prashantrsingh

[prashantrsingh]

One of the biggest mistake where PX projects fail

Is that they are not aligned with Corporate Objectives 

They just happen in silos because internal transformation teams have budget to do so

Getting a buy-in from top management is one of the most important ingredient of a successful process improvement projects

5 step approach - 

1. Understand your corporate objective

2. What are your business strategies connecting your corporate objectives?

3. What new business initiatives you are taking to connect with Business strategies

4. What are your execution in alignment to your business initiatives.

If it is aligned in a step by step manner and connected with long term objective, you might be less likely to be failed and it is easier to get support from people if we can explain them by connecting these 4 dots.

[prashantrsingh]

Ever thought how TVS Motors respond to price fluctuations?

Ok to understand this, let us understand what are their major cost elements - 

1. Raw materials cost

2. Components

3. Converting raw material into parts which are directly used.

By majorly doing three things -

1. Premiumization across product segments through a variants based strategy ( For example, raising prices of two-wheelers which are majorly sold in cities as compared to rural markets)

2. Focusing on building volume share from export segment 

3. Continuous focus on reduction of material & fixed costs 

4. Enhancing supply chain effectiveness

[prashantrsingh]

Promotions

Entry level : Drive projects, Handle queries for specific tools, RCA, Analysis based, Developing solutions, Take actions Mid sr : Manage projects, Lead multiple projects, Spread ideas, Drive workshopsAnalyst : 

[prashantrsingh]

I want to undergo training from you

Correct this thought

[prashantrsingh]

Problems which I am trying to solve?

Not allowing us to become obsolete - Developing or being informed about skill sets which are relevant to industry 2. Many of us need someone to talk and discuss when we are in any job switching process. We might not need a solution always...Sometimes we just need our thought process validated. I am trying to be that one... But we don’t trust you... No problem. Do check out my posts, if you find them helpful We can connect. Talk.  Build professional connect Trust comes later. It is a long term game! 3. I want to be the most elligible person for promotion. what should I do?

[prashantrsingh]

changes companies do while changing work models - like complete wfo etc.

[prashantrsingh]

Difference between

Digitalisation

Digital Transformation

BPM Op ex Process excellence

[prashantrsingh]

Job switvching

Soch rha hu wali prblm

[prashantrsingh]

C-SAT & E-SAT

An organisation is run mainly by 2 things.  Customer satisfaction & Employee Satisfaction

If you are working in any domain in improving one of these 2 aspects of any organization, you are bound to add more value. 

[prashantrsingh]

4 key life improvement things which I have learnt from people in Linkedin

1.  Pavan Sathiraju : In one of his posts, he has written about ‘How to ask for feedbacks’ from your manager where he mentions, to ask ‘ What are the points where I have improved upon’ instead of asking  ‘Can you tell me few points on which I should improve upon’. This helps in registering good points about you in manager’s memory

2. Vivek Singhal: He has reduced my fear of investing money in stock markets and hold my stocks with conviction

3.  Akshat Srivastava: Akshat Sir has taught me how one can experiment more with life and hobbies in early stages of career

Equal credits to many others. Thanks for improving my life!!

[prashantrsingh]

A thoughtful gift

Recently, I received a very thoughtful gift from VMware. Yes, I am posting something about gifts for the first time.

Coincidently, when I received it, I was reading ‘The Secret’ which explains Law of attraction and rules behind How your thoughts become things..

To summarize in a sentence, when you think something good, you are automatically sending a positive frequency to Universe and sooner or later, you will find that thing/thought with you in some or the other way

Oh, what is the gift? – A Scribbling pad. A pad which helps you in writing your thoughts and can clean the slate on a press of a button

So, what is making this so special?

I have started applying the principles explained in the book using this scribbling pad. Before I sleep, I write down my goals and when I get up, I read them. This is really charging me up to get up daily at the same time with same rigor and energy.

Also, I have started getting dreams of my goals already which is helping me in imagining pictures of dream house, prosperity and wealth which I intend to achieve in life.

And automatically, It is making me feel good every day.

