A major problem at many companies is the inordinate amount of time it takes to complete a process. For example, insurance companies are famous for spending many weeks to review an insurance claim and issue a payment check, even though the total amount of work required is under an hour. The long time period from the beginning to the end of the process is usually due to the number of transfers between employees. For example, the insurance branch office may forward a claim to an insurance adjuster, who passes it along to a manager if the amount exceeds a set level, or who hands it off to another person who checks to see if the claim may be fraudulent or if the claimant has an unusually long history of claims, then moves the paperwork to another person who issues checks, and then returns the entire packet to the insurance branch office. Insurance is just an example – companies invest a shocking amount of time in moving paperwork between a multitude of employees. A related problem is that paperwork can be lost when it is moved between employees. Further, it is difficult to pin blame on anyone when a transaction is improperly completed because there are so many people involved in the process. Thus, spreading work among too many people opens a virtual Pandora’s box of troubles.
The solution is called process centering. Its underlying principle is to cluster as many work tasks for a single process as possible with a single person. By doing so, there are fewer transfers of documentation, which reduces the amount of time lost during these movements, while at the same time eliminating the risk that paperwork will be lost. Further, employees have much more complete and fulfilling jobs since they see a much larger part of the process and have a better feeling for how the entire process works. And best of all for a company, the time needed to complete transactions drops drastically, sometimes to less than 10 percent of the time previously needed.
The main problem with process centering is employee resistance. This is a reengineering best practice, which means that the old process is ripped up and replaced with an entirely new workflow, which makes employees nervous about their jobs, or if they will even have a job when the changes are complete. Accordingly, they usually are not pleased with the prospect of a new system and resist vigorously, or at least are of minimal assistance. Only excellent communications and a strong commitment by top management to completing the project will make this best practice operational, given the likely level of resistance to it.