h a l f b a k e r yI like this idea, only I think it should be run by the government.
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Time/complexity formula for work processes
A price of a good or service is an abstraction, it needs to capture cost of materials and time spent by individuals. It also needs to encompass profit In a very complicated world, we don't use software enough to encode all costs and time used and complexities. Our accounting is snapshots of costs but I think jobs can be studied and encoded in a computer system and used to calculate prices. | |
In computing we use big o notation to work out what the
costs of an algorithm are. For example, if you needed to
deliver 100 parcels to 100 cities, there is a path between
the cities that is efficient and this problem is NP Hard to
calculate as there is so many different permutations of
visiting
each city. This is the travelling salesman problem.
The average company has tens of different computer
systems with each their own features and requirements for
usage. They also require certain skills to use such as office
administration and information processing. Nobody wants
to pay for training for this
What if you had a data format which encoded all these
systems and the relationships between them and modelled
the business processes and interactions between each
system. You could work out or estimate the time cost and
intellectual complexity of the business and you could
therefore do accurate capacity planning and resourcing
levels.
If you've used Business Process Modelling and Notation
you know you can execute encoded business processes
with a computer system.
The human element is not encoded but big data collection
systems could capture data from employee emails, system
usage and track it in a business case tracking system.
Elastic Prices could be calculated and you are guaranteed
profitability. You could calculate that one customer uses
very little resources but another customer uses a lot. You
could charge that person more as they're more costly to
provide services for.
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You need to factor in desirability and demand, and willingness of the customer to pay for the service offered. |
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//You could calculate that one customer uses very little resources but another customer uses a lot. You could charge that person more as they're more costly to provide services for.// |
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All kinds of problems with this. Discrimination charges, difficulty in accurate tracking, the customers feeling screwed over if they get charged more even though it costs more to provide service. And taxis already charge by the mile and some hair-dressers by the difficulty of the do, and massage parlors by the time and expertise required, and airlines by the level of service demanded... |
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All this is true [voice]. I suppose the potential customers who would be put off by this pricing structure will go elsewhere, leaving you with only the subsidised customers, and you will go bust. Unless of course you set the "baseline" price cynically high so that the "discounts" still bring you down to a profitable level. |
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I feel like I am being subtweeted here with both:
//You
could charge that person more as they're more costly to
provide services for//
and
//Unless of course you
set
the "baseline" price cynically high so that the "discounts"
still
bring you down to a profitable level// |
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Which is another way of saying that the simplest approach
to charging by complexity is to charge by time spent on the
work, which is what professional services firms have been
doing for so long as there have been professional services
firms. |
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Anyway, I don't really understand the idea? Modelling job
costs in a more detailed way to allow for more accurate
quoting? I think that the biggest variable for the cost of
providing prof'l services is "What is the client like?", really,
and I am not sure how you can encode that, unless the
model is complicated enough to account for personality
types (individually and collectively). |
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That will be six guineas. |
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In computer science we have big O notation to
estimate the complexity of an algorithm. |
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I want an estimation of work done that is fairly
objective similar to my calories based salary on this
website. |
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Some jobs are so tedious and costly from a time
perspective and others are really straightforward and
just need someone to work through them to get the
work done. |
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Hard problems are similar to scales where you need
to keep everything balanced to solve the problem
with your resources available. SAP software has
planning and optimization components but I think the
idea could be generalized. Business process
modelling is a baked thing that exists but I don't think
there are mathematical formulas for work complexity
or even a procedure for encoding business processes
for complexity and work analysis. |
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Any analysis of the work day has to incorporate the
unavoidable 30 minutes waiting for computers to do
things from switch on and log in and to checking
emails |
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//I suppose the potential customers who would be put off by this pricing structure will go elsewhere, leaving you with only the subsidised customers// |
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IMO it's not the price but a high price combined with having to rub elbows with the have nots. |
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//formulas for work complexity // |
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But as you pointed out tedium is a huge part of many unpleasant tasks. It's not just the complexity, but tasks being stretched out over longer periods of time requiring continuous focus on something unpleasant. |
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There must be an approach that hides the
unpleasantness of boring work and replaces it with
something enjoyable. |
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The doing one thing enjoyable but actually driving
something boring. |
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This seems to reward people for finding the hardest
and most pointless way to do anything. |
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Being subtweeted again I see, thanks Rayford. |
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There is a 1 million dollar prize to prove that P=NP in the travelling salesman problem. |
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The "largest solved problem of 24,978 cities in 2004" |
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Surely the answer lies in having parallel processes follow each combination simultaneously, but stopping as soon as the shortest route finishes? |
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