Category: Services

Strategy, Architecture & Problem-Solving

signature

Look at the Evidence – the Spike and Delay Pattern in Social Care

A number of years ago, I was transforming a city’s social care directorate and, as part of that transformation, we aimed to reduce the time it took to do anything when interacting with the service. The transformation was based on a more fundamental need to free up workers to be able to do the work…
Read more

speaker

The Delay Following the Spike – Issues with Cycle Time in Service Industries

How long does it take you to do what your customers want? Not just the first part, but the whole of it? 1. The Pattern I see this pattern commonly replicated across service industries. It involves a very short spike of activity (e.g. 5-20 minutes) followed by a lengthy delay where something is sent to…
Read more

Chick

The Whole Chicken

KFC has a radio commercial playing over the last few weeks, but I’m struggling to understand what it means. I understand the words but they’re contradictory, even within the commercial spot itself. I’m left wondering what the business motivation is behind commissioning that ad slot. What was the intention? The Content Here are some of…
Read more

Business Motivation Model for GDPR

GDPR: The White Knight or The Elephant in The Room

I’m going to use GDPR as an example of how prioritised goals can make a big difference in how an organisation responds to change. I’ve no wish to jump on the consultancy bandwagon that is GDPR; I’m definitely no expert on the subject. However, GDPR will serve as a good example in this content as it’s…
Read more

Checkout Till

Finding a balance between the needs of the organisation and the needs of the customer

Some companies are immature in their approach to customer relationship management (CRM), but at the heart is a desire to get something for free. And that’s wrong. The scenario You look around a shop, you pick something up, take it to the checkout, wait in a queue. You notice that the queue is moving slowly,…
Read more

Business Architecture and Service Design

How Might We Apply Service Design to the Enterprise?

I simplistically take the view that Service Design is the concepts and methods of Design Thinking applied to making services work better for their customers. It’s a definition that works in the circles I most commonly move in, i.e. directors, programme directors, etc. It allows me to set the stage in which service design and…
Read more

The Washroom Principle - Revised

The Washroom Principle – The Easiest Way to Evaluate a Company

There are plenty of methods for conducting due diligence, whether for partners, customers, suppliers or mergers. They’re lengthy and they’re expensive. There are times for adopting principles of formal Business Architecture, such as capability matching in M&A situations. But no matter what the deliverables indicate, there’s a useful and quick check to perform as a…
Read more

Capability Components

Pardon, which sector? – Xtech and Why I’m Fed Up with Tech part 3

I’ve written previously about the issues with xtech that arise from applying -tech to the end of a sector such as healthtech, fintech, etc. And I introduced (and revoked) the idea of a -value suffix. Earlier this week, a conversation earlier made me think more about this and I want to explore the concepts of…
Read more

Capability Vision 0_04

Using Archimate for Business Motivation Model and MSP – Part 6: Capabilities and Org Units

Taking the model defined so far and introducing the concept of capability changes and the effect on the organisation units. Recap In the first article, I introduced the standards and the tools that are in scope of this series of articles. To recap, the chosen tools/standards/methods are: Archimate – The open source enterprise architecture modelling…
Read more

high-heeled-shoes

High-heels, guitars and cultural expectations

Expectations can run deeper than you may at first think, especially if those expectations are based on decades of cultural information/misinformation. This may affect attitudes towards quality or acceptance of new ideas, including industry innovations. If we’re aiming to make changes in an organisation, we should look out for the deep-rooted expectations of what’s acceptable.…
Read more