Any swimming tips before I dive into the pond? Real estate development business

Our company has more than 30 years of experience in the real estate development business. One of the key processes of the company includes Customer Service. Initially, I was tasked to develop procedures and work instructions of Customer Service department's processes, and later, for the whole organization. Also, make improvement whenever there is an opportunity.

Ideally, documentation should be done by the process owners or committee members who belong in different departments. In the case of our company, I am the only one, as Business Process Analyst, who does the documentation. I am a newly hired and my position is a newly created one.

Since our management system is not based on any international standards e.g. ISO 9001, I really don't know if still need to do a 'Gap' analysis of our company. I know that a gap analysis will let me know how much work I need to do. But how can I do that? How would I know the gaps of the current practice of the department as against that of what is required by what?

biboy2012 said:

Our company has more than 30 years of experience in the real estate development business. One of the key processes of the company includes Customer Service. Initially, I was tasked to develop procedures and work instructions of Customer Service department's processes, and later, for the whole organization. Also, make improvement whenever there is an opportunity.

Ideally, documentation should be done by the process owners or committee members who belong in different departments. In the case of our company, I am the only one, as Business Process Analyst, who does the documentation. I am a newly hired and my position is a newly created one.

Since our management system is not based on any international standards e.g. ISO 9001, I really don't know if still need to do a 'Gap' analysis of our company. I know that a gap analysis will let me know how much work I need to do. But how can I do that? How would I know the gaps of the current practice of the department as against that of what is required by what?

Click to expand...

You do not need ISO 9001 to do a gap analysis for your company.

Begin by making a list of the "desired state" of the organization. The Owners or Top Management should be able to describe what the organization should look like. You should look at the desired competencies of your organization's personnel. Don't know about the Philippines, but I am sure there must be some legal/regulatory requirements associated with your type of business. Etc.

Make a list and compare. The difference between the "ideal state" and the current state are the gaps.

Ever heard about Benchmarking? Check on that as well..

Good Luck!

biboy2012 said:

Our company has more than 30 years of experience in the real estate development business. One of the key processes of the company includes Customer Service. Initially, I was tasked to develop procedures and work instructions of Customer Service department's processes, and later, for the whole organization. Also, make improvement whenever there is an opportunity.

Ideally, documentation should be done by the process owners or committee members who belong in different departments. In the case of our company, I am the only one, as Business Process Analyst, who does the documentation. I am a newly hired and my position is a newly created one.

Since our management system is not based on any international standards e.g. ISO 9001, I really don't know if still need to do a 'Gap' analysis of our company. I know that a gap analysis will let me know how much work I need to do. But how can I do that? How would I know the gaps of the current practice of the department as against that of what is required by what?

Click to expand...

For starters, there is a substantial difference between residential development and commercial development, both in terms of scope and the behind-the-scenes transactions with zoning departments and building codes and the front end dealings of financing and marketing.

There is also a big difference between speculative and "made-to-order" development.

These different facets usually mean the commercial developer has a much more sophisticated team both behind the scenes and out front in finance and marketing. The relative size of development projects also has a big influence on the internal processes of the organization.

My investment bank funded a few big commercial deals in the 70's and 80's. The time span from initial idea to turning the first spade of earth was mind boggling. One $50,000,000 deal we had syndicated to three other investment banks took 5 years, with the first disbursement of loan funds only coming in the third year - all the other pre-development costs had to come from equity capital.

Personally, I'm not one of those doom and gloom guys who cry about how bad the market is - a well-planned and well located development can be financially successful in any economic climate. We made money financing deals in 1975 when many other lenders were shutting the loan windows.

Stijloor said:

You do not need ISO 9001 to do a gap analysis for your company.

Begin by making a list of the "desired state" of the organization. The Owners or Top Management should be able to describe what the organization should look like. You should look at the desired competencies of your organization's personnel. Don't know about the Philippines, but I am sure there must be some legal/regulatory requirements associated with your type of business. Etc.

Make a list and compare. The difference between the "ideal state" and the current state are the gaps.

Ever heard about Benchmarking? Check on that as well..

Good Luck!

Click to expand...

Ummm I think it’s difficult to benchmark our business processes and performance metrics against industry best. That would require us to conduct an "industrial espionage" to our competitor.

I will try to prepare a Gap Analysis checklist of desired state.

Thank you very much, Stijloor, for your valuable input.

Any additional suggestions you guys may have would be welcome.

By the way, is there a customer service sector specific standard?

biboy2012 said:

Ummm I think it’s difficult to benchmark our business processes and performance metrics against industry best. That would require us to conduct an "industrial espionage" to our competitor.

Click to expand...

No, no espionage required! :mg:

Many organizations have benchmarked successful companies such as Disney Corp, Apple, etc. Many successful companies are not shy about their accomplishments and how they did it. You can read articles in trade journals, etc.

