OPERATIONAL PROCESS RE-ENGINEERING
Re-engineering how information moved through the business, when off-the-shelf systems couldn't do it
A UK professional-services business needed information to flow reliably between stages of a workflow no existing system could fully support.
WHERE THIS SITS
Operational process re-engineering — one of several project types SPL has worked directly on. If a project like this sounds familiar, it's worth a proper conversation.
THE SITUATION
The business needed a materially improved system for handling and processing information through an existing operational workflow — reducing the limitations of the current process, and allowing information from different sources and stages to be processed, validated and transferred reliably through a more integrated system.
WHY IT WASN’T STRAIGHT FORWARD
This wasn't an administrative redesign. The desired functionality couldn't readily be achieved with the existing systems, because of technical limitations in how information was structured, exchanged, validated and processed between different parts of the workflow — it was genuinely uncertain whether the requirement could be met at all without bespoke development.
WHAT THE WORK INVOLVED
Existing internal processes and off-the-shelf systems were assessed first, and used wherever they could meet the requirement. Where they fell short, the team mapped the technical requirements, identified the limitations in the existing architecture, and developed and tested alternative approaches against representative operating scenarios — prototyping and refining as they went, with testing focused on whether the underlying solution could reliably do the job, not just whether it was convenient.
WHAT HAD TO BE REVISED
Yes — early approaches exposed limitations that hadn't been apparent from theoretical consideration alone. Elements were revised following testing, with each subsequent version incorporating what had been learned from the unsuccessful or partially successful attempts before it.
HOW WAS IT RESOLVED
The technical uncertainty was reduced through successive development and testing iterations. The resulting approach delivered a workable method of achieving the required interaction and processing — something the existing systems hadn't been able to do. Where individual uncertainties couldn't be fully resolved, those limitations were documented and fed into the final approach.