Assessing Business Problem: If It Ain’t Broke, Please Fix it

It’s not always possible to get ahead of the curve when predicting potential business problems, but it certainly makes things easier in the long run when you do. Here are a few assessments you can use to evaluate current and future issues to help you maintain business continuity.

You’ve heard it before, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” It’s a phrase that means if something is functioning properly, it’s best to leave it as is – don’t make any changes that could potentially break it. Bert Lance coined this phrase in the May 1977 issue of Nation’s Business magazine.

How often have you (or should I say we) taken this idiom as gospel? Frankly, it may have been the mode of action we followed in the past due to financial, time, resource or economic constraints. It would have made sense then to avoid fixing a “not yet a problem” a decade ago. But in today’s fast-changing digital world, if you don’t address these problems in a timely manner, it might restrict your business’s nimbleness and ability to change.

Different Levels of Business Problems

It is good to categorize these problems into three areas:

1. The problem exists – You have a cracked foundation, and those cracks are visible.
2. The problem is starting to happen – You can see evidence of the first few cracks.
3. The problem is “not yet a problem” – You can’t see the cracks yet, but you will soon if ignored.

Though it is common sense to do restorative or preventative maintenance on the problems mentioned above, at times, we intentionally overlook them. Let’s look at an example for each degree of the business problems discussed above:

Digital Modernization – The Visible Problem

You were proud of your company’s award-winning app when it debuted five years ago, but recent surveys show app-user satisfaction has slipped. They say they now want an app that fully integrates with their accounts, delivers real-time access and scheduling, or can even interact with in-store displays or holograms.

However, providing these exciting features is only the first step toward digital modernization. In addition to the interface, you’ll need to modernize your backend systems as you continue innovating and staying on top of technology. The visible problem of less happy customers and an aging app reveals deeper needs within your IT stack.

Business Process Management – The Developing Problem

Your insurance underwriting business relies on documents — lots of documents. However, in your highly regulated industry, regulators constantly revise documents and the processes for how these need to move throughout your company. Even more policies are on the way, and you’re not sure how they will affect your people or their existing processes.

Business process management (BPM) is the discipline of helping you modify your processes to keep up with changing customer and market needs. In the developing problem above, you may need a BPM solution specifically targeted at document management — with space carved out for people and technology — to stop this below-the-surface problem from becoming a full-blown regulatory crisis.

To Automate, Or Not to Automate? – The Potential Problem

Your business is humming along, but you read an industry newsletter describing how a competitor saves time and money by turning many aspects of their operations over to automation. The article talks about robots, chatbots and plain old “bots,” and it’s full of abbreviations and words you’ve never heard. Could automation be right for you? Would it cause more problems than it fixes? How can you know, and where would you start?

I can think of other examples where we apply a temporary “band-aid” to situations or ignore them altogether to avoid investing resources. In my 18 years of experience across mid-sized to Fortune 500 companies, I have seen these exact situations play out and contribute to business failure or ineffective company adaptation to the quick pace of change that today’s digital transformation programs require.

How Can You Resolve Your Potential Business Problems?

Now that we know that resolution of the problem is necessary, we can categorize the solution into two buckets:

1. Restorative
2. Preventative.

You can think about the difference between restorative and preventative in terms of time. A restorative resolution focuses on fixing a visible problem that’s already happened or is happening now, while a preventative solution is more about a developing business problem or potential problem in the future.

Taking proactive actions by doing quick assessments around operating models – people, process, technology and information — is one effective way to determine if you need restorative or preventative solutions. Then, you can start the “fixing” process. Here are a few types of assessments that can help.

• Organization Assessments (People) – An organization assessment can capture the voice of your employees and customers to identify the pain points they feel but don’t necessarily communicate. The cultural, performance, change, training and leadership impacts on day-to-day work can highlight areas of opportunity. If your organization’s assessment indicates people are unhappy now, it calls for a restorative solution, while a survey that indicates a trend suggests a more preventative approach.
• Business Assessments (Process) – These are great ways to identify the leaks, gaps and risky areas within your business functionality. A business assessment also allows you to investigate how to make your business more resilient. If business processes are gumming things up now, look for a restorative solution. If the broken process is more of a headache or presents a problem that’s grown worse over time, think more preventatively.
• Process Assessments (Process) – This type of assessment shows where in your process(es) you should remove the inefficiencies such as rework, manual work, context switching, inflexible workforce, high wait times and focus on low-priority work. Like business assessments, look for inefficiencies hurting you now for restorative solutions. Inefficiencies people have learned to work around but could be better in the future — or that take more time for newer employees to learn or accept — are more preventative.
• Information or Technology and Data Assessments – These are great ways to evaluate if your company has trustworthy data and architecture to underpin data-driven decision making. If your website or company’s access to data is down now, that demands a restorative solution. But if you know from research or peers that you could do better, a more preventative approach is sufficient.

The important point behind these quick assessments is to determine the urgency of the problem. That way, you can determine if the solution requires just a quick diagnostic working session (a few hours), a workshop (a few days), a deep-dive assessment in selected areas (a few weeks), or a full-fledged comprehensive assessment across operating model (a few months).

Conclusion

As you search for a resolution to your business problems, remember: it’s always better to get ahead of the problem before it gets ahead of you. Partner with a vendor with capabilities in all areas — people, process, technology and information — to help wherever you are. But the most important thing is to know exactly where you are in the problems you face, first.