...and Local Government is no exception.
It's 'Make it Happen' Month! So how about getting the ball rolling to implement that new strategy / system / process you know you need but have been putting on the back burner?
Welcome to the Iamdata Solutions Asset Management Monthly Newsletter - November 2022
With the Financial year end well and truly done and dusted, November seems a good time of the year to explore how we can refine and improve some of our processes, systems, consider a new technology, or a new strategy that will ultimately make our lives easier and help us to be more efficient in our day-to-day work moving forward.
Continuously improving processes and systems helps us to be more productive – after all Councils are renowned for being able to ‘do more with less’. We could never achieve this if we hadn’t welcomed and embraced any new labour-saving practice, system, or procedure to help us.
However, this type of exercise often gets put off because we are busy with the things that feel more urgent right now - but imagine how much work and time you will save yourselves once you have streamlined a process or implemented some new technology to replace repetitive manual tasks or revised an out-dated strategy, to help you work more efficiently and effectively. Imagine how satisfied you will feel once it's done. I promise you it will be worth the work!
I’m not talking about when something clearly isn’t working. In that scenario, we fix the issue as quickly as possible. This exercise isn’t just about solving the big problems but more about identifying opportunities for improvement that allow you and your team - the whole organisation to thrive.
There are a number of ways to find and prioritise improvement opportunities
Phase 1: Finding and Prioritising Improvement Opportunities
Organise a debrief with your Team to itemise where the consensus defines what core processes need to be improved.
A good question to ask at this stage is, is it relatively easy to meet your organisation’s business goals with the current processes? Any Improvement Strategy that you undertake should be aligned with your current Business Strategy.
We have all experienced a time when we wonder why on earth we are doing a particular task in a particular way and it seems clear that we could achieve the desired goal if only we were allowed to approach it and execute it differently.
The Finding and Prioritising Improvement Opportunities Phase is all about bringing your ideas to the table for discussion with your team and other key stakeholders. Giving your work colleagues the freedom to bring to the table innovative suggestions is one step closer to improving and streamlining the process.
Focus on the gaps and where the process falls down and/or what isn’t working as smoothly as you’d like it to. Or you may have heard how some other organisations are dealing with a similar problem. This would be a good time to bring this scenario to the table, especially if you have an understanding of the solution employed to fix the issue.
It is important to include every stakeholder / team / person in the discussion as there may be a valid reason why the current process exists and changing it may cause significant detrimental damage. Also, approaching a system or process from different perspectives may help identify unique or untraditional ways to increase productivity. Everyone’s contribution is helpful to the discussion.
As well as gathering information, engagement with all interested parties will ensure that there are no surprises for anyone at the end of the improvement process. You will all be working towards the same goal, and everyone will have a clear understanding of what the end goal is. Regular communication is key if any improvements are to be successful.
Consider how often the process is used. High-volume or high-frequency systems should be prioritised. Improving these elements has a greater impact than similar innovations on lesser-used systems.
Identify bottlenecks and look at some of your current practices that have been in place for a long time. If a process has been working well for many years that’s great, but there could be an opportunity for improvement here because some of the older software that may be in use may be more difficult to align with the more modern corporate systems being used within your organisation.
I recommend that you choose ONE process to improve / implement. Implementing any change, however small it sounds on paper, takes a lot of effort and if you choose more than one you may not be able to complete the project satisfactorily and nothing will be gained from the work you have initially invested.
Phase 2: You have decided, with the consensus of your colleagues, what needs to improve.
Now, with your decision made, it’s time to become clear about what you need to do to achieve this. Engaging with your team members and key stakeholders will help determine the steps that will need to be followed in order to execute the project.
You need to be able to determine if any new process you bring in or process you amend is an improvement on what you had before. This is only possible if you set some sort of metric to measure success before you trial the new processes. Measuring the time it takes to complete, and how easy and streamlined the suggested changes can be implemented and executed are often good measurements.
Map out the current process. If you work for the Council the current process may have already been mapped out. Councils are very process focused so this is often the case. If you don’t already have your current processes mapped out then it can be a relatively easy processes you don’t have to make it complex, just make sure you include every individual activity associated with the process.
Phase 3: How to Execute Your Improvements
The reason you haven’t already made your ONE improvement happen already is likely because it feels harder than other activities you are doing in your day-to-day work. Making changes to current processes, implementing new technology - changing anything is hard and takes time, effort, commitment, and planning.
For this Case Study, I’m using the introduction of Power BI into the organisation. Your Plan to execute your improvements will depend on what you’ve chosen to do.
Case Study - How to integrate Power BI in your organisation ecosystem
Microsoft has written a couple of documents on the subject. Power BI adoption roadmap tells you how to adopt Power BI and how to roll it out to your organisation with best practices.
It provides several scenarios and explains what you need for each scenario. The scenarios include:
Personal BI: The content creator has a lot of freedom and flexibility to create content for individual usage. This scenario describes using a personal workspace for private usage.
Team BI: The primary focus is on informal collaboration among team members who work closely together on a team. This scenario describes using a workspace for both collaboration and distribution. It also showcases the value of using Microsoft Teams for collaboration between Power BI creators and consumers.
Departmental BI: There's a focus on distributing content to a larger number of users within a department or business unit. This scenario describes using a Power BI app for distributing content.
Enterprise BI: The primary focus is on content distribution at scale. This scenario describes using Premium capacity to distribute content to a larger number of read-only consumers who have a Power BI free license.
Innovative Continuous Improvement Plan - Power BI Project
Here is my Innovative Continuous Improvement Plan to Implement Power BI. We implemented the Personal BI model as a proof of concept activity. Once the organsiation was happy that Power BI fulfills it's requirements, the Team BI model was integrated into the organisation's ecosystem.
So, have a think about the last piece of work you completed. Did you encounter pain-points and bottlenecks? Can the process be streamlined to make it easier, quicker, and more efficient? Perhaps it’s time to really think about how you can make those improvements you’ve been considering for some time. Make November the ‘Make it Happen’ Month.
I have worked on many different projects with my Local Government clients, from designing and developing Power BI Reports, to building SQL Server databases for spatial data, to managing and maintaining the GIS and the Asset Management systems. If you'd like to discuss how we might work together, then please email me at ➡️ jill.singleton@iamdata.solutions
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