Traditional reengineering that focuses upon the paper, the form or the activity will be of little value as our digital world becomes more pervasive. Think for a minute about how many businesses take comfort in a paper record, a signed document or a competed form. Now think for a minute how much of that will disappear over the next 2-4 years. The business issue is that startups and disrupters don’t care about the paper paradigm. They care about the client experience, efficiency and making it easy for employees to complete their work. They care about changing the paradigm. So if you are tinkering with the status quo, stop! Think about; if I were a disrupter, or a start up would I design it this way? Put your money and your resources where your strategy should be. Focus on the client, design the best journey you can with the best technology available and design your process for that journey.

Take a mortgage for example, non status quo thinking would be to capture client details from drivers license information, use real estate listings, electronic appraisals, client transaction history, credit bureau information and property tax details to originate a mortgage in under a day. Some lenders are doing that now! Others are still reengineering the old paper paradigm. Gee, I wonder which way the client wants it done? That will likely tell us who will win in the long run.

Leaders need to stop spending money in areas that are not strategic and lever the new technology that is here now. Reworking and old paper based system of record is spending good money on bad technology and wastes the effort of process engineers to get the old thing to work in the new way.

Why not build the new thing the new way built so that we get it right the first time and win for the business and the client?