Systematization of a Service By Richard D. Zuleg

Sometimes we are faced with the taking on a new or existing project or service. This process is usually riddled with a number of problems. The first problem you may encounter is the scattered data problem. Critical bits of data can be found on the company intranet, stored on a file server, embedded in a script, or in someone’s memory. This data could be contact information, user names and passwords to systems, instructions on how to perform a task or descriptions of what a particular service is intended to be. Services often involve repetitive tasks such as doing some analysis and then creating the same email, or document over and over with slight variations. So your job is to understand what is involved and track down all of this data, get it organized, and identify the tasks involved to complete the job.

The first step toward getting your new project under control is to start collecting and organizing the data. Look for certain types of data that can be extracted and placed in a central location. The goal is to abstract as much data as possible, for example if you have a separate service document for each client try to identify common procedures and data elements. Contact information for example should be stored in a central database and documents should reference this. Once the data has a defined structure you need to define a central location for this data. A database is a usually an ideal central location for data.

Once you have decided how the data will be organized and stored you can start to look at your procedures. The goal is to find similarities between tasks and streamline the tasks as much as possible. Make tasks repeatable, cut unnecessary steps, and make sure the tasks produce the same results each time. This is where we can start to build in quality assurance. The key is to think of a long term scalable solution and define a repeatable process.

Once data is properly organized and centralized, and the procedures have been streamlined into a repeatable process with quality checks in place we can move into the final phase. At this stage the supporting infrastructure will be in place and the data will be correctly organized and referenced by our procedures. It will now be a simple matter to automate the procedures. You have now defined your data structures and written your procedures so that the process is ready to be accomplished by a machine. The machine produces and packages the product and then the product will be reviewed by a human for the final quality check and then the package is delivered to the end consumer.

To review, the steps for systemization of a service are:

1. Identify data that can be abstracted
2. Identify, streamline, and document the process
3. Build supporting infrastructure
4. Automate the process

The key is to think of long term solutions.