Why I'm dropping Google Drive for Dropbox

I've migrated the whole company over to Google Drive and have been using it for 12 months. Everything seemed OK at first and we started using Docs and Sheets in place of Office.

Here are some of the issues that have cropped up that are now insurmountable:

Google Drive is slow

Not just slow, but sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow.... this could be to do with being based in Australia, I don't know, but I do know that it can take hours for large file to upload. And forget about Photoshop or Illustrator files, they can take days. 

Google Drive is Unreliable - especially on a Mac

GDrive crashes. Often. And doesn't tell you. We run a mixed environment of Windows and Mac - on Windows it seems to be pretty good, but on a Mac not so. GDrive also has a weird habit of incorrectly showing folders as not shared but they are - internally this is just annoying, but externally it could be damaging. 

Maximum 2Mb images in Docs and Sheets

We design products, these need lots of images and they are regularly more than 2Mb in size. Limiting the size of the images that we can import into Docs and Sheets (and Slides) is an insurmountable issue for the Product Design team. 

Docs and Sheets are Primitive

I've tried, I really have... but Docs and Sheets are just not nice to use - Sheets misses some core functions that I know and love (e.g. Goal Seek). Formatting is just plain and trying to get something looking nice is tedious and difficult. Table of contents can't have page numbers. 

Internet Connectivity is Required

Perhaps not such an issue when (if) the NBN rolls out in our area, but at the moment, having eight people on a network and using Docs and especially Sheets can be a problem - Sheets and Docs themselves aren't, but if someone's uploading a huge Photoshop file it can cause reload issues with Docs and Sheets. In addition, using Sheets for large spreadsheets is slow - it can take up to 30 seconds to load each worksheet, which whilst that's not a lot in the grand scheme of things is just plain annoying. 

Still there are things that I'll miss - sharing, instant comments, full integration with my Android phone. It's a big job to change again and I'm not looking forward to it, but Google Drive, Docs and Sheets are not business ready yet. Maybe one day, but not now. 

Systems and Connections

OK, so we've been running with a bunch of cloud based systems for years now and I've been working with them full time for over 12 months. Generally, it's all hanging together well. Our system landscape looks something like this:

Gmail 

Gmail is the core email platform.

MailChimp 

Cloud based direct electronic marketing.
www.mailchimp.com

Neto 

Core system, used for managing the website, customers, sales, shipping and payments.
www.neto.com.au

Saasu 

Core system, accounting platform. Also used for creating Purchase Orders and managing stock/inventory values.
www.saasu.com

Dropbox

File storage and management. Also used for sharing documents.
www.dropbox.com

Process Frameworks

Rough Value Creation Hierarchy

So, APQC seem to offer some excellent basic structured. The overall cross-industry framework is fine - however they have recently released a Retail Process Classification Framework (PCF) as well as the existing Consumer Products PCF.

For us, we have two separate businesses, each needing it's own framework. To that end, I'm going to use both the Retail PCF and the Consumer Products PCF and a mix of the two. It could be tricky as it's not completely clear as to where the lines are drawn, but I'm going to try to use the Value Creation Hierarchy that Rummler et al. refer to.

Which goes something like this:-

This leaves me thinking about how this maps to the levels of the PCF. The Rummler VCH has 5+ levels:
1. Supersystem
2. Value Creation System
3. Processing Sub-Systems
4. Process
5+. Sub-Process/Task/Sub-Task

Compare with the APQC PCF:
1. Category
2. Process Group
3. Process
4. Activity
5. Task

This doesn't really align - especially at the top most level... needs thought...

Cheers
BC

Starting out

Having worked in large companies for a little while, I've become more and more involved in the development of a small business. In starting and growing a new business, the application of the core skills and concepts of process architecture that I've applied to large organisations over the years should be applicable to this smaller one. In fact, one of the main challenges and hurdles of implementing a process driven approach might not be there - that of senior management buy-in. It helps to be 50% of the senior management...

So, this blog will be a place to capture thoughts and approaches to implementing a value-driven process architecture in a small business.

This will be drawing specifically on the work of Geary Rummler and Alan Brache in their 1995 book Improving Performance: How to manage the White space in the Organization Chart. I hope to also draw on White Space: Revisited, (re)Discovering Value, and Value-Driven Business Process Management  amongst others. These will be added to and noted on the References page.