Corporate evolution and adaptation
Kanban, or continuous improvement, is a famous Japanese philosophy and whether through micro-fixing or large scale system overhauls, it’s a worthwhile philosophy to consider. As the world changes and new technologies are developed, so does the way we work. While remote working is on the rise, a tough economy is actually heightening the need to work collaboratively towards one goal. At Centrica we know that adapting and making improvements is important. Now more than ever, it has become essential in ensuring efficiency, and both customer and employee satisfaction.
Uniting internal forces
Working for a top 30 FTSE 100 company, you need to be able to constantly adapt to new challenges. One of those challenges will always be improving way things are run. Take a recent example, it was necessary to implement a bigger and better Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system that would improve customer experience, reduce operational costs and guarantee employee satisfaction. In addition to the system overhaul, we faced an additional obstacle: managing a team of 12 individuals, from various business divisions based throughout the UK, towards one goal. The primary concern wasn’t the team’s ability, but rather how to effectively bring together all 12 people from different offices and disciplines, while finding a way for getting them to collaborate, share information and record project updates easily and quickly.
One every-day software solution for all
As any manager who has implemented a major project will know, coordinating a group of people who have different working styles, tools and methods that suit them can be challenging. Finding a method that the entire team could use was vital. Having used Mindjet’s software before, it was clear that it was up to the challenge and a viable option for a geographically dispersed team.
Using Mindjet’s visual interface made it easy for the team to integrate the software into their busy working lives. It worked well as a tool to coordinate and collate the different strands of information produced by the team. The nature of the project meant that the information and collateral wasn’t in one format, whether Microsoft documents, spread sheets, web links, or diary notes we were using them all, but this solution made it easy to manage and view all the files in one central place.
Information on a need-to-know basis
The scale and importance of the project for the entire company often meant that members outside the project team required quick updates on the project’s status. Ordinarily this would be a timely process and would involve team members dedicating time to creating and sharing these updates. But for us this wasn’t a problem at all; the fact that all parties had access to Mindjet and could incorporate updates as the project progressed meant that it was easy to provide an overview of the project whenever it was required.
Completion
As is true of all major projects, timing is everything. There’s no doubt from the team involved that Mindjet’s software was key in delivering the new project on time and within budget. With the team travelling from across the UK, we were able to avoid costly admin time, saving team members between one day and one week’s worth of time every month. Management were so delighted with the results of the project, that the software is being considered for other projects planned for the future.