Do you Know about SOA?

 Do you know about the concept of (SOA) Service Oriented Architecture ?

Service-oriented architecture:

A design approach to standardize functions, or services, so that numerous dissimilar applications and technologies can share them—both inside and outside the company

 Service:

A distinct, self-contained, well-defined function or capability that operates through a contractually defined service interface

Service Interface:

A technology and implementation independent way to systematically define a service’s:

–      Features, i.e. capability and output

–      Terms, i.e. requirements and input

–     and SLA, i.e. operating performance and quality of service

A service oriented architecture establishes:

            The taxonomy … the way to define, classify, discover, and integrate services

The service architecture covers all aspects of the environment from infrastructure, applications to business process

New Concept

(COA) Customer Oriented Architecture …What is it?

All Roads Lead to Successful Customer Outcomes

For a customer oriented architecture to exist there must first be defined successful customer outcomes (SCO).

Let’s think of SCO’s as processes linked together as a success chain. A failure of any one link in the chain, will result in failure to deliver that desired SCO.

 Each success chain will have blocks (Don’t call them steps) which are the success affecters. Things that could impact that success.

So how do we define these SCO processes and their success affecters?

It all starts with  Successful Customer Outcomes.

Successful Customer Outcomes

•     When defining success chains, we  start with the output of the chain – the successful customer outcome.

•     What are the outcomes that determine success for our customers ?

•     Defining a successful customer outcome is a very important activity to COA.

 The Customer Success Statement

•     The best place to start is with the customer success statement, where we create a simple and condensed version of how our target customers would express their ideal interaction with us.

Please take note of the phase “target customers.” 

•     The first step in the process of defining the customer success statement is to make sure we know the customers whom with, we wish to have success. It is NOT acceptable to use some kind of blanket statement like “Any customer is a good customer.”  We need to be specific.

 Defining Target Customers

•     Lets assume that we can achieve a target customer definition through existing business knowledge, marketing and strategy capabilities.

•     In some cases, this definition will be highly refined and actionable At the other extreme, we may not know who our real target customers are for many reasons but even so, we must build the best description that we can with the information, experience and intelligence available to us.

•     Fortunately one of the benefits of the customer oriented architecture is that once deployed, it has the ability to help us identify the customers fitting our target and can help us refine our target as well.

 Example

 Let’s work through an example to get a feel for how this works.

Air Transportation

We are a budget airline. Therefore, we know that our target customers are willing to accept less frills in return for lower pricing. We say we are a budget airline so we have clearly communicated to our potential customers what we do.

Now, when we first start to build the customer success statement it is easy to fall into the trap of projecting what we think we are selling onto the customer as if the definition of customer success was like this:

“I expect to get great prices whenever I fly your airline.”

Is this a customer success statement? Not even close. This is at best, only a starting point from where we can build a real customer success statement. Fortunately, we do have some guidance to help us along the way. Here is the basic set of rules, or directives, for building the customer success statement.

 Success Statement Directives

•     Use action statements when describing the customer success statement

•     Clearly define the beginning and the end of the experience from the customer point of view

•     Include a statement for ALL points where the customer touches the business

•     Make sure to consider time

•     Also consider the number of customer actions

•     These directives help us expand our customer success statement to the breadth and depth we need to create an accurate and actionable statement that truly reflects what a successful customer outcome is to our target customers.

 Building the Success Statement – The Budget Airline

In the budget airline example we started with the customer statement of; “I expect to get great prices whenever I fly your airline.”

Directive 2 tells us we need to cover the customer statement by clearly defining the beginning and end of the customer experience from the customer’s point of view.

Let’s work with this and see what we uncover. The customer already expects two things from us, to get a great price and to fly with us. Is this the beginning of the customer experience? No it is not.

Before they can get a great price, they must first find a flight that meets their needs. Once they find their desired flight, they must then book the flight, right?

So the customer experience starts when they first initiated an interaction with us. Regardless of the means of the interaction, the customer experience starts when they take the action to initiate an interaction with us. This discovery allows us to add the statement, “My experience begins when I take my first action to interact with you (I want to book a flight).”

Recap:
“My experience begins when I take my first action to interact with you (I want to book a flight).”
“I expect to get great prices whenever I fly your airline.”

What happens next? Well, before taking a flight the customer must find a flight that meets his or her needs adding; “I need to find the flight that fits my needs.”

 Customer Experience

Because we already have great prices in the statement we can move on past this to the next action assuming the customer now has their flight selected and that they have gotten a great price.
  
What happens next? Not much until the day the flight takes place. On this day, the customer goes to the departing airport, but they can’t just get onboard the plane.

Before they can board the plane, they need to check in. So we can now add to the customer experience “I go to the airport and check in.”

Recap:
“My experience begins when I take my first action to interact with you (I want to book a flight).”
“I need to find the flight that fits my needs.”
“I get a great price.”
“I go to the airport and check in.”
“I fly your airline.”

 Customer Experience (Continues)

 Makes sense so far ?

Once the customer is checked in, what happens? Well, they go to their gate and then board the plane when they are called to do so. Once everyone has boarded the flight can begin the actual process of traveling to its destination.

