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Personal Creativity Reflection

Outside Events
Alec Sharp
The University of Maryland Division of Information Technology hosted a senior consultant to discuss
process improvement. Alec Sharp, a founder of Clariteq Systems Consulting Ltd., highly rated
conference speaker, bestselling author, and a consultant with over 35 years of experience spoke for a
few hours for a small group of students and faculty. I was invited to go as an applicant for the QUEST
program, and I was very excited to hear him speak. My father is a consultant, so I have heard him
speak on numerous occasions about his profession, but it was fascinating to hear an accredited
professional speak about consulting from another point of view. Sharp talked about his experience
with several companies and their quest to reengineer their business processes. Sharps main idea was
that many processes are outdated for the fast-paced world we live in today. There were five key points
that were addressed during the course of the presentation.

1. It's essential to have clarity on what a business process really is


2. Existing performance measures are often functionally aligned and work against
business processes
3. Enterprise system implementations must include a business process perspective
4. Success with business processes depends on taking a holistic view in which six
enablers are considered
5. Business processes can't be great at everything a single strategic differentiator
must be chosen9
Sharp used real world examples that were familiar to us, for example, the process of college
admissions. Everyone in the room had gone through the process and knew how frustrating college
admissions can be. Sharp also stressed that the experience on the other end, for the schools, was almost
as frustrating as it was to apply as a student. Each individual department had optimized their

9

Graphic obtained from the PowerPoint presentation by Alec Sharp


Outside Events 49

Personal Creativity Reflection



processes, but they didnt flow together cohesively. Clariteq consulting was hired to help reengineer
the admissions process for a college. Each individual yellow process in the chart is a category of
individual task that the department must go through. The yellow processes were grouped together by
department, and when Clariteq came in, they were able to meet their final goal, admit and onboard a
student, quickly and efficiently.

Overall Sharp left us with one important point from his presentation: it is important to take a step back
and look at the main goal of what you are trying to accomplish. If all of the different pieces that make a
project or a company cannot fit together to accomplish that single, unified goal, the process needs to be
reengineered. None of the department should get in each others way or impede the race to accomplish
the end goal. This is applicable in my own life because I often get caught up with individual projects or
classes, but it is important to see my end goal: graduate with a bachelors degree in neurobiology and
physiology, and work towards getting into medical school.

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