Will Rogers once said, “Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody ever does anything about it.”

Sometimes I feel like that about business processes. I like to complain about them but don’t do enough to change them.

Think about some of your own experiences. Have you ever wondered who came up with the process being used to “service” you? I have had some recent experiences with major retail and service companies that were mind boggling at best – complicated package deals, pricing terms, and rebate requirements. Not only was I confused, but the customer service employees were struggling, too! It always makes me wonder how organizations establish and maintain effective internal controls around all this complication.

One of my friends recently described my career as an interesting “walk about” in a wide variety of roles and industries. In particular, over the last couple of years this “walk about” allowed me to meet and interact with lots of good, hardworking people in finance and operations functions around the country. These people are working in all shapes and sizes of organizations. Most of our conversations told me that virtually everyone wants to find ways to “do things better” regardless of the size or structure of their organization. The only thing is … true changes to their business processes seem hard to come by.

In a recent conversation with an assurance partner at a national CPA firm, he told me he sees lots of situations where an organization’s ERP system isn’t implemented in its entirety or management doesn’t seem to trust it. Instead, they use procedures outside the system (i.e., spreadsheets) to verify what’s going on inside the system or to “do the consolidation.” He surmised that this may be caused by people at the functional level not wanting to be overly reliant on the ERP system or on IT people. Sounds like a matter of trust to me.

So why are things in this state? Despite all the desire and talk, are we stuck in the rut of “we have always done it that way”? Would you like to try some really new and different ways of doing things but always seem to encounter some resistance? Is it your own hesitance or the reluctance of your organization to take the leap to new ways of thinking and new processes?

If any of this rings true to you, rest assured you most likely are not alone. Let’s explore the topic further. Feel free to share your observations and experiences … good and bad … and over the next few posts I will do the same. Maybe we can at least “influence” the weather!!!