Who remembers the “re-engineering era”?

Visio was in full force, internal process maps, data/information flows and six sigma coloured belts were all the rage. Maybe in some businesses they still are and maybe they should still be.

Re-engineering back then, was in my view all about looking to drive efficiency, looking to take out redundant steps, maybe automating aspects and questioning the value of certain process types.

You could say “customer journeys” and “customer touch points” and “pain points” are the new breed of the process mapping and the new era of re-engineering with a focus on the processes that both customers and team members interact with.

There seems to be far more focus on what people feel, say and do during the process rather than just what they did in the world of re-engineering.

There is an acceptance that different types of people “personas” will approach the journey in a very different ways.

Back in the first wave of re-engineering I’m really not sure any thought was given to differences more thought was given to similarities and consistency and delivering standardized efficient processes. IT back then needed data to be structured and binary decision trees applied.

The new journey aspect of looking at processes is not so much about re-engineering but maybe reframing processes; it’s less about efficiency and more about effectiveness and satisfaction. And in many ways as interested in unstructured data as it is in structured data.

In this era customer experience is king.

But is this going far enough. On the re-engineering era and the customer experience era did we and are we going far enough with our thinking.

Do we ask the question “why” enough? Do we think “what happens next” enough?

If we do ask “why” is it answered purely from an internal perspective to defend what we do. In the case “what happens next” is it answered from what we do next or what our customers do next.

Reading and researching good outcomes it’s easy to spot that good outcomes are achieved when you think beyond the obvious. When you explore the “why” and “what happens next” from a a far more external perspective.

Rengineering processes is still a thing in businesses today; it has very much changed in focus but it’s clear that the thinking has to continue to evolve with a much bigger emphasis on “outside in” rather than “inside out” and to really focus and understand what really matters to customers.

Those that are human centric and curious as they reengineer processes are achieving far better results than those that remain in the internal efficient process mapping era of the past.

How are you embracing this new business era? Are you asking the “why” , “what happens next” from a “customer value” perspective?