I never thought, such a small action will help me improve my thought process at this level.

Might sound little dramatic, yeah? Try once, you might have a similar experience.

But what if my goals are not defined? Stay tuned for my next post.

[prashantrsingh]

What if we treat ourselves as small cap growing company?

Our objective will be to become a large cap company soon.

We will calculate our growth every quarter

 We will find improvement opportunities for ourselves

We will try finding some extra sources of income to grow our market cap (ok…net worth)

Our focus will be to improve our asset utilization. (Considering time as our biggest asset)

We will try keeping our Debt/Equity as low as possible all the time

And so on…

This is changing my mindset and I am going to consider myself as a small cap company in a growing sector…

What do you think?

[prashantrsingh]

How does Process mining help your business?

1.  Discovering your process automatically

If we have the event data, the Process Mining tool can easily discover the complete process with a dynamic process diagram. We can apply filters to the dynamic process diagram to view the process in different shapes and forms.

But, what is event data - Mandatorily, we need just three things proceed  Case ID, Activity and Timestamp 

Consider an illustrative example of data needed.

Besides this, we may also want to have different attributes on which you want to categorize your results and find right improvement areas

2. Checking process conformance

In addition to automated process discovery from event data, if we have the happy path of the process documented, we can understand the conformance level of the process by using Process Mining. The documented process will act as a benchmark against which the actual process discovered by event data can be checked for conformance.

3. Identifying process enhancement opportunities

Once the process is discovered and conformance levels identified, Process Mining will easily help identify the major bottlenecks and possible pain points in the process. If a business group wants to execute any process improvement initiative, this can serve as a good starting point for the consulting team to define and prioritize the major problem statements of the business processes.

4. Predict what may happen and adjust accordingly

By referring to the automated business process, the business teams can easily predict resources that might be required to support additional workload in the future. This can help accurately forecast the cost and manpower required to run business operations and set correct expectations with the leadership. E.g., There are quite a few companies who are shifting towards SaaS from Perpetual and Subscription model and as it is new for these organizations, there is a need to alter the business processes to adjust to this new business model. Process Mining can help identify the key changes and/or process improvements required to make it a smooth transition.

 #consultants #strategy

[prashantrsingh]

Can we make our thought process more structural?

Most of the times I feel we have the solution ready, however we are unable to put forth it in right words for our idea/solution to win the race.  2 techniques for above problem, which I learnt from Matt Abrahams has helped a lot in recent past.

An example which can help you to understand the difference between before and after learning scenario [ In professional environment]

Rohit (Somebody senior) : Hi Prashant, Can you please introduce new person Rahul to the group?

Prashant : [This comes as a shocker as I am not prepared. Instead of embracing an opportunity, I take it as a Do or Die situation & I am thinking a lot about the consequences if I fail to introduce properly ] 

Hello everyone, We have Rahul here who was my classmate when.... we were in college. He is a very fun loving person....He is very talented...

[Though, I am feeling like I have lot to say, but I just to escape this conversation somehow and I am waiting for somebody to chime in speak something]

After applying one of the techniques  :{ ‘What - So what - What’s next’}

Matt explains, take every chance to speak as an opportunity and always embrace that opportunity. Acknowledge the nervousness and forget about the consequences which may happen if you goof up in that conversation. 

Now the improved version - 

Prashant : {What} Sure, Rohit. Thanks for giving me this opportunity to introduce Rahul [It might look as a cliched line but this sentence gave me enough time to structure my thoughts] So, hello everyone - Today we have Rahul here with us for dinner. And I personally know him since we were in same college. He has around 5 years of consulting experience and a

 {so -what} go-to person for problems related to analytics and process improvements. Apart from work, he is a avid reader of non-fiction business related content. 

{what’s next} Feel free to reach him out to know more about his experience. ....Let’s raise the toast... There’s one more technique - {Problem - Solution - Benefits} which works similarly well. PS - The introduction in improved version can definitely be improved even now.

#communication #consultants

[prashantrsingh]

How we can discover insights about our process in a smart way?

