CRAPIDO® – a brand new Responsibility Assignment Matrix

Empty interior with wooden floor and grunge wallDo you know how pricing works in your organization? Do you know who is meant to be doing what? Do you know what your involvement in it is? Do you know where to find these things out? In many organizations pricing isn’t clearly defined and, even if it is documented, it’s done badly. Here I’d like to introduce CRAPIDO® as a key component to help you design and build pricing processes to achieve your business goals through more consistent and predictable outcomes. That of course is the polite way of saying it.

What is CRAPIDO®?

CRAPIDO® is a more complete, practical and usable Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM). It can be used to clearly define roles and responsibilities in pricing or indeed any other business process. Without an effective RAM, you’ll find a business is inefficient, ineffective and dysfunctional. And the people in them, under-performing and frustrated. Designing and documenting your business processes is an essential first step on the path to improve the way your business performs.

What is Business Process Documentation?

  1. A Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) – this is who gets to decide what, who does the hard work, who has to be informed, etc. etc. This where CRAPIDO® comes in.
  2. Document the steps in your process in the form of a Business Process Flow-chart.
  3. A list of Job Responsibilities by Job Function – which is an abstraction from (1) & (2). This is so you can sit down with someone and say, this is how and when you are/are not involved in these processes, and let me tell you why.
  4. A Business Process Architecture of all your processes which outlines how they intersect and interrelate. This is so you can show folks how stuff fits together to enable them to envisage a complete picture.
  5. And you also need: a Process for Updating Processes and
  6. A Process for Updating Architectures. You need to be able to show that your processes and architectures are open to improvement, responsive to feedback, and adaptable to organizational changes.

So what exactly is CRAPIDO®?

CRAPIDO® is a more complete, practical and usable Responsibility Assignment Matrix than any other that has been been published. Well, I would say that wouldn’t I? It has a complete suite of roles, it’s easy to use and for some reason, a lot more fun to use than the other RAMs.

So what’s wrong with existing Responsibility Assignment Matrices?

The basic problem with other Responsibility Assignment Matrices (RAM) is that they simply do not have enough roles: most have four or five, CRAPIDO® has seven. Count them. Seven. And while I am a great believer in less is more, this is not one of those cases. RAMs with four or five roles are at least two or three sandwiches short of a picnic.

Having had to use RACI & RAPID® extensively – only because they were the corporate standard – I found them extremely frustrating. From my perspective of defining pricing roles and responsibilities, they are limited and incomplete. CRAPIDO® has been specifically designed to eliminate those frustrations.

RACI misses out on Agree, Perform and Out-of-the-loop. All rather essential elements, particularly in pricing.

RAPID® critically misses out Informed and Out-of-the-loop. Informed is part of RACI, PACSI, RASCI, RASI, RACIQ, RACI-VS, CAIRO, DACI & RATSI but somehow does not make it into RAPID®. This particularly problematic for pricing where communication of pricing decisions – both internally and externally – is crucial.

PACSI lacks a Recommender; RASCI is a bit kumbaya but nevertheless slightly improved version of RACI; RATSI misses out the Agree and Out-of-Loop roles and also doesn’t have a clearly called out role for Recommend. But one thing they all have in common: insufficient roles. RACI-VS comes closest with six roles but is really only suited for very bureaucratic or structured environments. Those extra roles are Verifier and Signatory, neither of which is really needed in business.

CAIRO is strangely the only other RAM which includes Out-of-the-Loop but still manages to be incomplete. Out-of-the-Loop is not just some crap I made up. Out-of-the-Loop is the opposite of In-the-Loop in case you’re unclear. If you’re in THE pricing meeting, you’re “In-the-Loop”. If you’re out of THE pricing meeting, then you’re “Out-of-the-Loop”. Really. Oh, and if your pricing meetings aren’t that vital, maybe you should put some effort in to making them that vital (before your competitors make theirs more vital than yours).

So what does CRAPIDO® look like?

Well, here it is in all its technicolor glory. Who gets to do what by job function, by process.

All told, it’s small, but I hope you’ll agree, perfectly formed.

It’s all agreed, documented and then parked on an internal website. Now no-one can claim that they don’t know what the process is, how to get involved, what their role is. It should be reviewed at least annually with quarterly opportunities to modify if required. All disagreements on who should be doing what will dissipate to a distant memory.

The real skill is making sure you have have an agreed philosophy for the allocation of decision-making responsibilities, the right processes defined (the rows), and, oh yes, and use Out-of-the-Loop to take out groups or individuals who don’t add value and slow the process down. O!

So there you have it: CRAPIDO®

Finally, and most importantly, for some unknown reason, CRAPIDO® makes assigning roles & responsibilities somehow more digestible, less painful and more fun than it would be otherwise. Now, can you say that about any other Responsibility Assignment Matrix!?! I thought not.

CRAPIDO® – well, let’s just say it and get it out there – for the Crap You Do!

You’re welcome.

#CRAPIDO

Copyright © 2018 The Pricing Factory®.
CRAPIDO® is a registered trademark belonging to The Pricing Factory®.
RAPID® is a registered trademark belonging to Bain and Company

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