Spending too much time navigating content and systems.

In the post “The Business Agility equation” one of the factors is Process Inertia. This post is a more detailed description of Process Inertia.

[Focus on added value]
The company’s employees are also a part of the equation.  They are met by ever increasing demands for efficiency and productivity and it is crucially important that the time used on non-value adding activities be minimised.  This does not only refer to the time used on implementing non-value adding processes (e.g. travel reports); time used on the implementation of value-adding processes (productivity) is just as important.  Regardless of the type of process, it would be best for the employee (and thus the company) if the individual stages of the process could be implemented without wasting time on navigation between different systems and information.

The complexity is further increased by the fact that access to the various different systems and types of information varies, and that these systems are all at different stages of their life cycle.  Thus, in spite of the fact that it may be appropriate to implement the process, the actual execution of the process takes a disproportionate length of time and results in a reduction of the quality of the output of the process in question.  This form of inertia is defined as process inertia.

Are you a victim of Change Inertia?

In a contribution I did to Børsen’s Management Handbooks concerning ERP systems, together with a colleague of mine, I described the Change Inertia concept as follows.

A productive company consists of a number of employees and machines which interact to produce one or more services or products for sale on a market. The structure of this value-adding activity is supported by a range of processes, made up of both core processes and support processes.  These serve to ensure efficient implementation of work procedures, to ensure a high level of productivity and to support the business model.

[The probability of success is proportional to the ability to change]
The employees, on the other hand, shall be able to act within the framework of these processes and a large part of the interaction is conducted via various IT systems. The interaction between a company’s need for processes and structure on the one hand, and the employees’ involvement in these processes and structures on the other, must be optimal if the company as a whole is to develop in a positive direction.

A company’s ability to implement changes to these processes in answer to changes in the market is actually proportional to its probability of success (this can be likened to a “super tanker” which runs aground because it was not able to change course in time).

Many companies find themselves in a situation in which process changes are impeded by technical complications but they choose to implement the changes anyway.  As a consequence, the work of the employees becomes more complex resulting in non-value adding overheads.  Quite simply, it becomes more and more complicated to implement process changes as the underlying systems cannot be changed and adapted at the same speed.  This form of inertia is defined as change inertia.

Change inertia can have serious consequences at a tactical and strategic level.  Therefore, it is of increasing interest – but also increasingly necessary – for a company to assess the potential for collecting all information and applications on a common platform, a platform which can provide simple access to processes and information and which can be adapted quickly and easily to facilitate the desired process changes.