PROJECTS
Ease of Doing Business
Overview
Within a large manufacturer the multiple sales channels consistently complained. The company had a reputation of being difficult to work with compared to its competitors. This included the business policies, service responsiveness, and technology reliability.
Outcome
We streamlined and digitized the service request management process, allowing the company to measure its response times and accuracy. The organization was able to reduce the customer team size by more than 20% based on understanding demand and capacity, while reducing the response times and improving the accuracy of the answers to the sales channels.
SAP Project Turnaround
Overview
Our client's SAP implementation, customer portal, and business intelligence program was millions of dollars over budget and facing additional delays, change requests, and financial write-offs.
Outcome
Working with a variety of stakeholders, including the Board of Directors, our team chartered a corrective path to align the business goals, risk appetite, and project objectives. We subsequently managed all aspects of the program according to the revised scope, timeline, and benefit realization
Sales Channel Voice of Customer
Overview
The company thought they understood why they were losing shelf space and revenue. The company believed they had a technology problem.
Outcome
We conducted an external voice of the customer survey asking the company’s customers for candid unbiased feedback. Through the surveys, site visits, secret shopping, and formal interviews, we showed the company that they had issues with the product offering, pricing, and data integrity. The company created and sustained a cross-functional program to solve the root causes of losing marking share.
Enterprise Application Footprint
Overview
The company used a variety of applications across and within business units. After selecting SAP as its primary Enterprise Resource Planning tool, the company needed to develop a roadmap for how to deploy supporting technologies.
Outcome
After initially deploying SAP in a 3rd party hosted environment, we recommended moving the solution on-premise saving over 50% of infrastructure and support costs. By aligning the business strategy and priorities with enabling cloud-based software, we guided the selection and implementation of the following software as a service (SaaS) solutions:
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budgeting & forecasting (Host Analytics)
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business intelligence (Qlik)
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customer portal (Qlik)
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procurement (Coupa and Concur)
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human resources & payroll (Workday)
In addition, we designed and implemented all the interfaces with SAP to ensure efficient business processes with appropriate workflow enabled transaction approval controls.
Mind the Gap
Overview
A recent reorganization of the IT function occurred, including a new 7 stage waterfall IT project methodology. The business team did not understand the new rules of engagement with IT. The IT organization did not understand the strategic direction of the business and its priorities.
Outcome
We worked with the business to understand the prerequisites prior to engaging in the IT project methodology. We initiated a series of leadership meetings which included the CIO and the President of the Business Unit translating the business strategy into IT priorities. In the end, the CIO stated that he wanted to deploy resources to business units that were fully engaged in the success of the solution, including the process and change management activities necessary to realize the benefits of the technology spend.
Teach Runners how to work with Builders
Overview
The company undertook an organizational redesign that impacted the roles and responsibilities of over 100 employees. The company knew they needed to dedicate personnel to a project to ensure the people, process, and technology all worked together to support the new organizational model.
Outcome
The resources chosen were high-performing resources who ran portions of the organization, but lacked large project experience for building solutions. We taught them how to define, enhance, and sustain change. The resources now understand what they can do within their teams and when they need help beyond their teams' capabilities to identify and run projects.
Application Turnaround
Overview
Our client’s mid-1990s, custom developed, 3-tiered, distributed application sales application experienced multiple issues. The client did not track the service requests associated with the application. Anecdotal information indicated the application was slow and problems were not resolved quickly. On-going investment to sustain and improve the application was negligible.
Outcome
We instituted a simple Microsoft access database to track service requests, and discovered that between 15 and 20% of the service calls involved password resets. Using these facts, the business and IT prioritized building self-service password reset functionality into the application.
We engaged users to capture the time transactions took to process using stop watches and a simple form. With this data, we proved that application performance issues resulted in 5% of sales requests failing to complete causing sales representatives and customer service representatives between 5 and 10 minutes of lost time per transaction. Using this information, the client undertook a series of performance improvements in the application that reduced average transaction processing time by 90% and eliminated the failures completely.
