Best Practice and beyond

What is a Best Practice?

Over the last decade, there has been a great deal of emphasis placed on the benefits of embracing “Best Practices”. This has largely been driven by the prevalence of Quality Management Systems such as such as ISO 9000 and ISO 14001, and the implementation of best practices based ERP systems.

In short, best practices are methods or techniques that have consistently shown results superior to those achieved by other means. A best practice can evolve to become “better” as improvements are discovered.

Does one size always fit all?

Best practice is considered by some as a business buzzword, used to describe the process of developing and following a standard way of doing things that multiple organizations can use. Some consulting firms specialize in the area of best practice and offer pre-made “templates” to standardize business processes.

However, following the template driven application of best practices can be to your disadvantage.

Contextual Practice … beyond Best Practice

Sometimes a recognized best practice is inappropriate for a particular organization’s needs. The phrase “Contextual Practice” is often used where companies have elected not to follow a best practice and have decided that, given their context, a practice of their own design is considered to be more appropriate for gaining market advantage.

A key strategic talent required when doing business process design, is to decide when to follow best practice and when to follow contextual practice. As a guiding principle, only implement contextual practice after conducting a strategic review that clearly indicates that it is desirable to deviate from best practice.

When do you embrace a contextual practice?

Consider a scenario where all players in a particular industry strictly follow the same set of best practices. This scenario would lead to there being very little differentiation between the service or product offering of the market players under question. Should these players start implementing contextual practices, the player most effective in doing so would prosper, whereas the player that is least effective in doing so would start to lose competitive ground. Typically, a contextual practice should have as its endpoint the attainment of a Sustainable Competitive Advantage (SCA), a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) or both.

Ultimately, when considering deviation from a best practice, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Will this contextual practice lead to a SCA, a USP or both?
2. Will this contextual practice be future proofed into the medium and long terms?
3. Will this contextual practice give me an advantage relative to my competitors?

If the above questions do not check out in the affirmative, it would be best to consider staying in the realm of best practice.

Your change management culture should be aware of best and contextual practices, as the change management process can constitute a gatekeeper to prevent suboptimal practices from taking root.

Contextual practices don’t last forever!

Bear in mind that should you implement a contextual practice that does indeed translate into a SCA or USP, the more astute amongst your competitors will rapidly emulate you. It is therefore imperative that you implement your contextual practices effectively so that you can derive the maximum advantage before your competitors catch up.

The reality stands that best practices are not static. Today’s contextual practice that provides true advantage will by definition be tomorrow’s best practice.

When implementing a contextual practice, pay attention to any barriers that you can use that will make it more difficult for your competitors to catch up with you.

Remember that, when implementing what you believe to be a contextual practice, if you get it wrong, you are actually implementing a bad practice. Monitor contextual practices carefully post implementation.

Cutting through the noise in a best practices world

Typically, most of a business’s practices should be best practices with relatively few contextual practices in play.

The contextual practices that a business engages with give it it’s “personality” and differentiate it from it's competitors. Given the key role that contextual practices play in providing a foundation for the development of a corporate personality, it is imperative that contextual practices are well chosen, offer value and are, as far as possible, sustainable.

Contextual practices often constitute the foundation stone for the development of a long-term marketing strategy.

Are all of our practices best practices?

Over time, bad practices tend to take root, either because of poor decision-making or because of the failure to keep up with the ever-shifting sands of best practice. All told, best practice is not constant and is continually changing as the environment shifts.

It is the function of management to continually evaluate the practices in play and ensure that bad practices are replaced, either by best or, less frequently, contextual practices. A well run Quality Management System as well as a culture of mandating staff to act against poor practice will be key to ensuring success.

How do I determine what constitutes a best practice?

