Reflection on Visualization Tool

Challenge

Visualization is a powerful tool that helps integrate different views and trains of thought. I use it to  illustrate and idea or process, which comes in handy since I have always worked with people from different  areas and backgrounds. I work as Customer Marketing Coordinator for a multi-national massive  consumption Company. I’ve been in this role for a year and a half, and I previously worked as CPFR  (Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment) Analyst for two years. Both my jobs have  required the capability to add value through collaboration between different areas. For example, as CPFR  I had to collaborate with the Sales Department, and be part of the Supply Chain Team. Now, I work with  Marketing, Sales, Supply Chain, Planning and Category Management areas. At the beginning of this year,  our Company was struggling with Market Research data that showed we kept losing Distribution points  versus our competitors. This meant we were selling our products in less stores that we should. The typical  approach for this issue was to “put the blame” on the Key Account Manager, who would “put the blame”  on Marketing, and we would be stuck in a vicious circle and find no solutions. So I was asked to lead a  Workstream to improve our Distribution, and therefore, our sales.

Selection

Since this was a complex task, I realized I had to create a multi-functional team to successfully map the  problem and to get commitments from all parties towards finding a solution. To understand the problem  from all its angles, I chose to use Visualization tool, which consists of using drawings, maps, photos,  schemas and other visual components that enable “Visual Thinking” – as Designer Angela Meyer explains  in this course, Visualization is basically using a part of our brain different than logic, which we use most of  the time. In this way, by directing everyone’s attention towards the same model of the problem, we would  all be speaking the same language regardless of our background and areas of expertise.

Application

We held a workshop with people from different areas of the Company that were somehow related to the  issue of “stores without sales”. This meant we had people from Marketing, Category Management, Fields  Sales, Key Account Manager (KAM), Customer Marketing (me), Demand Planning and Supply Chain (CPFR).  At first, everyone thought that the only reasons why we had stores without sales were the most obvious  ones (which we will call “Lame Ducks”): our price wasn’t competitive, our promotions were not attractive,  our portfolio wasn’t appealing, and our service level to our customers was not on target, among others.  However, once we started to integrate everyone’s point of view, and we started “drawing” different  scenarios through a diagram (your typical arrow – concept – arrow, nothing fancier), we realized that the  problem could have many other causes, most of them driven by the fact that there was no stock of our  products in store (hence, the “no-sales” part).

We identified that a store could either have sales, or have no sales. For stores with no sales, if there was  no stock, this could be driven by forecasting issues of Phantom Inventory (theoretic stock but no physical  stock). If there was stock in the store, there were two possible causes for not having sales: the wrong  execution or the ones we referred to before as “Lame Ducks”. This meant we were only looking at 1 of 4  possibilities at the beginning of the session. Once we were able to map this, we associated responsible  areas for each case, which allowed us to search for solutions through our different roles, rather than  blaming each other.

Insight

Now, with all this eye-opening information, we were able to understand with a more complete  approach not just this issue, but many other problems that other areas go through, and we realized that  through visual thinking these “big complex problems” could be split into “smaller simpler problems”,  and through collaboration we could get better more efficient solutions that add more value to the  business. This exercise helped me understand better the “Human” part of the Design Thinking process.  Sometimes when we use tools like Visualization, we are able to empathize with others, and join forces  into finding efficient win-win solutions for all stakeholders.

Approach

In this case, we were able to take a step back and not just be focused in one possible cause for the  problem, but deep dive into other possible causes, and find suitable solutions. There was no blame  involved, but collaboration, empathy and creativity. We still have a lot of work ahead of us, but I am  confident that by identifying the root causes of the stores with no sales, we will be able to solve these  issues through concrete and tailor-made solutions.

I look forward for more challenges like this one, where we can add value through collaboration!

The picture above illustrates the Visualization Tool being used to map the possible causes for stores with  no sales, and the responsible areas in each case.

