The Best Process Improvement Often Starts With One Question: Why Are We Still Doing This?

I have always been interested in technology and automation. If something can be done faster, more accurately and with less manual effort, I naturally start thinking about how to make it happen.

But over the years, I have realised something.

Not everything that can be automated should be automated.

I like automation. But automating a bad process only makes the bad process run faster.

Let me explain what I mean.

Imagine a process where someone downloads a report from SAP, copies the data into Excel, makes a few adjustments, prepares another report and sends it to someone else. That person reviews it, adds a few comments and forwards it to another person for approval.

Now, suppose we automate this entire sequence.

We have saved time. Reduced manual effort. Probably eliminated a few errors too.
Sounds like a successful automation project, doesn't it?

But what if nobody actually needs that second report? What if the information is already available in the system? What if one of those approvals was introduced years ago for a reason that no longer exists?

We may have successfully automated a process that should have been simplified in the first place.

And this is where I believe process improvement and automation need to be looked at differently.

Before asking how to automate something, we should ask why we are doing it at all.

Working across Finance and Operations has given me opportunities to look at business processes from different perspectives.

In Finance, we are naturally concerned about accuracy, controls, compliance and reporting. In Operations, the focus is often on speed, execution, productivity and getting things done.

Both perspectives are important.

A process that looks perfectly reasonable from a control perspective may create unnecessary work for the people executing it. On the other hand, removing a step simply because it takes time may compromise an important control.

The challenge is to understand why each step exists and whether it continues to serve a useful purpose.

And technology comes into the picture only after that.

I am certainly not against automation. Quite the opposite. I enjoy exploring how technology can solve everyday business problems. Whether it is SAP, Excel, a simple script or one of the newer AI tools, I find it interesting to see how much repetitive work can be eliminated.

But I would rather eliminate an unnecessary activity altogether than build an impressive automation around it.

Sometimes the solution is a new system.

Sometimes it is a small change in the existing system.

Sometimes it is simply removing an Excel file that nobody really needs anymore.

And sometimes, the best solution does not involve technology at all.

For me, this is an important part of business transformation.

It is not just about implementing new technology or making existing activities faster.

It is about questioning how things are done, understanding why they are done that way and finding a better way of doing them.

Automation can then make that better process even better.

I Am a Chartered Accountant. But I Have Always Thought Like a Technologist.

I qualified as a Chartered Accountant more than two decades ago, and naturally most of my professional career has been associated with finance.

Accounting. Reporting. Controls. Commercial finance. Supply chain. Budgeting. Profitability. Business partnering.

But somewhere along the way, I realised that I have never looked at myself purely as a finance person.

Mention “IT” to a Chartered Accountant and Income Tax may naturally come to mind.

For me, IT has almost always meant Information Technology.

Technology has fascinated me for as long as I can remember, not necessarily because I wanted to become a programmer, but because I have always been interested in understanding how things work and, more importantly, why they sometimes don't.

When something doesn't work the way I expect, my instinct is rarely to simply accept the limitation.

I want to understand it.

Why does the software behave this way?

Can the process be changed?

Is there another tool?

Can something be automated?

Is there a workaround?

And once I find the answer, I usually feel compelled to share it with somebody else.

That instinct probably explains why my personal website, parkhi.net, has had a section called Workarounds for years.

Technology was never really separate from my finance career

Looking back, the pattern is clearer than it seemed at the time.

Early in my career I became involved in migrating financial data from Tally to SAP during a post-merger integration.

At another point, although it had little to do with my formal finance responsibilities, I registered the organisation's domain and helped implement its official email system, eventually involving more than 250 email IDs. I even administered the domain, largely because I found the technology interesting.

Later came SAP certification, system implementations, process redesign, reporting architecture, automation, finance controls, procure-to-pay processes and ERP migrations.

None of this changed my professional qualification.

I remained a Chartered Accountant.

But technology increasingly became the way I approached business problems.

Technology is most valuable when it solves a real problem

Perhaps this is why I have never been particularly interested in technology merely because something is new.

A new application, an AI model or an ERP system is interesting.

But the more important questions for me are:

What problem does it solve?

Does it genuinely make the process better?

What happens when the real-world process doesn't fit the system?

Can we simplify the process before automating it?

Are we creating technology for users, or forcing users to work for the technology?

These questions become especially important in finance.

Finance sits at the intersection of almost every business process, procurement, sales, supply chain, taxation, inventory, cash flows, controls and management decision-making.

As organisations become more digital, finance professionals therefore need to understand considerably more than accounting.

They need to understand systems.

They need to understand data.

They need to understand processes.

And increasingly, they need to understand automation and artificial intelligence.

The most interesting problems sit between functions

Some of the most difficult organisational problems don't belong neatly to Finance, IT or Operations.

They sit somewhere in between.

Finance understands what needs to be controlled.

Operations understands what happens on the ground.

Technology understands what the system can do.

Transformation happens when somebody can connect all three.

That intersection increasingly fascinates me.

After more than two decades in finance, retail and supply-chain environments, I have started thinking more deliberately about something that has probably been present throughout my career:

I enjoy solving business problems through technology.

I enjoy investigating.

I enjoy questioning the existing process.

I enjoy finding better ways of doing things.

And I enjoy explaining what I have learnt so somebody else can benefit from it.

Perhaps that is why the word “workaround” has always appealed to me.

A workaround begins with a simple belief:

There must be another way.

And very often, there is.