SCAMPER – how to generate practical improvements to services and processes

It is difficult to come up with new ideas and new ways of doing things, even more so if you have been involved in a particular service or process for a while. Sometimes it’s even difficult to identify that a process even needs improving, especially if it’s delivering its intended goals.

However in the words of Thomas Edison “there is a better way, so find it”. Every single process can be improved in your organisation, leading to better quality, faster service and lower cost delivery. The challenge is to generate enough ideas to find the ones that will lead to the outcomes that you need in a cost effective way.

This article is about a tool that I have used to achieve demonstrable improvements and has been used in the private, not-for-profit and public sectors to great effect.

SCAMPER is a framework designed to help come up with fresh ideas for a process.

It’s a simple process that is based on the idea of taking an existing service or process and subjecting it to 7 areas of questioning – the results can often generate simple, quick and easy to implement solutions that can have an immediate impact on a process.

SCAMPER is a set of “thought sparkers” by looking at a problem through a set of different lenses.

The best way to work is to simply go down the list and ask questions in each of the 7 areas, come up with as many ideas as possible, the aim at this stage is simply to generate ideas not to evaluate them, this comes later.

SCAMPER stands for:

There are lots of famous examples of how this has been used, McDonalds is often the organisation used to describe SCAMPER;

Re-arrange – customers pay for the meal before eating

Combine – takeaway (Drive-thru) with a seated restaurant

Eliminate – the need for cashiers with self-service tills etc.

I recently reviewed a set of business processes for a not-for-profit as part of some voluntary work that I do, I used the SCAMPER technique:

Combine – the existing business process involved between 2 – 3 phone calls to the customer, as a result of Re-arranging (see below) we were able to COMBINE the calls into 1 (better for the customer, better for the organisation).

Re-arrange – as a result of looking at the process and using SCAMPER we identified the opportunity to RE-ARRANGE the point that we ask for a customer’s bank statement (which is often the point the customer drops out of the process), so we re-arranged it to the start of the customer journey. This will keep more customers in the process and reduce the cycle time = better outcomes for everyone.

Eliminate – as a result of the review of the bank statement process and asking a set of structured questions, we challenged ourselves with “do we really need bank statements, and is there an alternative?”. We are now looking at technology that will allow us to scrape this data from a customers bank account (with their permission) using Open Banking, ELIMINATING the need for a bank statement altogether.

So how can you use SCAMPER?

This technique is incredibly simple, at its most complex it involves a detailed process map, subject matter experts, MI and an analyst.

At its most simple (and often most effective), it involves a pre-determined process (that you want to improve), a set of questions and a group of people who are involved in the process.

The process is simple; agree a process to work on and work through each question, stop and try to generate as many ideas as possible in each area, take care not to evaluate them. The aim is to have lots of ideas, after all the best way to have a good idea, is to have lots of ideas.

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Here are the questions:

Substitute

This area focuses on parts of the service or process that could be substituted or swapped with another. The most famous examples for this are in manufacturing, can you substitute one material for another, but this equally applies to people or processes:

1. 1. Which rules can you substitute or replace? (e.g. we don’t need 90 days of bank statements, we could use 30 days)

1. 1. What can be used instead (e.g. issue an SMS instead of a phone call, a letter instead of a face to face interaction)?

1. 1. What rules/ procedures influence the process how could these be changed?

1. 1. What other places could this be done?

1. 1. Who else could do this?

1. How could the customer do this themselves?

Combine

How can you bring together two separate activities, processes to reduce waste and speed up the process, e.g. can you combine customer contacts?

1. 1. Which process steps can be delivered by the same person at the same time? (for example can the “approvals” process be changed)

1. 1. What would happen if we combined steps 1&2 or 2&3 or 3&4 and so on?

1. 1. How could we make the combined steps of 1&2 or 2&3 or 3&4 work?

1. 1. Where could you combine/ share information between systems/ processes?

1. 1. How can you combine customer activity between different business areas?

1. Which job roles can be combined (to reduce the handover of work)?

Adapt

The solution of how to improve a process is probably already available, therefore the challenge is adapting an existing idea for your process.

How can an existing process or service be adapted to improve outcomes, can you adapt what this process aims to do?

1. 1. What else is similar to our process? (what have they done?)

1. 1. What can we copy from another process/ team or service (e.g. from different industries)

1. How could you adapt or readjust this product to serve another purpose or use?

Modify

This can also be used to cover maximise and minimise. Effectively this relates to looking at how a process could be modified in some way to deliver better outcomes.

1. 1. What element of this product could we strengthen to create something new (e.g. allowing reuse) or preventing subsequent contact (i.e. failure demand)?

1. 1. How can you each step of the process faster (e.g. by 5%)?

1. How can you minimise the number of mistakes (by both customers and colleagues) and subsequent re-work in a process?

Put to another use

This relates to how you could use the existing process to support another activity, or how another activity can be used to support your process.

1. 1. What else could this process be used for (e.g. what else can we communicate at the same time)

1. Who else in the organisation would want to use the outputs from a process?

Eliminate

This area focuses on identifying opportunities to stop doing unnecessary tasks, simplifying processes for staff and colleagues and removing the need for certain information.

1. 1. What would happen if we stopped doing X?

1. 1. For each step and sub-step what is the impact of not doing it?

1. 1. How could technology be used to eliminate the need to do X?

1. 1. Where do customers make mistakes, can that process step we removed?

1. 1. What rules can be eliminated?

1. What features of a service can you remove without altering its function?

Rearrange

This area looks at how process steps can be delivered in a different order to generate different results?

1. 1. What would happen if you did process step X at the start or end of a process?

1. Can you rearrange how information is presented to change behaviour?

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The questions above are not exhaustive, but hopefully a good prompt to generate lots of ideas and areas for further investigation.

A structured SCAMPER session should generate 10’s and 10’s of ideas, the next step is to review the ideas that have been generated and identify the ones that have potential.

An effective SCAMPER session with a introductory session on creativity and continuous improvement can be delivered in just one day, leading to practical outcomes for further action.

Ultimately fully committing to a SCAMPER session to evaluate a specific process, product or service is proven to help you understand that process better, what’s already good about it, where the weaknesses are, what other people are doing in a similar situation alongside a whole set of opportunities to achieve improvement.