Improve the process before streamlining with software

Perhaps you heard the story in December about the truck driver that won a Lamborghini Murcielago LP-640 worth over $200,000. A few hours after getting the car he crashed it!

http://autos.yahoo.com/blogs/motoramic/truck-driver-wins-lamborghini-crashes-hours-later-220724449.html

It is a nice analogy about process improvement. Often there is the temptation to purchase software to instantly improve a process. But that can often result in what happened to this truck driver, suddenly we are in a vehicle which is much more complex than we are familiar with and it can go out of control, that is assuming we know how to even start it.  So if we simply throw money at software to speed up an existing process then all we are doing is potentially speeding up an inefficient process. The first step MUST be to improve the existing process THEN we can consider software to speed up that now efficient process. When that software is up and ready, you also need to be up and ready, fully aware of how it works when the consultant etc walks out the door!

So don’t instantly throw money at a problem, use the fundamentals of Quality first. There is a reason that Philip Crosby used the phrase, ‘Quality is Free’.