Post by Greg Hilton, CIO
Many years ago, I read a great book on problem solving and the art of “framing up” business problems. The book,
The McKinsey Way, by Ethan M. Rasiel, is a peek into the problem-solving framework used by one of the world’s most successful business strategy-consulting firms, McKinsey & Company.
The Theme – Approach every business question with a structured framework for solving the question (Ex: How can I measure and management my contract relationships to make sure they are priced optimally). We take structured problem solving real serious at
Answers Systems and seek solutions not just with technology, but also with process improvement and best practice implementation that includes the human element.
After many years of having read this book, and applying similar problem solving processes to many business issues faced in our industry, it is apparent, that the old system I studied years ago is still an effective way to categorize a problem’s issues and address them in logical order.
As Chief Information Officer, I have the great challenge of balancing technology requirements for staff and customers with business problem solving. If your like us here at Answers, the constant challenge keeps you up at night, but never ceases to get you out of bed in the morning ready to solve the next business problem.
Again, borrowing from McKinsey,
here are the high-level steps to follow when solving a business problem:
- Gather as much of the facts as is humanly possible.
- Start with a hypothesis of what the problem may be
- Divide your supporting findings into unique categories (Google for “MECE” for more information on how we will do this or stay tuned for the next blog post).
- Test, Test, Test your theory
- Implement!
Over the next few posts, we will consider a few problems faced by the Foodservice industry and we will start with a basic Hypothesis: “Information, coupled with great process and analysis tools, gives a manufacturer’s team the power to improve their business relationships and dramatically impact the organization’s bottom line.”
Sounds like a simple hypothesis to prove out. All we need to do is select a scenario to study. We like Contract Management so we are going to test out the problem-solving framework with the most basic of contract scenarios.
So let’s rewrite our hypothesis using this scenario:
- Information about the claiming history and volume usage of a contractee or a segment of contractees. . . . .
- Coupled with a process to trap, track and audit usage and claiming activity against the contractee(s). . . .
- If your team has powerful tools to analyze the information and has been sufficiently trained. . .
- Can improve your ability to negotiate appropriate contract discount terms with both your operator and distributor for mutual gain.
In our next post, we will dig into Step One – It’s about the data: how to get 100% of your contract claim data.