This is where Process mining comes into picture

Process Mining is the use of enterprise system logs to explore process improvement opportunities. 

It is a family of techniques relating to the fields of Data Science and Process Management to support the analysis of operational processes of an organization based on data generated in enterprise systems like Oracle, SFDC, SAP HANA, etc.

But, why can’t we document it manually and find insights?

Traditionally, processes have been designed on paper or using a process mapping tool. This is simpler than using event logs from enterprise systems to understand the process.

 However, there are some demerits of using the traditional process mapping tools.

1.  Oversimplification:

We tend to oversimplify the process when we try to put it on paper. We will miss out on capturing most of the variants of the process and we will not be knowing the impact that these variants without data to assist us. Many a time, delays are created due to exceptions and less common variants in the process which are not captured in the process map if we are trying to document it manually.

2. Inadequacy to capture human behavior:

Employees do not work at a constant speed as their performance levels are dependent on the stress level they experience. This relation between employee performance and stress level as per the very well-known Yerkes–Dodson law below which gives a relationship between Performance and Stress

This reality is difficult to capture in a process map built using traditional process mapping tools.

Stay tuned for my next post which will explain what kind of problems it will solve for the business/customers and make our work easy. 

Wish to know more about Process mining, feel free to drop a message

#strategy #consultant 

[prashantrsingh]

A book which has changed my perspective completely

I often used to think, why my father didn’t invest in stock market from early days when it was launched

So, I am just trying to give an attempt to understand his thought process by going in that era - I am currently 27 and father is 61 yrs old. Like most of us, he started earning around 24-25 yrs of age after his graduation. The goal was to feed all family members and survive for living and nothing else.

But let’s say, after few years of earning he made himself capable to invest. May be in his early 30s..

Challenges at that time –

Concept of investing in stocks was very new. BSE Index was introduced in 1986

There were not many resources readily available for them to understand and analyze stocks which are readily available today

Inflation in 1986 was around 9% so a best option of investment was something which could beat inflation

Ok, coming back to our point – Now we are near to 1992-1993. One day, he might have thought, let’s put money in stock market. Let’s us think that BSE Index value as benchmark to compare returns from stock market

BSE Index value on 2nd March 1992: 4504

Oh, but inflation in 1992: 11.79%

Okay, let’s think conservatively he had little patience to wait for his investments to grow.

BSE Index value on 3rd May 2004: 4504

Which means 0% returns for 12 years.

And avg inflation rate from 1992-2004: More than 7%

Conclusion 1: I should not expect my dad to be patient for 12 years and losing money because of inflation.

What happened after that till 2008: BSE Index gave returns of more than 320%. Many became rich during this period

But what after that: BSE index lost 65% of its total value in recession and it took roughly 6 years for it to make new highs.

Conclusion 2: I should not expect my dad to understand such volatile investments.

And this me brings me to understand chapter 1 ‘No one’s crazy’ from ‘Psychology of Money’ – A book which changed my perspective.

Hence many of you might have noticed our parents give anti stock market advice and tell us to stick to stable investment options like FD, Real estate (which was booming in their era) etc. 

[prashantrsingh]

Challenges in doing a Value Stream Mapping across  Enterprise

1. Finding a right sponsor for your  internal project  : Since we are planning to do it throughout enterprise, it  becomes very important to have correct authority of sponsorship otherwise the  exercise may not get adequate support from other business groups which are involved

2. Numbers quoted by your calculation  may not match with organizational numbers : Normally, every internal organization quotes  its own metrics to their higher leadership with its own definitions and improvement  projections. It may happen that if you calculate those numbers with a  different and neutral mindset, it might not match with the numbers by which  higher leadership of that org is already familiar. This leads to back-and-forth  discussions ultimately delaying the overall VSM initiative

3. Lot of exceptions to be considered to  make it more practical: This one an be considered as continuation from 2nd  challenge. Now to make our calculated numbers look correct, the consulting  team will have to consider lot of exceptions which may dilute the purpose of overall  effort. This may add to overall time delay in our VSM effort.