Stijloor.

The company [as an organization] has more than 30 years of experience. In those 30 years, the individuals have a "group memory" of where things went right and where they went wrong, but I suspect that (like many organizations) they did not keep good written records of those successes and failures for systematic review to establish "good practices."

All benchmarking depends on reviewing the record [history] and learning from it. When a consultant (like me) is engaged to oversee "change management" in a company with scanty records - one thing we usually do is interview as many folks as necessary to find both bad and good and bad experience to create a matrix of good practices THEY would like to repeat and bad practices they'd like to avoid. (It's rarely about MY perception of good or bad. My function is to ask sufficient original questions and follow-up questions to perform a type of "root cause analysis" to create an accurate grid. )

Sometimes, not always, folks may relate good and bad experiences of other organizations as a type of benchmarking, but I try to keep things in the realm of reality by reminding folks that, science fiction aside, only light and electricity go from zero to 186,000+ miles per second at the flip of a switch, the rest of us need some "continual progress" to get up to speed.

Thus, we introduce the concepts of "process," "system," and "continual improvement." All persons are kept in the loop and we try to create a plan for a system of processes (with "plateaus" along the way where progress can be evaluated to determine whether the plan is working or needs to be tweaked.)

My style of consulting is to create [recreate?] Deming's System of Profound Knowledge (SoPK) to encourage everyone in the organization to be on a constant learning curve and to deploy that knowledge to improve the organization and, by extension, improve themselves.

For either the internal or external "change maker," it is important to remember that the question foremost in the mind of EVERY member of the organization is,
Providing an acceptable answer to that question is key to success. I find the changes agreed by consensus after examining the matrix of good and bad are the ones which provide the most acceptance of

Wes Bucey said:

The company [as an organization] has more than 30 years of experience. In those 30 years, the individuals have a "group memory" of where things went right and where they went wrong, but I suspect that (like many organizations) they did not keep good written records of those successes and failures for systematic review to establish "good practices."

All benchmarking depends on reviewing the record [history] and learning from it. When a consultant (like me) is engaged to oversee "change management" in a company with scanty records - one thing we usually do is interview as many folks as necessary to find both bad and good and bad experience to create a matrix of good practices THEY would like to repeat and bad practices they'd like to avoid. (It's rarely about MY perception of good or bad. My function is to ask sufficient original questions and follow-up questions to perform a type of "root cause analysis" to create an accurate grid. )

Sometimes, not always, folks may relate good and bad experiences of other organizations as a type of benchmarking, but I try to keep things in the realm of reality by reminding folks that, science fiction aside, only light and electricity go from zero to 186,000+ miles per second at the flip of a switch, the rest of us need some "continual progress" to get up to speed.

Thus, we introduce the concepts of "process," "system," and "continual improvement." All persons are kept in the loop and we try to create a plan for a system of processes (with "plateaus" along the way where progress can be evaluated to determine whether the plan is working or needs to be tweaked.)

My style of consulting is to create [recreate?] Deming's System of Profound Knowledge (SoPK) to encourage everyone in the organization to be on a constant learning curve and to deploy that knowledge to improve the organization and, by extension, improve themselves.

For either the internal or external "change maker," it is important to remember that the question foremost in the mind of EVERY member of the organization is,

"What's in it for me?"​

Providing an acceptable answer to that question is key to success. I find the changes agreed by consensus after examining the matrix of good and bad are the ones which provide the most acceptance of

"What's in it for me?"​

Click to expand...

I have already drafted the relevant procedures of the Customer Service Department. I appreciate all of the advices you guys have provided so far. But I hope it’s okay if you could continue helping me out by responding to the new challenge I am facing. The next assignment is to document the actual practice of Operational Support Department and recommend improvements. I requested a meeting with a department head to discuss their department’s processes and requested three supervisors (of three sections under said department) to walk me through all the various steps of their processes. From there, I could somehow gauge the amount of work that we will be doing as well as the priorities of our anticipated efforts. I will of course, initially focus on documenting the current/actual practice. However, after documenting the actual practice, I can now focus on the adequacy, compliance on good practices, effectiveness and other improvements.

Unfortunately, the department head told me that they’re really swamped with a significant volume of backlog items that have target dates from current month until next month. She has been out for quite a long time due to personal matters; it’s only now that she got back from her long leave and have a lot of catching up to do. The same goes for her team (referring to the three supervisors).

She suggested sending her via email any questions I might have or any items I want to be addressed and she will send in her responses.
I would appreciate if anyone can help me think of the good questions to ask so that my deliverables will still move even without our meeting. Perhaps, we can identify any items that need further discussion for a sit-down later on.

I am thinking of questions that can assist me in capturing all the information needed in writing their procedures. The first thing that comes to my mind is the outline of actions of people and/or areas involved in a particular activity according the WHO does WHAT, and WHEN structure. However, I have learned that one section alone has 32 different transactions/processes. I’m having second thoughts about asking the department head to define all steps. She is high enough to such smallest level of detail.

