When we set up a new system we will enter some data to get started. This should be the only time that our process is a Data Entry process. At all times after the initial system set up, data entry needs to become a part of the process itself. So, if I answer the phone and find out that it's a new customer, my first step is to call up a new record and while I'm asking for the personal and company information, I am entering that right into the system. The rule is:
"Enter the data directly into the system, when the data enters your business"
Internal processes have a data capture element in the system design. We can find out information to gauge system performance and also information that we can use as positive reinforcement for the people running that system. The process should be set up with this in mind. If the system gives the people who are running it something positive or helpful, then they will enter the data accurately and willingly.
Information from the past has a future value, or freshness, to it.
Financial reports from the last three months shed light on what the next three months might be like. Machine reports from the last two hours show trends of what the next two hours might be like. How fresh your information needs to be is determined by what your decision making schedule is like. Adjusting the machine might occur many times in a day, whereas adjusting your financial strategy happens less often.
People should monitor the data that the systems are designed to generate and should only start a discussion and decision making loop when the information starts to show a trend that would take it out of predetermined standards. Collection of information, monitoring and feedback discussion are only support activities...the results and yields are the primary systems concerns.
What can a system give to people (not what can we take from them) that would be an incentive to get people to use and support the system. A system has to be designed to meet needs in a balanced way. It can be used for enforcement if things are out of control, or reinforcement, if things are in control. It has to meet the needs of the results that the customers are expecting and paying for, it's also has to meet the needs of the employees.
Either customer or employee needs being unmet will lead to system failure.
People like to be systematized when they can objectively see the benefits.
Systems can help workers to identify that there is almost always more work to do than the capacity of the business can handle. So a further benefit of systems is to root out incompetence, whatever its reason. Development of a business means understanding the reality of what's happening and then devising a new constructive strategy to overcome real problems in the business.