The Six Sigma Process And CRM

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Does Six Sigma Have a Place in the Front Office?

***tier3square.shtml***The Six Sigma process reminds me that I was an Economics major in College. Implicit in that was a core requirement that I study statistics. I stunk at it because I really had a hard time applying this stuff to the real world. There were no television shows about economists saving lives like there were medical shows. As a result, anything that requires a heavy reliance on theory bugs me. And it if bugs me, someone who has studied it, imagine how much fun it would be introducing Six Sigma, and related cottage industry, to a middle market company that wants to be more competitive without breaking the bank.

Reasons Why Six Sigma Process and CRM Don't Mix

• CRM is a front office process related to information flow. Six Sigma origins are tied to manufacturing processes
• The fact that a cottage industry has sprung up around this process tells me I should run, and run fast
• The average middle-market company I work with isn't staffed with statisticians. As a result, the explanation of this process glazes eyes and leads to thoughts of 25 year olds in blue suits running around charging $300 an hour.
• Of 58 large companies that have announce Six Sigma programs, 91% trail in the S&P 500. These may have been manufacturing focused initiatives, but if they were, then I'm certainly not going to endorse it for a non-manufacturing process

I'm a plain talking guy. I understand that these methodologies, like the Six Sigma process, are designed to enforce control over the process and the people within it. But at least one critic of this has stated that it also stifles creativity, and while it may help existing processes, it cannot identify new products and services or disruptive technoologies.

I don't know what any of that means. All I know is that creativity is usually a key component in any sort of process improvement. I deal in creativity every day, whether it's working with a company to improve the way they work, or whether I'm creating the technology to support those improvements.

If you want to read more about the differences between the front office and back office, and why back office methodologies like Six Sigma aren't a good fit for front office CRM initiatives, I recommend you download Dick Lee's whitepaper on Visual Workflow which you can find on his website. It's a short read and extremely informative.

Return to Business Process Mapping from Six Sigma Process

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