Process diagnostics
Before investing in a new system, an artificial intelligence project or a reorganisation, it pays to know how the company really works. In a few weeks, and with a few hours of your people’s time, we show you with facts.
When does it help?
- Before choosing a new ERP or another integrated system
- Before an artificial intelligence project that must deliver real results
- After an acquisition, when two ways of working have to become one
- When growth has outgrown the organisation
- When margins or performance get worse for no obvious reason
- When an investor or a new management team wants more visibility
- When key people are about to leave the company
Why before the projects?
Artificial intelligence, automation and new management systems do not replace good management: they assume it. Applied to unclear processes, they simply make inefficiencies faster and add costs and risks.
New systems are often built around the company as it is today, not as it should become. And without a starting measure, nobody can say for sure how much a project has delivered.
What do we analyse?
Processes
How work is really done, with which steps and decisions, and where practice drifts away from procedures
Measures
How long the cycle takes, how much is work and how much is waiting, what the inefficiencies are worth
Systems
What the applications do, what they could already do, what relies on spreadsheets and files outside the systems
Data
How reliable the information behind your decisions is, and where it is re-keyed by hand
People and know-how
Where critical knowledge sits, and how well the organisation copes with absences and change
For each area of the company we agree at the start how deeply to look at each dimension, so effort goes where it is needed.
What do you receive?
- Process diagrams anyone can read, with roles, systems and issues in a single picture
- A table of who does what
- Measured work and waiting times, by activity and by process
- Inefficiencies valued in hours and in euros, with the assumptions stated
- A map of systems and data: what is missing, and what you pay for without using
- A map of the know-how you must not lose
- An action plan, with immediate measures and projects ranked by benefit, complexity and timing
How much effort does it take?
8–24 hoursper key contact, over the whole project
Very little. The schedule is set at the start and the intensive work is ours. Your key contacts take part in a few sessions and review the documents. We use artificial intelligence to speed up documentation, always subject to your review.
How does it work?
- Initial conversation
Short, to see whether and where we can help - Pre-diagnostics
A joint working session to define profile and scope; a few days later you receive the detailed plan, with expected results, schedule and the effort required - Diagnostics
Analysis of the areas in parallel, with an iterative method; documents go to your key contacts for validation - Action plan
The priorities, with expected benefits, complexity and timing
From our experience
An international chemicals distributor was working with fragmented applications, some of them outdated, and poorly integrated databases. The analysis of operational processes and the IT landscape showed where to consolidate functions and systems and how to simplify processes across sites. The result was an action plan over several horizons, with immediate measures and projects, which laid the foundations of the group’s new operating model.