Boost your digitalization: modularize processes

Automation is central for companies that are digitalizing, and new technologies, including natural language processing and image recognition as well as robotic process automation, allow us to automate processes that were impossible or prohibitively expensive to automate earlier. Although I’m a strong proponent of automating everything repetitive, there’s a “dirty little secret” around automation that few talk about: once automated, companies often seek to avoid changing and evolving these processes as it involves potentially significant costs and risks. I see at least three key causes: deeply integrated implementations, lack of competence and interdependencies.

Especially consultants, but also IT staff employed at your company, often are extremely focused on the task at hand and finishing it. They largely or completely ignore the long-term consequences and implications. Project management tends to have the same priorities as any future changes to the resultant work product will be part of a new project and thus the problem of another project manager. Consequently, the implementation of processes that are automated tends to have a very short-term focus, resulting in implementations that do the job but are highly integrated and interconnected. This lack of modularization causes any changes to require significant effort.