To our surprise, only about half of the award winners we contacted knew what process information was or had made any concerted effort to collect it. So even some of the most process-oriented companies in the United States have not fully developed infrastructures for providing process information to managers and workers. Like most organizations, they have generally measured and monitored their performance using financial information, usually accounting-based. Even many accountants would agree that financial indicators alone are usually insufficient to effectively manage an organization's performance. If companies are serious about measuring performance beyond simply bean counting for isolated business units, processes are the obvious alternative.
Processes can also be leading indicators of future financial performance.
There are lots of decisions to make. One basic issue involves distinguishing between process data and process knowledge. Improving process data involves a lot of nasty slogging through transaction systems, which I'll describe in a moment. At Chevron Corp., for example, sharing best practices in a Notes-based database began in response to a new, decentralized organizational structure that otherwise might have resulted in little interaction across business units and functions. But creating process-oriented data goes beyond building some knowledge databases in Notes or on the Web.