Primary, Secondary or Tertiary – All Processes Impact The Client

“Secondary and tertiary do not imply unimportant”

Every process a business performs has an impact on the client, regardless of how it is prioritized.  When we are engrossed in our day-to-day lives, it is easy to get caught up in our own mind space, task lists and email responses; forgetting perhaps, that our work effects others and is part of a larger process, system and ultimately a deliverable to the client.

When considering an organization, we tend to think in terms of what types of products and services the entity provides and attach a preconceived prioritization of its processes.  This prioritization is amplified by the way we are taught to think about organizations as we catagorize companies into various segments such as manufacturer, whole sale, retailer and professional services.  Whirlpool Corporation, for example,  triggers thoughts about appliances such as washing machines.  Manufacturing processes come to mind as its primary or core process.

The tendency to catagorize and prioritize work performed occurs inside our own organizations.  Depending on the products and services the entity produces and where we reside on the organizational chart, processes get identified as primary, secondary and tertiary.

However, the business entity is a whole organization whose purpose is to provide value to its client. Each process creates deliverables, either inputs into the next process or an output directly delivered to the client.  For example, a product’s features are shaped from information about the client gathered from marketing processes. Those features are incorporated through engineering processes, executed through manufacturing processes, sold through sales processes, delivered through distribution processes and invoiced through accounting processes.

Each of these processes impacts the client by how well these processes are performed. It is important to correctly process an invoice; clients would like to be billed acurately.  Likewise, clients would like their preference incorporated into products and services.  While processes may need to be prioritized for planning, resource allocation and improvement efforts, the ranking a process receives does not designate it as irrelvent to the client.