Data Reporting Challenge - Discovering “What Is”

Challenge

For one of our software product line which is doing reasonably well, senior management wanted to  further increase its market penetration and hence generate more revenue. Multiple areas of  improvements were identified to further explore and come out with recommendation. I was asked to  work on  improving data reporting functionality (one of the feature in software product) as there were  number of challenges with respect to number of reports being built, there maintainability and how  users’ needs were being fulfilled. There are multiple departments and teams involved in building and  delivering this software to customers. This includes Sales and marketing, product management,  Engineering, customer services and production and support groups. So the key challenge for me was to  understand the current state “ What Is” to effectively find the possible opportunities to improve  customer experience about data reporting.

Selection

I was completely new to the product line and how it is being delivered to customers. So I was finding it  really difficult to identify how to gather the real insight into the current state (What is) and possible  opportunities to improve. There were multiple stakeholders (geographically distributed) involved right  from the starting of delivering customer reporting needs as sales and proposal team to customer  services to maintenance group and also the product engineering group but I wasn’t clear on each ones  role and current scope. Considering above situation I decided to use the visualization techniques in  conjunction with short interviews with all key stakeholders across the department to really understand  and visualize the current customer experience on how their reporting needs are being delivered  currently (discovering the critical “What is” part). Also using visual diagrams will help avoid any  communication gap especially when interviewing remotely.

Application

First I build the list of groups/departments/programs and key stakeholders involved in it. I met with each  of the key stakeholders in each area and used standard interview questions to understand their  perspective/process and insights on addressing/solving customer reporting needs through the existing  software product line and what were their pain problems.  During the course of the discussion, I  gathered key events driving some action and build the business process steps that each group was  performing to serve the customer needs.  Then I created a high level Swimlane diagram with these  groups/departments and programs and tried to connect the process events from each group to build  the end to end flow.  In some cases I used brainstorming diagrams to graphically represent stakeholders  thought process, pain areas and there view on solving the problems.

Insight and Approach-

It was an overwhelming experience. Event process diagrams gave me and all key stakeholder full insight  about how customer’s data reporting needs are being addressed going through number of process steps  across department. It also highlighted some very fundamental gaps between what each  department/group perceived the need was and how it was being fulfilled. For Ex. Sales/marketing  considered that software has inbuilt standard reports available and doesn’t need any additional effort  (part of standard offering) but in fact customer services group was building these reports every time for  new customer resulting into duplicated work every time. Brainstorming diagrams surfaced some pain  areas which have been there for quite some time but not being addressed. For example, customer has  to login to multiple application instances to gather the data they need and then collate outside of  system which is frustrating and time consuming. So above information will really be useful for my next  steps on discovering “What If” part. I am thinking of using mindmaps and workshops to bring the  different stakeholders from different department together and further brainstorm on the findings and  identify some design criterion and potential opportunities to help improve reporting functionality in  system and customer experience about it.

