In the Digital Age, businesses run on technology, especially information technology (IT), we’re always looking to find areas for improvement and increased efficiency. How do we find them? One way – the way IT has done it historically – is to wait for a complaint or request from someone connected with the line of business involved. This approach frequently winds up being hit-or-miss and line-of-business specific, with various departments buying similar tools. This approach sometimes breeds improvement ‘projects’ that duplicate effort and cost, consume time and resources, and may or may not produce the desired results.
In Japan the efficient way would be to go directly to those involved in the work called the Gemba Walk. It is aimed specifically at finding waste. While eliminating waste and finding efficiencies is important, improvement means adding positive elements as well as eliminating negative ones. In the realm of technology, this may mean upgrading, replacing, or finding new uses for the technologies we already own.
While an actual Gemba Walk will work when managers are physically located in the same place as workers and the work is literally visible, in the age of remote work and distributed teams, that is less and less possible. What is needed is a digital way to see what is affecting the work, slowing it, and creating inefficiencies.
Gathering, analyzing, sharing, and acting on data collected directly from the end-users of your company’s technology tools can drive improvement that really makes a difference in several ways:
Throughout the course of our work, we’ve found that there are four key elements included in this approach to improvement:
Now you’ll have the basis for a continuous improvement cycle – which is called the ITXM (IT eXperience Management) Framwork – that is data-driven and is founded upon the experiences of end-users who are, after all, your employees.
Improvements can and should be done iteratively, sharing the data from each step before taking the next. One of the most frequently used words in business right now is agility, the ability to adjust and respond quickly to changes.
At CSG Technologies we use experience data to drive improvement which can accelerate positive change, reduce unnecessary effort and expense, and assist in making employees feel heard and valued. There’s another effect as well: as improvements happen and take effect, IT is also demonstrating its value to the organization as a whole, something many CIOs struggle to accomplish.
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