Systems Should Narrow the Gap Between Two Humans, Not Widen It

The role of computer systems has always been to improve our lives. The way I see it, any system should narrow or remove the gap between two humans. In the right context, this could even mean eliminating unnecessary interactions altogether—such as in self-service scenarios.

The gap I'm referring to could be between frontline staff and beneficiaries or between the back-office team and frontline staff. And yet, IT projects often take a systems-centric view, inadvertently introducing more administration and frustration rather than reducing it. These projects always start with the right intentions, but once we get into system selection and implementation, we can easily lose sight of the real goal.

To put it another way, the role of any IT project should be to reduce the amount of time humans spend interacting with computer systems—not increase it. So the first question we should be asking ourselves is: Who are the humans we are trying to help here, and how can we get these systems out of their way?

This is why introducing too many systems will always have a negative effect. Beyond the basic systems, adding more complexity inevitably increases the time people spend swivelling between multiple platforms—just to enter data or extract the information they need to do their jobs. Before undertaking any IT change, I always encourage my customers to consider the goal from a human perspective, not a system’s perspective.

It’s amazing how much of a positive impact this simple perspective shift can have on the effectiveness of a tech change. And it makes sense.

If the goal of my project is simply to implement a new expense management system, then that’s exactly what we’ll achieve. But that might also mean 20 team leaders end up having to re-key information from expense management into finance or another downstream system just to make everything work.

On the other hand, if my team’s focus is on reducing the time our frontline staff and team leaders spend on computer systems just to administer charging our members for incurred expenses, we are much more likely to achieve that goal—even if we end up implementing the same system.

It’s a simple hack, but it works.

Andrew Walker
Technology consulting for charities
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-walker-the-impatient-futurist/

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