process everywhere

In the last post, I exposed the mounting challenge related to our abilities to draw valuable conclusions from the swell of data that will be available to us in the near future.  In order to benefit from this influx of information, companies will need to adopt a scientific approach to understand and create actions from this information.

Fortunately, the sort of scientific and numbers driven approach has been evolving for the past century.  It started with Fredrick Taylor studying the movements of workers in a factory and has evolved into process improvement philosophies like Total Quality Management, Six Sigma and Lean thinking.  Over that time period they have moved from assembly lines, to service business like delivery, restaurants, and medical practices, and now are starting to take shape in white collar environments including banks and insurance companies.

Applying these concepts to web companies and consumer product behavior are the next step in this evolution.  Because the disciplines are heavily focused to operations inside the company, many people assume they are not good for evaluating what is happening outside the walls of the organization.  In fact, this assertion couldn’t be further from the truth.

In lean thinking, everything starts with the customer.  Our business need is to provide the exact item required at the highest quality at the lowest cost in the shortest lead time.

Getting the Right Things Done, Pascal Dennis

Process improvement takes place by using the aspects of you business that you have control over to better serve the needs of the customer.  Acquiring voice of the customer data at the outset is the most important aspect of the philosophy.  The preceding quote applies to businesses with traditional operating model including production and cost of goods sold.  But as we apply this idea to the web where variable costs are marginal, it would differ slightly.

With lean thinking applied to the web, it is still all about the customers.  The website must provide the exact service required at the highest quality while the delivering the highest level of intuition and ease of use to the user.
This guy.

In my next post I’ll take a closer look at the tools that make up the process improvement methodologies and how they should be applied to the web.