My  reflection  -  Learning  Launch

1)  Challenge

● At  my  organization  I  work  as  an  Operations  Manager  and  one  of  my  primary  responsibilities  is  to  oversee  day-to-day  service  delivery  levels  of  all  business  units.  We  are  a  service  provider  operating  in  a  global  environment  with  highly  demanding  clients  who  require  high  quality  levels  coupled  with  fast  turnaround  times.  Demand  is  usually  steady  (peak)  through  the  year,  with  lean  periods  coming  by  only  during  the  holiday  season/year-end.  Considering  this  highly  competitive  working  environment,  it  is  paramount  that  all  cogs  in  the  wheel  of  our  organization  work  seamlessly  in  order  to  avoid  any  sort  of  customer  dissatisfaction.  One  of  the  key  means  I  used  to  employ  in  order  to  achieve  this,  is  to  continuously  exploring  opportunities  to  optimize  our  operations  process.

● In  order  to  support  our  regular/important  clients,  one  of  the  service  offerings  we  provided  was  the  flexibility  for  them  to  reserve  capacity  with  us  upfront,  and  we  guaranteed  to  hold  resources  for  their  request.  The  volume,  effort  involved,  and  timeline  were  often  agreed  upon  at  the  reservation  stage  and  our  clients  were  extremely  happy  with  the  overall  flexibility  it  provided  them.  The  process  was  set  up  a  few  years  back,  but  during  the  2nd  half  of  2015  we  were  faced  with  a  couple  of  peculiar  problems  -  i)  clients  were  not  sending  in  their  requests  at  the  agreed  upon  time,  or  ii)  neither  did  not  send  in  the  materials  nor  communicate  it  to  us,  which  meant  that  these  resources  could  not  be  utilized  for  other  requests  in  the  system.  This  was  significantly  impacting  our  ability  to  optimally  manage  resources,  thereby  adversely  affecting  service  delivery  levels.  This  became  an  important  topic  of  discussion  during  the  daily  Operations  Managers  meeting,  and  the  need  to  understand  more  about  the  situation  and  resolving  it  became  a  top  priority  for  me.

2)  Selection

● My  team  and  I  got  together  and  spent  the  first  few  days  to  completely  and  thoroughly  understand  the  problem.  We  engaged  in  numerous  activities  including  data  analysis,  internal  staff  interviews,  identifying  patterns  with  specific  customers,  and  conducting  Voice  of  the  Customer  (VOC)  to  gauge  the  sudden  change  in  customer  behavior.  At  the  end  of  the  exercise,  we  concluded  with  2  primary  root  causes  for  the  problem:  1)  The  low  supply  during  peak  business  hours  was  not  able  to  manage  the  incoming  demand,  hence  more  and  more  customers  opted  to  reserve  capacity  upfront  -  sometimes  days  in  advance,  and  they  simply  forgot  that  they  had  a  standing  reservation  2)  The  software  system  deployed  for  the  capacity  booking  system  was  archaic  and  did  not  provide  customers  with  the  ability  to  intimate  us  regarding  changes  in  volumes  or  timing.

● These  were  clearly  2  large  and  independent  problems  which  had  to  the  addressed  on  a  war  footing.  The  need  to  ensure  continuity  of  business  operations,  at  the  same  time  drastically  improve  service  levels  prompted  me  to  choose   the  'Learning  Launch'  tool.  This  was  a  great  opportunity  to  experiment  and  test  new  ideas  in  the  real  marketplace.

3)  Application

● The  team  decided  to  attack  the  2nd  problem  first  as  it  directly  impacted  customer  experience  and  was  one  of  the  pain  points  we  had  heard  during  our  VoC  interviews.  We  began  with  the  hypothesis  of  defining  an  ideal  reservation  experience  for  our  customers.  We  dug  deeper  into  the  no.  of  communication  they  had  to  make  in  order  to  get  a  reserved  request  completed  and  explored  opportunities  to  minimize  redundant  communication.  We  also  reviewed  scenarios  that  could  be  automated  in  order  to  gain  efficiency.  Enriching  the  customer  experience  and  dependability  of  the  solution  was  high  priority  for  the  team.

● With  the  help  of  our  in-house  software  developers  we  integrated  a  couple  of  quick  and  dirty  (but  small)  upgrades  in  the  system  by  introducing  i)  Phase  1:  actionable  links  in  the  email  to  either  cancel,  reschedule,  or  intimate  delay  in  submissions  ii)  Phase  2:  automated  email  reminders  to  customers  when  they  were  nearing  their  request  submission  time  iii)  Phase  3:  automated  acknowledgement  of  receipt  of  materials,  etc.

4)  Insight

● We  reviewed  the  new  system  for  ~4  weeks  and  continually  gathered  data  and  information  on  customer  behavior/experience.  We  made  minor  changes  and  tweaks  during  this  period  and  could  almost  immediately  see  huge  improvement  in  performance  of  the  process.  The  results  of  the  ‘Learning  Launch’  phase  spoke  for  themselves  -  ‘No  Show’  rates  declined  by  ~70%  and  the  intimation  on  delays  and  reschedule  requests  were  almost  down  to  ‘nil’.  This  significantly  enhanced  our  ability  to  predict  demand  and  thus  enabled  us  to  optimally  marshall  resources  and  manage  service  levels  better.

5)  Approach

● A  key  takeaway  from  this  experience  was  there  some  of  the  problems  that  grew  into  big  customer  pain  points  could  have  been  anticipated  and  resolved  if  the  ‘Mind  Mapping’  tool  was  applied  systematically.  Constantly  looking  for  patterns  and  themes  in  data  during  operations  meeting  would  have  helped  predict  the  changing  customer  needs  and  their  challenges  sooner.  This  is  something  I  will  be  keen  to  watch  out  for  and  ensure  to  incorporate  into  my  approach  going  forward

