🔎 Read this if you've ever seen this in a business case: “Reallocating Resources to Higher Value-add Activities”
In my consulting career, I have led or participated in countless performance improvement projects centered around technology solutions that streamline and automate manual processes.
A key deliverable for these projects is a business case projecting the project's expected economic benefit. The assumptions around these projections are usually heavily scrutinized and constantly challenged... with one exception.
Most tech-enabled PI business cases have a vague line that says something like, “reallocation of resources to higher value-add activities”, along with some savings number that no one involved could reliably explain if asked.
This phrase is usually code for, “We used to have people doing this task, and now that we've automated it, we won’t need as many people.” It implies, however, that the money once spent paying someone to do manual tasks can be used instead to pay someone to do something more strategically important that the company will benefit from.
The thing is though, out of all the hours of back-and-forth on the numbers, out of all the times I was challenged on the validity and accuracy of the metrics used to determine cost savings, efficiency, or improvement, I have never been asked, “How exactly are we going to get those resources into higher value-add activities, and what will they be doing?” I have never given a status update on the progress of the "strategic resource reallocation" workstream.
I believe in the concept of "reallocating resources to higher value-add activities" because it will help companies innovate, mitigate risk, and solve complex strategic problems that will make them more profitable. No matter how capable our technology becomes, certain challenges will always require human intuition, experience, strategic thinking, and ethical judgment.
The reality is that technology will continue to create opportunities to reduce the need for human involvement in business processes. To remain competitive, companies must take advantage of these opportunities. With that said, in every company, so many challenges and opportunities remain that aren’t being addressed because leaders don’t have the people or time to focus on them.
If we don’t embed specific and actionable approaches to resource reallocation into our performance improvement initiatives, it won't get done quickly or precisely and may not happen at all. This is a huge missed opportunity as companies look to drive efficiencies by leveraging tech.
I recently launched a consulting practice at DLM Professional where this concept will be a focal point of our PI work. As AI and other technologies make their way into the mainstream of business, this opportunity for clients should be prioritized.
🔎 I'd love your thoughts and I invite you to follow here on LinkedIn to hear more.
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