evolution of Business systems
20th century marks the birth of communication hardware and software systems. Before that time, communication happened through assistants, secretaries, phone calls, telegrams, telegrams, and letters in business and work. Invention of computer systems and their capacity to store and manage data made it easier to get to someone and keep records. Management systems concerned themselves with managing display, storage, and transmission of records and data. Whereas the actual coordination of service agreements at most fundamental level, remained in stressed human minds.
In our assessment, business is not about managing objects and data inside the organization, but to facilitate and coordinate communication that matters, and get breakdowns resolved with just in time innovation.
19th and 20th century systems, most still in use today, knowledge is considered to be a power. With the invention of modern search engines, knowledge has been democratized and is no longer in fact a power, for most businesses. What constitutes power today is the ability to coordinate action that happens through service agreements. Recent success of Uber tells us — Coordination is the game for the 21st century.
Classic processes of business management are rooted in the management of information, and rational decision making based in previously established models. To further understand this point, let's consider the Radio Transmission metaphor:
- Sending messages and data from point to point.
- The essential actions are the sequential transmission and then receipt and parsing of the data that was sent.
- Unhappy results often lead to blaming and stalemates common in organizations today.
Harvester BOS (Business Operating System)
Harvester BOS is a radical new management and communication system built for the 21st century business. Harvester BOS consists of practices, patterns and components that are used in the design of your organization's end to end business operating system.
Harvester BOS has a Service Oriented Architecture rooted in the Speech Act Theory, which brings about a new kind of management of communication and coordination of service agreements in the organization. In Harvester BOS (Business Operating System):
- Communication is coordination of action, guided by the interpretations of particular observers.
- The actors bring forth and coordinate a multiplicity of frames and actions at the same time.
- Unhappy results often lead to self-examination and development of new skills.
COMPONENTS
MAP OF BUSINESS
Our designers are rigorously trained in identifying core areas of issues in your organization, building new operating models, and implementing the Harvester BOS (Business Operating System). We consider business coordination as a map of patterns and practices, taking place in 9 distinct blocks, in a 3 dimensional map of time vs. time vs. time. Those are the three dimensions on which all business activity takes place. Notice the center which is present of the present (on x and y axis) where your operations take place. In designing your business operating system, we use this map to work in collaboration with you, to search for hidden areas of waste that's bleeding your organization dry, with nothing reporting on it. The map reveals blind spots in the organization and the new processes and operating model is designed and implemented to fix those areas.
PATTERNS, PRACTICES AND COMPONENTS
We have an extensive set of patterns, components, and practices that we have built and implemented repeatedly at our clients producing notable results. Our practices and
We have an extensive library of patterns, processes, components and practices in the banking, manufacturing, healthcare, IT Services, software and internet, and startup industries.
Implementation
Harvester BOS implementation take place via three distinct areas services, that support each other.
Please visit Services for details of each service area, or get in touch with us to start a conversation about bringing radical positive change to your organization.
Fundamentals
Harvester BOS (Business Operating System) works as a service coordinator for your organization. In the implementation of Harvester, organizations are designed as networks of service agreements. The verbs set in the following figure 1.2 are the fundamental units of managing service agreements.
A service agreement is a declarative act of communication, and a fundamental unit in the construction of an operating system for an organization.
Stages of operating cycles
Here are the 4 fundamental stages of a Service Agreement loop from start till closure in its atomic form. A agreement begins with an assessment of a situation in which someone assess that something is not complete, broken, or needs to fixed. An assessment results in a request or an offer which is to bring forth a new future Condition of Satisfaction. The roles of speaker and listener (customer and performer) constantly change at each stage and managed in our framework.
Figure 1.4 displays a two dimensional view of the loop. In reality the process of managing action via commitments could be viewed as a helix of states between customers and companies, that continuously evolves.
core Processes
Here is a small example (Figure 1.5) of a standard request between two people in a services company. From the “Preparation” state, a customer, C, (someone who makes a request) makes that request to do something, which moves us to the “Negotiation” state. The performer, P, can agree and we can move on, but what if the performer says “No, I can't do it” or “Yes, with these changes” etc. You can quickly see how exhaustive the possibilities become. If certain portions of your business process do not involve any negotiation or back in forth discussion, you can simply disable different states and acts. This is only a fraction of the possibilities embedded in our software.
Request & Offer Mechanisms
In designing the Harvester BOS (Business Operating System), we first look at what “Requests and Offers” needs mechanisms that support:
- “Capture” (i.e., recording), triage, and routing of all requests from clients and offers and initiatives on behalf of clients or in their interest,
- “Closing the loop” on those initiatives, and with clients, including pro-active handling of anticipated breakdowns,
- Alerts and alarms pertaining to pending and overdue commitments,
- Mechanisms for escalating, delegating, and resolving situations in which we are failing to deliver on our commitments,
- Observing patterns, successes and failures “closing the loop,” management of the process of bringing resolution, allowing learning and improvement of processes, technology, and skills,
- Processes through which we keep ourselves in touch with the concerns of our clients,
- Building trust with clients through collaborative design of new and improved services, and by making explicit our responsibility in taking care of their concerns, and
- Preparing and grounding costs, (incentive-based) pricing, bills, contracts, etc.
These mechanisms will allow designers and managers to rapidly develop grounded answers to questions such as,
- How to articulate services as a set of Requests and Offers that create recognizable “core” business value.
- whose fulfillment is measured, transparently and accurately, against conditions of satisfaction that make sense for the businesses, rather than on “IT-centric” measures?
- for which the exchange (and the invoice) is for successful delivery of those conditions of satisfaction?
- How to manage the business as a set of Requests / Offers, to/from Clients, and to/from Suppliers / Vendors?
- How to create a clear audit trail of breakdowns against those Requests and Offers, and against the invoices?
- How to maximize self-service and minimize the numbers of queries from Clients?
- How to link suppliers' / vendors' invoices against a pricing model, and to company's invoices to clients?
- How to continue to improve, and to sweep waste and costs out of the business?
- How to continue to understand what is core, not core, and opportunities for consolidations?
