“It’s poorly designed and executed processes that suck up large amounts of money, time, and energy – and ultimately lead to a frustrating employee and customer experience.”- Verne Harnish (MIT professor and founder of Gazelles and Entrepreneurs’ Organization).
The challenge: A small global distribution company experienced growth pains in their operations department—an increase in sales caused customer service representative to be overloaded, resulting in slow rate quotes and declining percent of shipments booked.
Many companies could easily solve the problem by hiring a few more customer reps. But the unique processes of this organization made it difficult for new employees to succeed in a fast paced and complex position. In fact, they often remark that an employee with “only two years here is relatively inexperienced.”
The Solution– How we re-designed the People process:
- Analyze duties: Conduct job analysis by interviewing employees and supervisors
- Process map: Review overall department workflow and document with process map
- 3 jobs into 1: Re-organize three distinct “job descriptions” into cross functional teams with 3-4 members doing the same “job” with complimentary skill sets
- Team Leaders: Identify and train new team leader position – to assign work, cross train, coordinate workflow across 3 teams that service different regions
- Next steps: train team leaders to create formal development plan for each member of team to further improve skills levels and customer support levels
The Result: After one month of implementing this People Plan™ solution—the percent of rate quotes booked rose 40%!
What results could your team reap from a similar People process improvement?
Read Verne Harnish’s full article: Process Vs Function
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
