Start with a piece of paper

At this point, I would like to engage you a bit. As you know, the case study serves as an example for the information that is presented in each chapter. Therefore, we can take the characteristics of the Lemonade Stand listed above and see if you can find them in your business. Take a piece of paper and a pencil to write down the different departments you have in your business. For example, write down Sales and make a circle around it. Start with Sales on the top left of your paper and arrive at Purchasing at the bottom left. You can use arrows to connect the circles. For example, from Sales to Inventory, Delivery and Purchasing. On the right side of the paper, write down the main functions that each circle performs. For example, next to Sales write down what needs to get done in your business as a part of the sales process. You may have a list such as the following: sales stages, forecast, pipeline, inventory check, proposal, order entry, and so on.

The idea is to establish a circular flow-type representation of your business where one department provides information to the next department.

Now that you have the main components of your business written down, you can identify where the actual data is stored. For example, is all of the data in one system with access for the department that needs the data? You potentially have multiple systems that need to interact and synchronize data. Those will be the aspects that we will target as they hold the greatest potential for improvement.