I recently was talking with a friend and our conversation reminded me of how important cross-process analysis is for a business.
Over the years my friend has eaten at Sonic on and off. It wasn’t an everyday occurrence, but Sonic was on his list of go-to places for lunch. Sonic recently upgraded their mobile app so customers can order ahead of arriving at the restaurant. It saves a lot of time and avoids the whole trying-to-get-your-order-correct over an intercom system. My friend also enjoys being able to order without having to interact with people on his lunch break. He started eating at Sonic much more often.
One day he went to place his order and the application had logged him out. It had never done this before. He tried to remember the password from his original registration but after multiple attempts couldn’t get logged in. He then went to reset his password and the app clumsily took him out to Sonic’s website. After multiple attempts, he gave up. Now keep in mind, he is smart and a techie. The problem was a website issue. He ate somewhere else that day.
It has now been a couple of months and he has not gone back to Sonic. Every time he thinks about eating there, he remembers that he can’t login. Now that he has experienced mobile ordering, he has no interest in going and placing a manual order and waiting at the stall. Sonic’s new app feature created a greater level of expected service. The loss of easy access to that service has caused my friend to stop going there. And it’s not that other fast-food places have that service. It’s the fact that if he goes to Sonic, he is missing out on what he once had. Sonic has not only lost the added revenue they started receiving from him when he downloaded the app and started visiting more frequently, they have also lost the income stream that existed before he ever used the app in the first place. Do they even know?
This is where cross-process analysis comes in. Businesses operate using many processes like the login process, the password reset process, and the sales process. Each can be individually analyzed and improved. Typically, in organizations, the sales process is thought to be the most important and analyzed in depth first. Processes like login and password reset seem ancillary and are often overlooked. In this case, an explanation for a loss in revenue can only be analyzed by looking at all three processes and how they impact each other. This is cross-process analysis.
Sonic could look at the restaurant level and identify new mobile sales that appear to originate from customers downloading the app and shifting from at-restaurant sales. They could then attempt to correlate a loss of these new mobile sales to an increase in failed logins and password reset failures for customers at the same location over time. This would give them an idea of the impact on overall sales. If there is a bigger problem, then they could improve their login process and password reset process. They could then reach out to the customers using whatever contact info they have with transparency and offer a free burger and a new easy way to reset their password. Hopefully they would regain a customer and the revenue.
When doing cross-process analysis, here are a couple of things to consider. First, when looking for influencers on key metrics like revenue, you should consider how ALL processes might have an impact, not just the ones that “make sense”. A lot of times, influencers are missed because humans think there can be no causation. After all, who would think that a failed password reset would impact long-term at-restaurant sales. Second, cross-process analysis is most effective when it is proactive and attempts to identify causation before an influencer can have a significant impact. My friend hasn’t eaten at Sonic for over two months – that’s two months of lost revenue. Hopefully, this is an isolated case for Sonic. Their BI program should be able to tell them.
If you would like to be more effective at doing cross-process analysis, reach out to us. We’d love to help take your BI program to the next level.
