Looking at life through a process-focused lens

When you live and breathe process, you start to look at daily interactions as a step in a process.I was at Newark airport on Friday (that was my first mistake) and my interactions with the airline seem to be a disguised as a scream for process help.There’s no need to call out the airline by name because experiences with all airlines these days tend to be the same:

• Overworked, understaffed, underinformed employees
• Archaic systems or a mix of legacy and brand new systems that don’t talk to each other

It seems to me an opportunity for BPMS.....if for nothing else than the effective dissemination of information to employees and passengers. Most of my travel angst is not stemmed from the delays. its from the lack of information. Its the airline agent telling me the flight is on time when we’re 10 minutes from scheduled departure and the engine of my plane is half taken apart. We both know the plane isn’t leaving on time, but I can’t take alternative action until the airline makes it officially delayed or cancelled.

BPMS can’t do anything about the weather nor can it do anything about a plane’s maintenance issue. What it can do, however, is streamline information to put everyone in the best position to quickly resolve an issue. Since I am well versed in BPMS capabilities, I tend to ask myself questions like:

1. Why isn’t information updated instantly the moment it changes (on the board, at the ticketing counter, at the gate, at the call center)?
2. Why can’t I be updated the second something changes to my phone or my email instead of being forced to wait in line or on hold for the most current information?
3. Why doesn’t information on delays automatically initiate an airline "load leveling" process that gets more employees to the airport ASAP?
4. Why can’t cancellations automatically kick off a process that puts every traveler in a hotel, on a rebooked flight and/or provided with a meal voucher as a default.....instead of making everyone stand in line and begin at square one. People could update their airline profiles with a "should I get stuck overnight due to non-weather related cancellation, a) putting me ina hotel automatically is fine, b) booking me a car rental to drive home is fine, c) do nothing and wait for my instruction.
5. Why can’t "crisis management" processes kick off that automatically provide airline agents at the airport with the authority they need to address the situation.

As with all things in life, it wouldn’t be this simple......but simply fixing information flow would do wonders, wouldn’t it?