You can’t improve what you don’t understand. While every improvement requires change, not every change is an improvement. When you have no opportunities in the market you can use your time to make improvements internally. However, spending time and money to make a process faster or better may or may not be appreciated by the market. That is, it may or may not lead to more sales or higher sales dollars. A good starting point for choosing systems to analyze include; people and education, delivery and distribution, testing, and technology.
When improving and analyzing systems, the focus is not on the technology but on the people interacting. Think of a relay race, it’s the handoff that makes a winning team, not necessarily the fastest runners. It’s recommended that you read Edward Deming’s book, “Out of the Crisis” or “The New Economy” for better understanding systems. You will notice in his books, he focuses on people, not processes. You have to make an effective and efficient process, establish policies that support it, create measurements to ensure policies are followed, and most importantly, assign and train the right people to use them.