Implementing best practices is “more easily said than done”. There is typically no definitive textbook available to guide you through the process. Best practice is often a matter of opinion and therefore needs careful evaluation prior to implementation. Some ideas that may be worth considering follow:

1. Many Consultants and business Academics have carved out a niche in this area. Engage only those that have a proven track record.
2. Consider implementing a best practices ERP system, and critically assess any requests for deviation from the system’s “vanilla” state.
3. Bring in fresh talent. A new set of eyes will identify deep-rooted poor practices more easily.
4. Engage in strategic conversation that centres on evaluating the effectiveness of your business’ practices.
5. Implement a Quality Management System.
6. Implement a Business Process Management Suite, such as the Therefore Quantum™ BPMS (www.therefore.co.za/quantum), to allow you to continually monitor the effectiveness of your business’ practices.
7. There are aspects of best practice that are documented, such as good agricultural practices, good manufacturing practice, good laboratory practice, good labour practice, good clinical practice, good warehouse practice and good distribution practice. It makes sense to use published standards as a starting point.

If in doubt, ask your Customers.

As a guiding principle, businesses exist to provide goods or services to their chosen markets. The practices that they utilize therefore have as their endpoint the need to maximize the value that they offer their customers, both existing and future. If in doubt, ask your Customers what they are expecting from you. Effective customer interaction will allow you to identify bad practices and to uncover potential contextual practices that could give you a competitive advantage.

A useful strategic tool to utilize when canvassing the opinion of customers is a Moments of Reality evaluation. More detail to follow in a subsequent article.

Legal Compliance

I have an admission to make. I am a committed believer in the free market and feel strongly that Government intervention in the economy should be limited to providing an environment that is conducive to business. Governmental best practice should minimize the legislative baggage and red tape that business has to navigate.

The only deviation that a Government should make to best practice should be in the direction of implementing contextual practices that benefits the economy, particularly when viewed with reference to the global economic stage.

Governments frequently get it wrong when they implement what they see as contextual practices, and as a result land up implementing bad practices. The propensity for this behaviour is typically the consequence of the absence of a long-term strategic view, fuelled by the need to implement electorate friendly policies in the face of relatively short electoral cycles.

The long and the short of it, is that Governments frequently implement legislation that may stand against your ability to engage with globally accepted best practice. None the less, in the absence of an alternative, it may on occasion be necessary to abandon best practice in favour of legislated practice.

It makes sense that you continually review your practices to ensure that you are not falling foul of legislated practice and to actively campaign against poor policy decisions made by Government.

Learning from Government Future Proofing contextual practice

In all fairness, the inability to implement well-considered contextual practices, given the inability to work based on a mature medium to long-term strategic view, is not a failing that is in the sole preserve of Government.  Business is often prone to the same failing.

For business, it is often difficult to see beyond the next financial year-end, which is a far shorter time span than the duration of an electoral cycle. The difference is, Government is a big ship, and it turns far more slowly than a business, which is smaller and therefore more agile.

The important observation is that it is critical that contextual practices be future proofed beyond the short term. The longer the term over which you can future proof a contextual practice, the better.

What is a Turnaround Strategy?

Reviving a business that has hit upon hard times tends to be hard work. The most difficult aspect of implementing a Turnaround Strategy is often establishing a framework that allows you to see the wood from the trees. The following practices-based road-map may well add some value to a Turnaround strategy:

1. Identify the business’ core practices.
2. Identify those practices that are subject to legislated practice and ensure that you comply.
3. Identify bad practices and ensure that your Turnaround Strategy contains a road-map that shifts them towards best practice.
4. Understand the market in which the business operates.
5. Select your targeted Unique Selling Propositions and Sustainable Competitive Advantages.
6. Implement contextual practices that support your targeted Unique Selling Propositions and Sustainable Competitive Advantages.

Business Process Management and Continuous Improvement

Businesses exist to perform a narrowly defined set of activities that result in them delivering value added products and services to their Customers, with the eventual aim of generating a sustained profit.

Those businesses that consistently perform their core activities more effectively than their competitors tend to prosper, provide Customers with more value, have higher levels of Customer satisfaction, retain their Customers for longer, are less wasteful of resources and, over a period of time, gain market share to the detriment of their competitors. The recipes that businesses use to guide the performance of their core activities are referred to as “Processes”.

