An interesting piece showing some of the outcomes of designless enterprise

James Robertson has written a great piece on the issues both large and small scale that design can help address. He outlines some of the major design disciplines and he has a couple of great case studies in the form of Telstra and Coles intranets.

Enterprise without design is likely to have more issues with:

At the small scale, these issues include:

• systems are cumbersome and hard to use

• complexity of systems impacts on staff and business productivity
• information and answers are hard to find
• solutions don’t meet regulatory requirements, such as accessibility
• processes are fragmented across many different systems
• staff training is slow and costly, due to the complexity of systems and processes
• staff uptake and adoption is less than desired levels
• frustration in systems reduces staff engagement and satisfaction
• bad design leads to mistakes and poorly-informed decisions

At the large scale there are also many challenges, including:

• internal systems and practices don’t provide an effective foundation for delivering great customer outcomes

• poorly designed systems act as an anchor to organisational growth
• inefficient internal practices make it hard for organisations to ‘do more with less’
• overall pace of innovation is slower than needed
• different areas and aspects of the organisation don’t work together cohesively
• mistakes caused by poor design have a significant organisational cost and increase business risks
• poor design leads to resistance to change by staff
• strategic projects and changes don’t succeed as well as they could

As James states the impact of poor design can be large and costly. It is also worth noting that design is an ongoing process not a 'project' that is done once.

Source: Redesigning the enterprise | Step Two | James Robertson, Feb 2015