What is a good approach in this situation?

You are getting into what we all refer to as "Interactions between the Processes". The key element of any process are its deliverable, may be one or more. Each process is there to DO and DELIVER something to an other process to further DO and DELIVER .. all in order to meet the customer, statutory and organization requirements. Some of these deliverable may also be retained within the process for a specific purpose (for the sake of better understanding you can refer to process as department)
When these deliverable are clear, the extent of activity gets clarity and from this comes the requirement of resources, both human resource and other infrastructure.
What you ask anyone must involve questions around these. Once these deliverable are clear, complete and can trace a defined path, improvements can be thought about.

somashekar said:

You are getting into what we all refer to as "Interactions between the Processes". The key element of any process are its deliverable, may be one or more. Each process is there to DO and DELIVER something to an other process to further DO and DELIVER .. all in order to meet the customer, statutory and organization requirements. Some of these deliverable may also be retained within the process for a specific purpose (for the sake of better understanding you can refer to process as department)
When these deliverable are clear, the extent of activity gets clarity and from this comes the requirement of resources, both human resource and other infrastructure.
What you ask anyone must involve questions around these. Once these deliverable are clear, complete and can trace a defined path, improvements can be thought about.

Click to expand...

Thank you very much for your reply.

The term process is a set of interrelated activities which transforms inputs into outputs. This means that a process may include several procedures. One of the Operational Department processes (out of 31 processes) is Ledger Adjustment. Under ledger adjustment there are 32 transactions/sub-processes (e.g. Change of Buyer's Personal Information Procedure, DOA Annotation Procedure, Transfer of Title under Buyer's Name Procedure, etc) I told the supervisor who owed the process to try to reduce the 32 transactions/sub-processes to limit the total output of sub-processes to 1 or few procedures to avoid overburden documentation. If there are similar steps, all he needs to do is to simply link or cross reference to minimize the need for repeating steps.

From the one-liner statement of department head "Why don’t you send me in advance via email any questions you might have or any items you want to be addressed and I'll send in my responses", it didn't seem that she meant asking even the smallest detail such as list of all of the tasks required to complete each process with the corresponding/identified performer (by job title) associated with each task. Guess she only meant the questions that are very typical for a Manager or department head e.g. departmental objectives, communication process within the department, etc

I understand that they are swamped with a significant volume of backlog items that have target dates. However, it is expected from my boss (Systems and Processes Department) that for the next few weeks, the documents (procedures, work instructions etc) are already drafted for review and approval to be implemented by Operational Department people. I created a template (tabular input-process-output) and have sent to three supervisors with the hope that it can assist them in capturing all the things needed in their procedure, but no filled-up template/tabular form that I have sent has returned with any inputs or comments.

biboy2012 said:

Thank you very much for your reply.

The term process is a set of interrelated activities which transforms inputs into outputs. This means that a process may include several procedures. One of the Operational Department processes (out of 31 processes) is Ledger Adjustment. Under ledger adjustment there are 32 transactions/sub-processes (e.g. Change of Buyer's Personal Information Procedure, DOA Annotation Procedure, Transfer of Title under Buyer's Name Procedure, etc) I told the supervisor who owed the process to try to reduce the 32 transactions/sub-processes to limit the total output of sub-processes to 1 or few procedures to avoid overburden documentation. If there are similar steps, all he needs to do is to simply link or cross reference to minimize the need for repeating steps.

From the one-liner statement of department head "Why don’t you send me in advance via email any questions you might have or any items you want to be addressed and I'll send in my responses", it didn't seem that she meant asking even the smallest detail such as list of all of the tasks required to complete each process with the corresponding/identified performer (by job title) associated with each task. Guess she only meant the questions that are very typical for a Manager or department head e.g. departmental objectives, communication process within the department, etc

I understand that they are swamped with a significant volume of backlog items that have target dates. However, it is expected from my boss (Systems and Processes Department) that for the next few weeks, the documents (procedures, work instructions etc) are already drafted for review and approval to be implemented by Operational Department people. I created a template (tabular input-process-output) and have sent to three supervisors with the hope that it can assist them in capturing all the things needed in their procedure, but no filled-up template/tabular form that I have sent has returned with any inputs or comments.

Click to expand...

You're fighting conflicting priorities. Your priorities, as assigned by your boss, are different from the priorities of managers who are trying to reduce their backlogs. At some point above the levels of these managers there has been a failure of leadership. Until the priorities of the various managers have been aligned, your frustration will continue and there is an excellent chance that the ultimate failure of the project will be pinned on you.

You need to talk to someone--your own boss for starters--and let her know that you're not getting the cooperation you need, and without it you won't be able to get your work done on schedule, if at all.