your deliverables? It’s time to streamline and integrate automated solutions – for rapid, reliable results.
5. Over-processing: Are you sure each review and audit stage adds value? Or are you simply going through the motions and inflating the number of steps required? If so, ask yourself how much value each stage actually delivers. If the answer is ‘very little,’ condense, combine or remove it altogether.
6. Over-production: I often see organisations that have already invested in advanced tools like Microsoft 365. Yet when it comes to their data practice and information management, they’re still stuck printing, scanning, approving and filing paper documents. It’s 2022! So out with the old, and in with the new.
7. Defects: Unreliable information can often be traced to two common causes:
a) The lack of a data strategy. Which then results in:
b) People progressing tasks based on assumptions and not knowing what their inputs are building towards.
The solution? A clearly communicated data strategy. And data-competent teams to swiftly resolve defects.
Remove waste, ease frustrations and boost efficiencies
When I enter a new organisation, the most significant source of process inefficiencies – time and again – are frustrated people. While better tools and software are important, each human interaction influences and directs your data workflows.
Because when your people are frustrated, they’re going to lose attention to the details. They’re going to cut corners. And they’re going to make errors – that will then need to be checked and remedied.
By critically reviewing your processes with the TIMWOOD lens, you’ll start to see the human elements involved in each waste area. To build greater trust, richer relationships and more robust decision making between your stakeholders.
I like to tell my clients: When it comes to processing and analysing your data, your people should be pulling insight-rich reports – not pulling out their hair!
Streamline your processes and accelerate your BI journey
Time to accelerate your BI journey for a streamlined, strategy-driven organisation? Let’s talk.
I’ve worked with a broad spectrum of organisations – across construction, health, NGOs and government sectors – and I’ve seen every source of inefficiency under the sun.
Archaic monthly reporting? Silos, sitting in silence? You name the waste, I’ve seen it as opportunity for improvement – and then addressed it.
Through strategies like the TIMWOOD tool and other Lean tools, Efficiecies tools and principles, I bring a critical lens to evaluate your processes from the outside in. I take a step back and give your team that bird’s eye view to explore threats (and opportunities) beyond their daily tasks.
So send me a message and let’s transform your data processes and practices to get your organisation cleaned up and firing on all cylinders.
Recent Comments