A tool will not tidy what is untidy

The problem it solves

The vendor's proposal arrives with an implementation plan and a schedule. What it does not say, because it cannot know, is that the information the plan assumes is available lives spread across systems and spreadsheets at different states of currency, and that the person who knows which of them is current has never written any of it down.

A tool that works from a company's records inherits the condition of those records. If the same client is spelled three ways, if the field marking a condition was filled in according to whoever was filling it in that month, if decisions were taken by phone and left no trace, none of that is corrected by connecting something new. It is inherited, accelerated, and made harder to argue with, because now it arrives formatted as a result.

There is a second gap, less visible. Before a tool takes part in a decision, somebody has to answer for that decision, somebody has to define who may see which information, and somebody has to review the output before it leaves. In many organisations that answer does not exist even with no tool in the room, and the investment then fails for reasons that have nothing to do with technology.

What it covers

The day is a diagnosis, not a redesign. It does not work on how a process ought to run. It examines whether the organisation is in any condition to let a tool take part in its work. Those are two different questions, and confusing them is what gets so many investments approved early and abandoned halfway.

The first block establishes the state of the information. Where each thing lives, who keeps it current, on what basis the fields get filled that somebody will later read as though they were uniform, what has been carried over from older systems, what was completed by hand, and what exists only in one person's memory. The group walks its own sources with a structured guide and marks each one by its actual condition.

The second block covers decision ownership and oversight. For every decision a tool might eventually touch, the group asks who answers for it today, on what criterion it is taken, who may see the information feeding it, and who would review the output before it leaves the company. The gaps that surface in this block are not solved by any supplier, and they are better seen before signing than after.

The close prioritises and writes conditions. What gets fixed now because it is cheap and unblocks the rest, what waits, what is not worth touching, and which minimum conditions the organisation must meet before its first investment. With that document in hand, the group practises reading a vendor proposal and deciding whether the company can sustain what the proposal takes for granted.

What participants learn

• Evaluate the state of the company's information: where it lives, who maintains it, how consistent it is.
• Identify the business decisions that today have no named owner and no written criterion.
• Analyse access, permissions and backups before a new tool treats them as settled.
• Design the human oversight that must exist before a tool takes part in any decision.
• Prioritise which condition gets fixed now, which waits, and which is not worth touching.

Agenda

1. 01Where information lives, and who keeps it current
2. 02Processes without an owner, decisions without a written criterion
3. 03Data quality: what comes in, what is carried over, what gets invented
4. 04Access, permissions and backups
5. 05What gets tidied first, and what it costs to do it
6. 06Minimum conditions before the first investment
7. 07How to assess a proposal with this diagnosis in hand

What the organisation leaves with

• An inventory of where the company's information lives, in what condition, and under whose responsibility.
• A list of decisions with no named owner, each with a proposed owner and the criterion still to be written.
• A document of minimum conditions the organisation must meet before its first investment.
• A routine for reading a vendor proposal against that diagnosis.