My last post (Measuring Success) was on measuring key factors before and after a change to determine if the change had the desired effect.
Just as important, if you want to be sure that measurement is easy and will not get put aside when things are busy; you need to automate the process of generating the measurements.
This follows the agile principle of automation for anything that gets done more than once. It is equally effective for businesses.
If you have managers or staff members whose job description includes manually generating part of all of a report or key performance indicator, you have a candidate for automation.
It is costing you more than you think. People are relatively expensive and their value comes not from doing repetitive tasks (that can be automated) but from adding value on the analysis and decision making.
It is insidious. Ten minutes a week adds up to 520 minutes in a year… more than an 8 hour workday gone a year. Add up all the repetitive tasks and the cost is significant. That is if it gets done regularly.
Chances are when things are busy, these things get put aside.
Then perhaps poor decisions get made because the information is not readily available. That can cost a lot more.
Automate reporting. Automate analysis. Automate distribution of the information.
The tools are out there.
Automate success.