Recap:
“My experience begins when I take my first action to interact with you (I want to book a flight).”
“I need to find the flight that fits my needs.”
“I get a great price.”
“I go to the airport and check in.”
“I go my gate and board the plane when called.”
“The plane departs.”
“I fly on your airline.”

Of course, once the plane begins its journey the natural conclusion is that it will land (at the correct airport), the passengers will get off of the plane and the journey is over.

Recap:
All of the above ..plus

“The plane lands and I get off.”
“The experience ends.”

 Customer Experience…more

 So that is the beginning and end of the customer experience, or is it?

 It can be, but if the customer has checked a bag then the experience is not over until the customer has retrieved their checked luggage.

Recap:
“My experience begins when I take my first action to interact with you (I want to book a flight).”
“I need to find the flight that fits my needs.”
“I get a great price.”
“I go to the airport and check in.”
“I go my gate and board the plane when called.”
“The plane departs.”
“I fly on your airline.”
“The plane lands and I get off.”
“I reclaim my checked bag.”
“The experience ends.”

This is a reasonable Customer Success Statement. Of course, it can be modified to reflect any new or expanded understanding we discover regarding our customers or for changes to our business model (like Security Requirements). The point is that any customer experience that results in an outcome important to the customer and our business needs to be defined in this manner.
  

Points to Remember

•     The quality/accuracy of the Success Statement exponentially increases the potential benefit (or even more) to our business. This is because each element of the Success Statement can by itself determine if our relationship with each customer is retained (or not).

•     This touches on the next part of the Customer Oriented Architecture - the affect of the Success Statement elements - or better, Success Affecters.

 Next Steps – Transform into Process

•     In the Budget Airline example, we went through the process of defining a successful customer statement. This statement clearly tells us what we must do to produce a Successful Customer Outcome for our target customers.

What have we actually created with this statement? Well, the successful customer statement gives us both the elements of the successful customer outcome as well as the requirements definition for our supporting business process.

•     The next step is to transform this statement into a business process we can use to fulfill the requirements of the statement and to manage, monitor and optimize this core business process of our business.
  

•     Here is a recap of that statement:

1) “My experience begins when I take my first action to interact with you (I want to book a flight).”
2) “I need to find the flight that fits my needs.”
3) “I get a great price.”
4) “I go to the airport and check in.”
5) “I go to my gate and board the plane when called.”
6) “The plane departs.”
7) “I fly on your airline.”
8) “The plane lands and I get off.”
9) “I reclaim my checked bag.”
10) “The experience ends.”

Note each element has been given a number so for our budget airline example we have 10 elements we must address in our business process.

 What’s Missing ?

 However, these statements do not currently provide the detail needed to produce a business process model. What is missing? We need to identify the metrics associated with each element that determine whether (or not) our business process has met the associated deliverable.

This is the next critical aspect that must be addressed. Each element must have a defined and measurable metric – and we must also have a range of acceptable values for each metric.

For the first element of our process…

1) “My experience begins when I take my first action to interact with you (I want to book a flight).”

…we need to determine what metric(s) apply.

Looking at the second element of our process…

2) “I need to find the flight that fits my needs.”


What metrics apply to element 2? Dissecting the second element provides some insight into what metrics are identifiable here.

 Finally….

•     So a Customer Oriented Architecture has business processes that all have the same outcome and associated outcome metric – the Successful Customer Outcome. The outcome is Boolean, meaning it is a one or zero, a yes or no, a success or failure.

Each Successful Customer Outcome then has Proof Points, where we have other metrics we can track that determine whether or not we have met with success or failure.

In the world of Boolean Algebra, the connection between Proof Points  and SCOs would best be expressed with the “AND GATE” operator. The “AND GATE” operator works very simply, for its gate to open and allow a TRUE (SCO) result every input – every single input no matter how many they are – must also be TRUE.

This type of approach to business processes can be very, very powerful. The tendency that people have, is to work towards an even distribution of result across the full breadth of tasks they are responsible for, a situation that will produce many, many failures in the AND GATE scenario. Focus on SCOs by the business and with its supporting technology (COA) is the opportunity to break inherent trends of mediocrity with organizations.

The people in our organization will gladly help our business be successful if we provide them with the opportunity to do so.

•     The application of Business Process Management, the use of Successful Customer Outcomes and technology aligned to deliver Customer Oriented Architecture give us opportunity to set new levels of success in our organization.

 Recap

•     COA – Customer Oriented Architecture

–     SCO - Successful Customer Outcomes

–     Defining our Target Customer

–     Creating a Customer Success Statement

–     Defining the Customer Experience

–     Transforming into Business Process

–     Defining Metrics

•     Additional Tasks

–     Document and Flow

–     Feed Requirements (tool & Process)

–     Implement CIP (Continuous Improvement Program)

 COA  What it is….

•     Customer Oriented Architecture: A design approach based on the customer experience and defined success outcomes to standardize processes,  functions and metrics, so that numerous dissimilar groups can share them.

•     COA Attributes:

–     Successful Customer Outcomes

–     Define Target Customer

–     Create Customer Success Statement

–     Define the Customer Experience

–     Transform into Business Process

–     Define Metrics

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