It stands to reason that a business’ core processes constitute one of its most valuable assets, as they are the embodiment of all past learning pertaining to the manner in which products and services are most profitably taken to market. The more efficient and effective these processes are, the greater their ability to translate into Customer value, profit and ultimately, the greater their asset value. The primary objective of BPM is to optimize the asset value of a business’ processes. 

BPM systems such as the Therefore BPMS, allow for processes to be rapidly modeled. Once these processes have been modeled, BPM systems can be used to facilitate their execution. The Therefore BPMS refers to modeled Processes as “Tasks”.

A feature of BPM systems is that they enable the rapid modeling of processes without introducing the need for writing code, thereby reducing the length of the BPM project life cycle and shortening the time lag between the initiation of a BPM project and the inflow of the resulting benefits. Further, given that the needs of the market are continually in a state of flux, the processes that a business utilizes to service its market must be continually revised to ensure ongoing market alignment. This requirement for agility dictates that it must be possible to rapidly modify existing business processes as the need arises. The Therefore ThreadBuilder® application enables the rapid creation and modification of processes, thereby ensuring that your business’ processes remain in synergy with both the needs of your market and your strategic direction. 

Best business practice dictates that all service outages are recorded, resolved and then analyzed to allow for the identification of areas of repeat process failure. This discipline is referred to as “Continuous Improvement”. Businesses that do not embrace Continuous Improvement tend to market products and services that are not adequately aligned to the needs of their Customers. This invariably results in them losing market share to their competitors and will eventually lead to their extinction. The Therefore BPMS has been designed to support the implementation of a Continuous Improvement strategy and is compatible with frameworks such as ISO 9001:2000, Lean and Six Sigma. 

Once weaknesses have been identified in processes, they need to be remodeled to ensure that they are rendered less error prone. The Therefore BPMS allows for process failures to be resolved by means of specialized processes referred to as “Queries”. The Therefore BPMS can then be used to analyze query volumes to identify which processes need to be reviewed to optimize Customer value.

Therefore BPMS … A SaaS White Label Product

White Label

The phrase “White Label” has as its origins, the image of a white label on the packaging of a product which can be replaced with the marketer’s trade dress. Its origins can be traced back to the days of vinyl records. Before records were released to the public, often before official artwork was designed and printed, promotional copies were sent out to DJs to solicit radio and nightclub play in an effort to gauge public interest and thereby better estimate manufacturing quantities.

In recent years, the phrase “White Label” has increasingly been used with reference to software. White label software is developed in such a manner that it can be purchased off the shelf, re-branded and then deployed so that it maps to the look and feel required by the purchaser.

The Therefore BPMS’ “Rapid Re-brand” capability allows for it to be re-branded so that it carries your Company’s look, feel and branding. The Site Setup section of the Therefore BPMS even allows you to specify a product name for the deployment. Style sheets allow for the modification of the product’s colour palette so that it maps to your corporate style guides. Likewise, the product can easily be set up so that it carries your logo and a banner.

Software as a service (SaaS)

Software as a Service (SaaS) is sometimes referred to as "on-demand software". SaaS is a software delivery model in which software and associated data are centrally hosted on the cloud. SaaS is typically accessed by users via a web browser. 

SaaS has become a common delivery model for many business applications, including accounting, collaboration  customer relationship management, management information systems, enterprise resource planning, invoicing, human resource management, content management and service desk management. SaaS has been incorporated into the strategy of all leading enterprise software companies. One of the biggest selling points for SaaS software is the potential to reduce IT support costs by outsourcing hardware and software maintenance and support to the SaaS provider.

The Therefore BPMS software is typically used as a SaaS service, where Therefore host and manage the application on behalf of its Clients. However, should Clients wish to host the application themselves, Therefore is prepared to accommodate such a request.

The Therefore Team are continually developing and refining the Therefore BPMS and deploy new releases, typically twice a year. Deployment for SaaS based Clients is handled by the Therefore Team. Where Clients have elected not to follow the SaaS methodology, the Client would periodically be required to apply the latest code and effect database upgrades via a carefully versioned upgrade script methodology.

Teaser – Commitment, persistence and Continuous Improvement

Every week we make between 10 and 20 small refinements to the Therefore BPM Suite. In a year that amounts to about 840 refinements. The Therefore BPM Suite has been under continual refinement for the last 7 years, which translates into some 6,000 refinements. What would you expect if you refined something 6,000 times? There is a dose of commitment and persistence in everything that we do.

... full article to follow soon.

Update - 22/22/2013

A full article has eventually been published. Sorry to keep you waiting ... hope it was worth the wait. For the full article, please follow the link below …

http://thereforests.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-power-of-evolution-and-picture-that.html

Clem Sunter's 21st Century Megatrends

Now that we are entering the fourteenth year of the current century, some of the megatrends shaping this century have become evident. As a 21st century fox, here is my top 10 list bearing in mind that these megatrends will apply for all global economic and political scenarios. In other words, they are universal rules of the game, not variables that may or may not come into play depending on which scenario you choose. I have also run them by my fellow fox, Chantell Ilbury. 

1. Populations are ageing

One of the problems making the budget deficit of the US so difficult to solve is the extraordinary number of elderly people who over the next 50 years will qualify for state-funded medical care and social security. Europe and Japan are in even more difficult situations given that population is declining in numbers in countries like Italy and now Japan. China faces a demographic cliff in about 20 years time because of the one-child policy introduced in 1978 and, at this stage, the nation has very little in the way of pensions and medical cover for the elderly. 

Of course, India, Africa, South America and Indonesia still have relatively young, growing populations where the challenge is to raise general living standards. Nevertheless, depending on the degree of success in achieving the latter objective, they too will one day face the same ageing problem as increasing longevity goes hand in hand with rising income levels. The number of people over 100 years old living on this planet is set to explode and somehow will have to be catered for.

2. More economies will return to a steady state

Japan has led the way. Having been a high growth economy for the 1970s and 1980s, it has been somewhere between zero and one percent annual growth since 1990. They have done everything to try and revive the economy and now have the highest national debt to GDP ratio in the world. Europe is about to follow suit, while America with its younger demographics will probably manage two percent per annum. 

Growth, as a concept, has really only been around for 200 years. Prior to the industrial revolution and the massive increase in population in the 19th and 20th centuries, it was only the favoured few who expanded empires and trade. Now we once again face a relatively flat economic universe driven by static populations in the more advanced economies. 

3. We have moved from the Age of Knowledge to the Age of Intelligence

The internet now means that access to knowledge and facts has increased exponentially over the last 20 years. The differentiator now is the way we use the existing knowledge to create new knowledge and connect the dots by dreaming up ideas that have not been dreamt up before. This is all about intelligence which comes back to teaching children cognitive skills. In a steady state economic universe, the penalty for not having an intelligent strategy as a business is no longer slower sales growth than your competitors. It is death. Innovation has become an even more important element of a company's life cycle since to grow, somebody else has to shrink. Competition in being original has just undergone a quantum leap.

4. It is more about defending your wealth than growing your wealth

Since 2000, food price inflation has averaged around 10% a year. Petrol prices have climbed too. In fact, the only thing that has checked the rise in the consumer price index is property (and mortgages). Meanwhile, interest rates are at all-time lows and returns from most asset classes since the beginning of the century have been subdued. It is the classic squeeze particularly in Britain and Europe. It is thus becoming more difficult to make money with money unless you are prepared to take a higher risk of losing it. In fact, preserving the real value of your savings is now a stretch. 

In a steady-state universe, you have to be a value-driven investor intent on stocks offering a satisfactory dividend yield and modest price-earnings ratio. Put another way, you have to be a dog whisperer where you can tell the difference between the apparent dogs that offer the upside because they are priced cheaply on account of general market conditions and the real dogs that are cheap for a valid reason. All in all, the retirement age for the remainder of this century has risen to between 70 and 75. Even then, you will still need an intelligent financial adviser. Otherwise, it becomes a race between poverty and death.

5. Education is out of sync with the job market and changing nature of work. 

Around the world, youth unemployment is a real issue and in some countries has hit record highs. One of the principal reasons is that schools are educating pupils for the job market of the middle of the last century, not the one that exists now. In those days, a decent academic qualification guaranteed you a job. Nowadays most kids have to be entrepreneurs and start their own businesses. When will schools wake up to this megatrend? I don't know, but in the meantime society will have a significant propensity for social unrest among its young citizens. They are the first generation for whom life offers fewer opportunities than for their parents because of their inappropriate education.

6. We are witnessing a second scramble, and potentially more dangerous scramble, for resources.

All the easy-to-find, easy-to-mine, easy-to-treat mineral and energy deposits have been found, mined and treated. We are now into the remoter deposits which require more infrastructure to get the product to the customer or more difficult deposits which require new methods of processing such as fracking. By the middle of this century this picture can only get worse which would signify that the next big technological wave after IT will be around improving resource utilisation efficiencies as well as making substitutes such as solar energy better priced for the average consumer.

A growing scarcity of water and food is also developing which is why the Chinese are purchasing land in Africa and why nations on large rivers are beginning to be more aggressive about the way water is shared. Marine mining and offshore drilling are also being stepped up with nations quarrelling over ownership rights in places like the sea off China and Japan. Outright conflict cannot be ruled out.

7. Wars will continue to be fought as weapons become more sophisticated.

This century has already seen its fair share of wars; but it is unlikely to have a war of the magnitude of the two world wars of the last century for one good reason: the principle of mutually assured destruction. Nukes have raised the stakes so much with their power of devastation that every nation, including America, will think twice about using them. Nevertheless, conventional weapons are being turned into weapons of mass destruction by improvements in technology as can be seen by the appalling destruction wrought by a single, deranged gunman in incidents in Norway and America. Missiles are longer-range, drones more accurate and explosives more deadly. While mankind's instinct to kill has in no way diminished, his ability to kill is forever improving. I doubt whether we will see a single month in this century where someone is not fighting a war somewhere in the world. Sad but true.

8. Like black swans, natural disasters will come out of the blue.

Tsunamis, hurricanes, superstorms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, droughts will continue to take their toll. Mother Nature is beyond our control and on account of a more populated world can unleash events of increasing consequence for human life. Moreover, so far this century nothing serious has yet been done by the super-emitters on global warming. It hardly rates a mention among political leaders whose tenure of office is far more determined by their country's short-term economic performance than by long-term climate change. One hopes that the meticulous collection of further scientific data will put the theory beyond doubt. Consensus has never validated a hypothesis. Often it is one man like Einstein that advances science: but evidence is always the judge.

9. Dictatorial regimes will become rarer, but what replaces them is not necessarily democracy.

One of the biggest phenomena of this century has been the trumping of tyranny in all the countries affected by the Arab Spring. However, it is too early to predict that democracy in the full sense of the word (constitutional rights, regular elections, limited presidential terms) is about to flower in the void left by old regimes. What is certain is that the social media combined with the internet and YouTube have irreversibly changed the balance of power in favour of the people. They can publish their gripes.

10. The work/life balance is now even more elusive.

In the last century, young business executives did not work 24/7. They did not have mobile phones and could not get emails at home. They switched off at weekends and on holidays because nobody could reach them. Now work has intruded on every aspect of life. The strain is showing.
This article was written by Clem Sunter and was originally published by News24.

Content is King

The Therefore Quantum™ application carries online instructions on virtually every page. When drafting these instructions, we have attempted to apply a set of standards to improve readability and ensure a consistent / professional feel.

As you are no doubt aware, on the Internet as well as any other media, content is king … and there is nothing that puts Users off more than poorly drafted copy.

Provided below are the standards that have been used when drafting the Instructions that are carried by Therefore Quantum™.

