5 reasons to give your customers and teams the visibility they need
When identifying areas to improve in your business, it can be easy to look at specific business functions or workflows in isolation. By lifting that up a level to more broadly, organisational visibility, a new world of benefits can be realised. My colleague, Mat Unwin and I were discussing the benefits of organisational transparency recently, and these were some of our thoughts…
Today your customers, suppliers, staff and partners are making quicker decisions based on information that just 2 years ago, they may not have had access to. Decisions based on trust, authority and transparency. Do you use Google to find great restaurants in a new area? Rankings driven by customers who have experienced those restaurants. Photos support the rankings and now labelling those dishes based on the menu.
How can you apply this to your organisation though and why should you provide visibility?
1. Productivity Improvements
This may sound obvious from the accountability-to-productivity standpoint for individuals and organisational teams, the cross-team productivity gains can be even greater in an agile environment. Early awareness of one teams delays to (or being ahead of) the standard operating rhythm in a project where multiple teams are working towards a common goal, allows the impacted teams to quickly pivot and re-focus in order to make the best of the new delivery date.
Visibility that another operational team is over (or under) performing will allow for the analysis and learning activities to start ASAP, before the opportunity to do so has passed. Even visibility into the same documents from a collaboration standpoint. The removal of email as the defacto method for communication and sharing material, that is fraught with issues.
With the right tools, a collaborative work management platform can provide visibility into a process, a project, a workflow and much more.
2. Loyalty
Perhaps often overlooked when your business leaders are focused on the bottom line or their customer, is the team running the engine room. Simply asking your team members if they would rather work for an organisation that truly fosters a transparent culture, celebrates successes and doesn’t hide their failures or an organisation that holds their cards close to their chest at all times and has a tailored outbound message should show this.
Coming back to the opening paragraph, the vast majority of customers say they would not only prefer to buy from an organisation that delivers true transparency but would pay more to do so, as found in the Transparency ROI Study where, almost three in four consumers (73%) say they would be willing to pay more for a product that offers complete transparency in all attributes. That’s loyalty!
3. Innovation
Idea generation. Imagine your customers could understand the way a process is handled within your organisation that could lead to them solving it for you? Perhaps your customer could provide more data up front that would shorten the process. Even just providing data in a specific format that reduces rework, questioning and time would deliver benefits to your organisation.
Real example #1 – Recently the Dusk team worked with an organisation that fostered a level of transparency between their suppliers and their own staff. This led to the identification of a potential improvement that would lead to cost benefits and process improvements on both sides of the relationship.
Consider the insights that your customers, peers and employees might have for you, and the unknown cost that a lack of transparency might be having to your organisation?
4. Workflow Optimisation
You don’t need to look far from the front door of your organisation to identify workflow inefficiencies. Standing around the water filter or going out for coffee yields many “if only’s” related to workflows.
Optimisation can be explored across a couple of areas:
a) Visibility, as defined in point number 1, Productivity Improvements
b) Can a process be automated that not only delivers measured improvements to your teams by minimizing rework and reducing errors but improves your customer experience and ultimately your bottom line. A good example is provided in the 5th reason below.
5. Improved Communication
How many times have you been cc’d or bcc’d on emails that are of little to no value, just to provide visibility? Filling up your inbox, constant notifications on your phone and all taking up precious time to open or discard.
Using a collaborative work management platform, access is readily available to the work your teams are performing and can be configured so you receive the information you need to receive.
Real example #2 – Dusk successfully delivered a workflow automation project for a customer recently where all quotations above a certain value had to pass by the CEO for approval. This was an internally defined figure but relied on the CEO reports remembering this and emailing them to the CEO, instead of straight to the customer.
The Dusk team defined the workflow and implemented the rules for our customer. Any quote generated from our customer’s finance system is automatically work flowed to the CEO for work above the figure and to the customer if it is below. Furthermore, the team delivered the functionality to loop the quotation back, by way of rejecting it internally for revision before resubmitting.
Other improved communication examples include reduction in phone calls chasing updates and email reductions. Most of all is optimizing the communication flow so that those that need to know, do so and those that don’t can access the information as they wish to. Traffic light statuses provide an easy to see visual and roadblocks are quickly removed.
Takeaway Tip
So how do you get started on the path to transparency? Speak to the team at Dusk about your organisational challenges, and how the IOP – our collaborative work management SaaS solution – can help optimise your business. The Dusk Mobile Intelligent Operations Platform is an industry leading collaborative work management platform. It connects your staff on any device, any time and in any location. Integrate your essential systems and products quickly and easily for real time collaboration amongst your teams. Automating work functions and delivering a connected experience has never been easier and achieving productivity improvements can start tomorrow.
If you’d like to find out more on visibility, consistent messaging, workflows, automation with project management and easy integration for your teams or business, get in touch today with our friendly team.
Oh and if you have any questions, our community is here to help – in the Support & Updates area!
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