I was recently talking with the president of a SMB, and during that conversation he mentioned some technologies he was thinking about implementing to improve some of his internal processes.
It is a constant refrain.
Technology Takes Last Place
Technology should be a distant last place in your considerations.
Technology is a tool that can be used by people.
A tool used by people to generate business results by following business processes.
Read these two reviews by John Caddel, and Bob Sutton referencing the same study on improving medication processes in hospitals. To quote Mr. Caddel;
I’ve seen both these situations in action: the ability of front-line personnel to understand and fix problems with the processes they use, and the effectiveness of often-overlooked simple and low-tech solutions.
The SMB Takeaway
Technology tools can help standardize, they can help speed up existing business processes. But if those processes don’t even exist right now. Don’t think (or let vendors convince you) that a software tool will be a magic bullet that can do it all for you.
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Photo Credit bunchofpants via flickr
And it’s always
Process
Data (and the tools to use them)
Organisation
And never forget: a fool with a tool is still a fool.
Or
Information from data
Knowledge from information
Or:
Not even project needs to be an IT project
Thanks for visiting John!
That is absolutely correct, if post-it type notes do the job, use them. When it gets to the point where post-it type notes are too slow or inaccurate – then look at automating them.
Regards.