With over 40 years Industrial Engineering experience and 15 years of recognised consulting excellence to the Australian national security and Defence environment, root cause analysis has identified many upstream causes to the big ticket performance issues the sector has been struggling to resolve.
A core difficulty has been that the role of business and technology had inverted; where once technology was used to support business, it now defines how business is conducted. Every time a new ERP or other significant system is adopted, it’s the organisation that has to endure change, not vice versa. Many times that change is transactional and not reflective of the management decisions made to achieve policy objectives.
Essentially staff have to become masters of the deployed technology, not the performance of the task required of them. Technology and the mastery of it has become a significant barrier-to-entry to employing the right resources when required.
With this dilemma in mind, Kitbag Consulting has been dedicated to supporting large enterprises, predominately Defence across various disciplines including our recent focus on developing Integrated Business Support Systems (IBSS).
Our designs enhance operational efficiency, improve decision-making and increase transparency across operations. The IBSS also provides a baseline or organisational activity and outcomes from which to continuously improve and evolve i.e., machinery of government / mergers and acquisitions changes.
Our latest achievement was to model Army capability management from concept through to disposal and all the management and investment decisions in between. We have just commenced to model the entire Military Personnel Organisation - an ambitious project that underscores our commitment to transformative solutions in the national interest.
We have witnessed firsthand how government leaders face challenges to deliver quality policy outcomes, maintain productivity and gain efficiencies within their complex and large agencies and departments. Complexity in a large and dispersed organisation can and does manifest in several ways impacting its operations, communication and overall effectiveness.
Key Issues Compounding Complexity
Here are some key issues we have encountered:
- Organisational Structure: Large government and corporate organisations often have multiple layers of hierarchy and various departments or divisions which has many benefits but can create complexity in terms of decision-making, reporting lines and coordination. Our IBSS solutions factor in the various stakeholders and links all of the interdependencies of decisions taken at the tactical level with traceability through to strategic objectives.
- Geographical Dispersion: When an organisation operates across multiple locations and functions, managing operations and maintaining consistency is challenging and often results in stovepipe outcomes.
- Cultural Differences: In a multicultural environment, cultural diversity can lead to differences in understanding of the spoken word resulting in differing work practices, communication styles and decision-making processes; all of which adds a layer of complexity.
- Communication Channels: The more extensive the organisation, the more channels of communication exist. Managing these channels effectively and ensuring that information and task flows accurately and efficiently is crucial.
- Technology Integration: Large organisations often use multiple systems and technologies which need to be integrated and maintained. Ensuring ease of interoperability at a reasonable price can be complex.
- Regulatory and Compliance Issues: As we become larger and our regulatory framework increases, navigating and complying with regulations consistently across multiple locations is complex.
- Product or Service Diversity: Offering a wide range of products or services can increase complexity in terms of production, supply chain management and customer support. Many organisations rely on the skill and know how of individuals to perform their tasks. People are mobile and may move to pursue further opportunities so without documented and accessible processes, activity can become outdated or just plainly wrong, error-prone and resource-intensive. These inefficiencies lead to delays in service delivery and impede data-driven decisions.
- Decision-Making Processes: In large organisations, decision-making involves multiple stakeholders across multiple organisational functions whicg requires coordination, making the process more complex.
- Change Management: Implementing legislative, strategic, policy, or technology changes is be more complex in a large organisation due to the number of people and organisational entities affected.
- Resource Allocation: Distributing resources effectively across various projects, departments and locations can be challenging, particularly when trying to balance competing priorities.
- Data Management: Handling large volumes of data from different sources and ensuring data quality, security and accessibility adds another layer of complexity. With the vast amount of data available today, it's easy for large and complex enterprises and government departments to become overwhelmed by information. Moreover, our observation are that data is managed by data specialists and many times exists without context. The data and their sources need greater accessibility by those actors informing or making decisions. Data usage needs context.
- Stakeholder Management and Transparency: Managing relationships with various stakeholders, including employees, customers, suppliers and shareholders requires careful coordination and strategy. Government agencies are often criticised for a perceived lack of transparency which contributes to the erosion of public trust and those of our elected representatives. The absence of a source of truth and authorised way of doing business results in duplicated effort, wasted resources and decreased productivity. This waste occurs within and between organisational entities and the absence of a documented process stymies innovation and continuous improvement.
- Limited Resources: Budget constraints are a reality and are in fact vital for the pursuit of efficiencies. That pursuit promotes the identification of innovative ways to optimise existing staff while delivering high-quality services to citizens.
Conclusion
The challenges faced by government and any large corporate entity in today's complex environment require innovative solutions to maintain productivity and efficiency. The IBSS instances we have designed provides a super Quality Management System that is used everyday to guide users in their tasks and used as a portal into the myriad of systems required.
Our IBSS design provides the necessary foundation and the guide rails to improve, to adopt disruptive technologies such as process automation and artificial intelligence. Moreover it is the precursor activity to ensure that ERPs are adopted and integrated in a seamless fashion. An organisation does not need to change their operations to comply with an ERP, it can have its own processes and engage the ERP when required.
Staff now have the ability to master their task, not the system.
