WK 1 – 01 DISCUSSION “Business Benefits”

[Mike Hincks]

Leveraging the list provided on page 9 of Lean For Dummies, what are some benefits your department or group at MasterControl could achieve from pursuing a Lean journey?

Please share your thoughts on this topic by responding to this discussion posting. To do so, just select this note and click on the Reply button, then after typing your response, click Send.

Thanks!

[Ryan]

The more we streamline our processes the less effort it will take to support our customers. Also, if we develop in-house trainings for as many things as we can we will reduce the cost of hiring a trainer or sending people off site for training. As we do our job to report bugs to development it should lead to less and less bugs over time.

[David Healey]

We could achieve the notion of under promising and over delivering.  We could potentially cut all the "dead-weight" from our procedures making us faster and more efficient in our abilities to effectively troubleshoot and resolve the customer's issues.  This will not only turn our customers into "raving fans" but will also increase our amount of effective referrals, thus helping MasterControl to grow through us specifically as TSE's.

[estolberg]

We could streamline our processes, thus allowing us to provide more with less. Specifically, we can provide higher-quality support for our customers using less resources (human effort and time) by utilizing Lean tools now and in the future.

[Mike Hincks]

You make a good point about streamlining. I think it's exciting that it's up to us to develop a scalable support model. How are we going to support 1000 global customers, 2000 or 5000 global customers.  I'm glad we have tools like Lean or I would not know where to start. 

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[Mike Hincks]

Higher quality support is a good goal. There are a ton of specifics buried in there and Lean is going to help us bring them to the surface. 

On Aug 26, 2012, at 3:47 PM, "estolberg" <esto...@mastercontrol.com> wrote:

We could streamline our processes, thus allowing us to provide more with less. Specifically, we can provide higher-quality support for our customers using less resources (human effort and time) by utilizing Lean tools now and in the future.

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[Mike Hincks]

Some good points David.  I've never been able to find the balance between under promising and over delivering, perhaps this is something Lean can help us with.  Also on the flip side of that, if you could predict your exact production capacity, would it be better to offer that to customers and deliver that to customers?  Dead-weight in Lean is called non-value added activities and we hope to eliminate most of them, some of them are necessary.  Life Sciences is a very word of mouth type of industry due to the web of suppliers and other relationships that each of our customers must have, all of which need document control.  For this reason, I feel that we can have as great an impact on company growth as the sales department.  If our customers get to the point where they would not dare switch to another QMS software because of their interactions with us.  

[bmiller]

Lean can help tech support become more proficient at handling cases due to more effective knowledge flow and support.  This will allow us to have the right answers or right directions moments after understanding the issues customers are having when it comes to known issues.

[David Healey]

I completely agree.  I think the point of perfect balance is nearly unreachable due to the difficulty of completely defining either.  However, while it is one of those things that you may not be able to define exactly what it means, you can still let it inspire you and help you accomplish some very positive achievements along the road to outstanding TS. How impressive would it be to have the ability to predict our exact production capacity and to be able to back it up with our ability to deliver?  We would likely have customers seeking us out vs. waiting on us to call them.  If our TS team could become the 'talk of the QMS industry' we would establish as great an impact if not even greater than the sales force on the 'new customer' pool of MasterControl. Under promising and over delivering is what it's all about.

[Jared Allen]

The closer we get to providing immediate solutions to our customers, the happier they will be with the level of support they are getting from us.  Lean processes can help us approach that goal.

[adecaria]

Ultimately it comes down to a higher return on investment from tech support.  The more efficient we become the more tech support becomes an attractive place to put capital.  This will mean better labs, more opportunities for growth, and ultimately better pay.  By becoming "lean" we can ensure our department gets the capital and attention it needs.

[ajones]

With the practice of lean we will be able to pin point the weaker areas of support and improve on them, this overall will contribute to providing a better service for the customer and therefore making the product better.  

[emcginty]

I believe that through continuous training on all aspects of our product, we will find that the service delivery will naturally improve. This will expand our knowledge and really show us how much we can develop over time and then pass that to our customers. 

On Friday, August 17, 2012 4:36:25 PM UTC-6, Mike Hincks wrote:

[Chanse]

I think that by utilizing open forums, such as this, and more open communication among TS, we can streamline our efforts and help our customers faster.  More in-house, in-person training on all aspects of our products will also help us deliver solutions to our customers quicker avoiding the need to get several people involved with solving the issues the customers experience.

On Friday, August 17, 2012 4:36:25 PM UTC-6, Mike Hincks wrote:

[Tyler Nelson]

I think in our department we could use Lean to help reduce the amount of waste that we produce.  Currently our process for installs is clumsy at best.  Paper is still involved and where we have the Mastercontrol process module to leverage we could eliminate quite a bit of waste in terms of time filling out paperwork and paper in general.  

[lgleason]

Pursuing a Lean journey would benefit the install team in several ways. Some key areas of improvement would include the scheduling process, IQ review process, and completion time for appointments. There is identifiable waste in these areas that can be reduced or eliminated through the Lean process. Enforcing the use of a template for obtaining information will reduce the amount of emails shared between the clients, project office and myself to obtain the necessary information for scheduling. Identifying processes to improve the IQ execution and educating our clients on those processes will reduce the amount of correspondence between me and the client to resolve issues. Isolating the key topics to discuss during our hardware/software reviews will reduce surprises during installations/upgrades and eliminate the need for extended appointments or rescheduling.  

[csimpson]

We could benefit greatly from streamlining our reference materials and sources of knowledge. For example: if we were able to somehow connect SF, KB, BugZilla, and roll it into a “One-Stop-Shop”, it would greatly decrease the time it took to research/find a resolution to an issue.

[jlongsjo]

Our team could benefit by having to do less work to get our job done. This could be achieved through streamlining and defining our processes as wells as automating tasks when possible.

On Friday, August 17, 2012 4:36:25 PM UTC-6, Mike Hincks wrote: