Blog

I always read reports that public services in Portugal were very bureaucratic and slow. I go through this from time to time, as I need to request family reunification for my wife at SEF and the last time, between the beginning and the end of the process, it was 8 months before the documents arrived. Really a little disheartening. With the pandemic many people went into despair, as a process that was already malfunctioning would most likely get worse. And bingo! It really got worse.

However, 3 months later, the surprise came: service requests were being completed in 3 weeks. That's right, 3 weeks! With the pandemic, SEF and other agencies digitized all product acquisition processes and this was the path to effectiveness (since there was no way to handle with the number of requests in person).

Today the stone in the shoe of many companies is not having an efficient process. And this efficiency is most often confused with team size, lack of money for hiring or purchasing software, in short, swelling of something that is no longer good...

No, it’s definitely not that. Efficiency comes from the speed with which the company is able to respond to market stimulus. Startups have revolutionized processes, as well as how to apply them. A startup is most often quicker in responding to the market, as it is flexible and quick in capturing stimuli and converting them into process. A government or a larger company would be, more or less, like elephants climbing trees. The intelligence in capturing stimuli and quickly converting them into processes brings more learning to the teams. With greater learning, companies begin to revise their products and even to build them using lean concepts: do, make mistakes, correct, learn and evolve. The faster we make mistakes, the faster we learn and more time we have to correct and evolve.

It is essential that a company adjust its processes daily, if possible. And more than anything, guide them to the market. For example: a Mobile Bank today has 78% more acceptance than a traditional bank. And why? For the simple fact that a startup turns its processes over to the continuous improvement of the customer experience. I do not remember of to know someone who likes to pay bills at bank counters, have coffee with the manager and things like that. Making the experience pleasant is the effectiveness that the whole company seeks through process improvement.

Therefore, contrary to what many professionals still think, continuous improvement of processes is not a waste of time, but a matter of survival.