If you ever hope to have a fully or mostly autonomous business, it must have multiple business processes that are fully run on their own. To have a mostly autonomous business, there must be Autonomous Business Modules. And, by definition, an Autonomous Business Module must have Zero-Touch Operations. For a business to move towards autonomy, then it requires a set of processes in the business and breaking that down into objectively defined tasks. The simplest form of a process would be two tasks strung together. Therefore, Zero-Touch Operations is a set of two or more business tasks with zero human touches from the company.
In this way, you can think of an Autonomous Business Module as the over-arching category that requires Zero-Touch Operations. An Autonomous Business Module could be a Zero-Touch Operation or series of Zero-Touch Operations (designed around Goal-Driven Architecture). A Zero-Touch Operation may or may not be tied directly to a profit goal.
For example, we could say that an ecommerce website and its shopping cart checkout process is a Zero-Touch Operation. This is because a user does not require an employee to select their item, put in their shipping information, put in their payment information, etc. The system, once built, took the place of what used to require telephone operators and physical catalogs.
Why Are Zero-Touch Operations Important?
Zero-Touch Operations are a prerequisite for an Infinitely Scalable System. An Infinitely Scalable System is a system that can grow to meet the internal or external demands placed on it without requiring additional human inputs.
Much like a digital product can be reproduced for virtually zero additional variable costs, an Infinitely Scalable System can be scaled for virtually zero extra human effort.
There are a couple of reasons why a Zero-Touch Operation is not necessarily an Infinitely Scalable System, however. Since a Zero-Touch Operation is technically any two tasks strung together without human touch, this may not be a meaningful system by itself. A Zero-Touch Operation could also not be scalable for some reason. However, an Infinitely Scalable System requires Zero-Touch Operations. Any human touch, even 1, means that as the system scales so does the need for human input. Although for many systems this may never become a problem, they are not technically infinitely scalable.
What Are The Metrics For Moving To Zero-Touch Operations?
There are 4 main metrics to utilize when moving toward Zero-Touch Operations:
- Human Touch Tally
- Total Human Tally
- Human Time Tally
- Total Time Tally
The Human Touch Tally is the total count of how many times a human touches a given process run once, from beginning to end. This is a count for every task in a given process. It does not matter who does the touches, how long the touches are for, or how complex the touches are. This requires a well-defined set of tasks for whichever process being measured. If a human has a single step in a given process and the human has 12 tasks, this counts as 12 touches. Likewise, if a given process has 2 human steps and each of those steps has 6 tasks, the Human Touch Tally would still equal 12.
The Human Touch Tally is an important metric because it lets you see how close you are to Zero-Touch Operations.
The Total Human Tally counts how many individuals are involved in a given process run once, from beginning to end. If we use the last example of 2 human steps with 6 tasks each, if the same person did both of those human steps, then the Total Human Tally is 1. If the 2 human steps were 2 different people, then the Total Human Tally is 2.
The Total Human Tally is an important metric because each time you introduce a new individual to a process you introduce extra friction. That additional person is more likely to need to process redundant information that the original person already knew. It also means it is more likely to require timing and coordination. A lower Total Human Tally will usually result in a lowering of the two types of time tallies, as well as an increase in quality within the process.
The Human Time Tally is the average aggregate amount of time a human must spend in a given process run once, from beginning to end. It does not matter how many times a human touches during the process, who does the touches, or how complex the touches are. This requires the ability to measure the time from when a human first begins touching the process (not when they could, but when they actually begin) and ends when they complete that particular task. The Human Time Tally is the time humans spend on each of their tasks. If there are 12 tasks in a process that take a minute each, the Human Tally Time is 12 minutes. It does not matter how many people are involved.
The Human Time Tally is an important metric because the lower it is the more leverage your business has while also giving you an idea of how scalable that process is in its current state.
The Total Time Tally is the average aggregate amount of time it takes a process to run once, from beginning to end. This time count inherently includes both human and system time spent.
This is an important metric because even if you have Zero-Touch Operations you may still be held up by some external thing. For example, if your process requires hearing back from a vendor, or the customer, or relies on an outside trigger event, these all could result in delays for your process. It may not be possible to get this to zero, but it does give you insight into your overall level of effectiveness. Measuring this over time will give you insight into the true effects of lowering your other 3 tally metrics and also give you some sense of which areas to tackle next for maximum impact.
How Do You Get Zero-Touch Operations?
If you are a first-mover or early adopter of a unique process, you will likely have to create new processes from the ground up utilizing Goal-Driven Architecture. A truly Autonomous Business Module could run in parallel to your current processes, however. This would allow you to maintain your current processes and test out something new.
To update unique processes, there is a 4-step process to bring down all of your tally times and see if Zero-Touch Operations are feasible:
- Step 1: Start with the minimum viable end-state
- What is the end result you want? Define it at a granular, objective, measurable level.
- How simple and minimal can you make this end-state and still achieve the end result you’re after? For instance, if you are looking at onboarding, what is the least you could truly do to not impact the client in a negative way and get things done as soon as possible?
- Define this as best you can. You want to keep only what is deemed a must-have for this end state.
- Step 2: Simplify your way backwards
- To get the mandatory end state, what is the next chunk of mandatory things you need done right before that?
- Remove anything that does not jive with this.
- Reconsider every person, form, and system. What is literally the most simple state of every must-have item that will get you your minimal viable end-state?
- If you don’t come back later to re-add a process 10% or more of the time, you haven’t tried cutting deeply enough
- Do not worry about edge cases initially. A good starting point is to determine if it is required 80%+ of the time or not, and try eliminating it if it is not needed that often.
- Step 3: Minimize tallies
- Utilize Human Touch Tallies, Total Human Tallies, Human Time Tallies, and Total Time Tallies and aim to minimize them all as you continue to refine things.
- This will require looking at each human step in the process, objectively defining the tasks, and then trying to see if it can be programmatically handled instead.
- Keep in mind that friction increases if it touches people in other roles, and increases more with other departments. This is especially the case when it comes to going outside of your organization. Minimize needing customer feedback and minimize communication needed with any outside vendors, unless absolutely necessary. You can always add it back later if it causes a problem.
- Step 4: Accelerate
- Now, figure out how to go faster.
- Are there any “phase gates” where a chunk of things can be done but you cannot move forward until that whole chunk is done? If so, what can be done in parallel?
- When going faster, where do problems pop up? If they are not unique problems, then you can figure out how to prevent or resolve them.
