Over the course of my career, I have been responsible for implementing automation and technology integrations to optimize many business processes. As automation becomes easier to build, organizations are spending less time defining why they're building it. Those companies that take the time to define the business outcome first create far more adaptable systems.
When companies separate strategy from implementation, even at this smallest level, it allows organizations to continually evaluate every automation using two simple questions:
1. If this automation disappeared tomorrow, what business value would we lose?
2. Is this still the best way to achieve that business outcome?
I adapted Natalie Dawson's vision and commitment statements to every automation and system integration we implement. The extra time spent documenting the intended business outcome can now be used to evaluate whether an automation is creating value or simply accomplishing a task.
One of the most common examples I see is meeting note automation. Companies often start by saying, "We need meeting notes," and rightfully turn to technology to help automate this task. The task is defined, but they skip the more important question, "Why do we need meeting notes in the first place?" Many of our customers come to us because they already have automated meeting summaries, yet no one reads them, uses them, or they simply become another document that gets stored away.
After a few minutes of talking with them, we can usually identify the true business outcome. One customer needed meeting notes to maintain compliance documentation. Another was trying to reduce the number of people required to attend meetings while keeping everyone aligned. The task, automated meeting notes, was identical, but the desired business outcomes were completely different.
Once the true business outcome was identified, we could answer the second question. In both cases, their existing automation was not the best approach because it had been built around the task instead of the intended outcome.
With the business outcome clearly defined, selecting the right technology became much simpler. More importantly, it gave both organizations a consistent framework for evaluating future changes against the value they were trying to create rather than simply whether the automation was still completing the task.
