Process Vs Practice

By Suren

In this article I thought I’ll discuss about how various organizations have their own definitions for the terms “Process” and “Practice”.  Given the nature of the consulting industry these words are used interchangeably. In the present world what consultant like to talk about is processes, when they enter the customer site, they want to analyze the existing processes, then the next phase is to identify the pros and cons in the process and then identify the changing business needs and change the processes accordingly.

However, one thing that is generally overlooked though this phase is whether these processes were in fact practices early on, or were they genuine business processes that were put into action after having brainstormed upon and tested for its feasibility and efficiency.

If you are consulting for a very mature company, which has been in operations for a long period of time, the chances are if you were to ask your clients about how these processes were designed and on what condition, the probable answer would go something like “Well, when I first joined, my senior taught me to do it this way…”, and this would indicate that these processes are indeed practices that have come about from adhoc operations and events that have come across during the beginning and growth stages of the company.

If this were the case, it’s likely that there are many disconnections in the process chain and perhaps some duplication of efforts too, since practices is more focused on individual’s areas and responsibilities than the overall big picture of connecting operations. In situations like this it’s going to be more important to identify a process with an overall view of the connecting points and introduce best practices (ways of doing things) within the sub-components of the process. This is what founded the ideology of “Best in class practices”.

Therefore, keep in mind that practices may lead to processes in the long run, but these could be disconnected due to its individualistic occurrences. The simple solutions is to have build best  practices built into the connecting components of a process, this makes the entire process chain efficient.

As one of my client once said “This company is more than a century old, we are like deadwood, practices have been drilled deep into us, changing us now is going to take another 100 years”….but now the same company  runs completely new processes and all of it through a web hosted solution, this is after implementing a a brand new vertical of a renowned ERP system.

Hope you found this post informative.

Have a nice day !!

ssurenlk@msn.com