Short Sentences	Sentences should be as short as possible. Consider breaking long sentences up into a multitude of shorter sentences.
Simple / Non-Technical Language	Always attempt to use language that is as simple and non-technical as possible. If in doubt, request your target audience to review your copy and to feedback to you with any words or sentences that they do not understand.
Factually Correct	Ensure that descriptive text is factually correct.
Superfluous Text	Superfluous text should be eliminated.
Spelling and Grammar	Descriptive text must be grammatically correct and free of spelling errors.
Trade Marks and Registered Phrases	Trade Marks and Registered phrases etc. must be marked accordingly (i.e. must carry the appropriate ™ or ®).
Capitalizing Text	Descriptive text must be correctly capitalized.
Punctuation	Correctly punctuated copy is easier to read than poorly punctuated copy. It is therefore imperative that the copy you utilize is correctly punctuated. Be sparing with exclamation marks. Most of us use them too frequently!J

It’s always a good idea to have as many people as possible proof read your copy. To achieve a consistent writing style across all of your content, it is really useful to have a consistent set of proof readers. 

Should your copy be technical in nature, it’s best to ask someone who is unfamiliar with the technical aspects of your subject to be on your proof reading team. Allow your non-technical proof reader to point out sentences that they don’t understand. Sentences identified as being "complex" must then be redrafted until your non-technical proof reader declares them easily understood.

Really important documents will need to be proof read any number of times. I have revised some documents up to a dozen times before declaring them fit for "putting out there". 

I have always found that it’s easier to proof read documents that have been printed. Somehow paper is an easier medium than a screen … but it could simply be my age that predisposes me to paper. It’s up to you. 

When proofing a document, read it out aloud. Paragraphs that feel uncomfortable to deliver probably need to be re-written.

Try not to use clichés. They don’t present the reader with a sense of originality. While on the topic of originality, nothing stands out more than copy that has been lifted off the web, or any other source for that matter. If you need to draw on content developed by others, ethically it’s appropriate to attain their permission and to credit their contribution.

Be careful about using "internal language" in documents that have an external audience. We sometimes introduce terms internally to facilitate strategic conversation and forget that our audience may not necessarily understand them. A Client of mine is in the distribution game. They distribute goods on behalf of manufacturers to the manufacturers’ Clients. To facilitate strategic conversation internally, they refer to the manufacturers as Clients and the manufacturers’ Clients as Customers.  This is all very well, but they sometimes refer to Clients and Customers in their marketing communication … and their market does not understand the distinction.

Finally, keep a library. Well written copy can be re-used and it makes more sense than always going back to the drawing board. The recycling of existing material also provides your audience with a sense of consistency.

Hope it helps. Feel free to leave comments with any thoughts that you may have on the topic.

What’s in a name?

We are frequently asked why we called our company “Therefore Strategic Technology Services”. Folks have developed some pretty good theories … and we may borrow bits and pieces of them someday.

The reality stands, we are not going to give away the secret that easily, so you are going to have to keep guessing.

As a teaser, consider the following definition for the word “Therefore”. It may give you a few clues ;)

there·fore

[th air-fawr, -fohr]  Show IPA

adverb

in consequence of that; as a result; consequently: I think; therefore I am.

Origin: 

1125–75; Middle English ther ( e ) fore,  variant of therfor therefor

Synonyms:

hence, whence. THEREFORE, WHEREFORE, ACCORDINGLY, CONSEQUENTLY, SO, THEN all introduce a statement resulting from, or caused by, what immediately precedes. THEREFORE (for this or that reason) and WHEREFORE (for which reason) imply exactness of reasoning; they are especially used in logic, law, mathematics, etc., and in a formal style of speaking or writing. ACCORDINGLY (in conformity with the preceding) and CONSEQUENTLY (as a result, or sequence, or effect of the preceding), although also somewhat formal, occur mainly in less technical contexts. So (because the preceding is true or this being the case) and THEN (since the preceding is true) are informal or conversational in tone.