By: Ali Tahir
If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing. – W. Edwards Deming
A process, rule or law is just as good as the one who makes it and since humans aren’t flawless so their processes aren’t perfect either; only a divine process can be. But if a man-made process can’t be flawless why have it in the first place?
I was once talking to someone who believed that every software development house could have its own “SOPs”/code for software development in the global market. To this, my argument was that it was the same as saying that every driver on the road could drive according to his/her own “SOPs”: One person might say that I will drive in the middle of the road, another might say I will drive at 5 miles per hour and yet another might say that I will just park in the middle of the road horizontally. Just imagine what kind of traffic we would have with this mindset! Even imperfect processes/laws are better than none.
Geographically, Pakistan is located very strategically and has a huge logistics market within the country as well as across its borders. Right now most of its port activity is through Karachi. In a few years, Gwadar will increase this market exponentially. The main and critical pieces missing in this huge market are good business processes and a technology centered approach.
Good business processes always play a critical role in the proper functioning of an organization and its longevity. Organizations with well-defined business processes benefit in the following ways:
- Reduced cost and risk: a business process reduces cost and risk by predefining optimum ways of managing jobs and covering future shortcomings.
- Minimized effect of human error: it reduces the effect of human errors by assigning tasks to specialists.
- Better efficiency: it improves the productivity of an organization by eliminating unnecessary steps.
- More customer-centric service: it gives customers a consistent outcome no matter who is dealing with the customer. Names change but the process stays the same. Also if a need arises to add something new, a well-defined process allows that.
- Minimized communication gaps: In a well-defined system weakness or loophole can be identified right away.
- Efficient time management: with a process-oriented approach more can be achieved in less time.
- Compatibility with new technology: with a well-defined system, integration with new technologies and future improvements become more manageable.
Without processes being defined and implemented an organization can face several issues. Some of these issues are mentioned below:
- Failure in issue recognition: without clear and well defined processes issues are almost impossible to identify, in fact, issue recognition becomes an issue in itself.
- Lack of clarity and low motivation: lack of clarity causes confusion with leads to low motivation; performance and efficiency suffer.
- Repeated mistakes: lack of processes mean that the same mistakes are repeated again and again.
- Wasted efforts: efforts get wasted due to lack of any set pattern or defined systems.
- High risk and increased expenditure: risk of failure/mistakes/losses are much higher and can bleed an organization to death.
Wahyd Logistics as a process-oriented, technology-based organization understands these factors and is working diligently in the Pakistani market to revamp the culture in this industry. It is a challenge because this industry is not very process-oriented, however, Wahyd Logistics is taking the lead so that we can compete in the international market. Change is a process in itself that bears fruit with patience and perseverance. The dividends of implementing processes are so high that they’re worth the effort.
