How standardizing process improvement helped ConnectWise integrate business units.
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Learn how ConnectWise has streamlined their business units, reduced clutter, increased efficiency, and are successfully driving process engagement across their organization. "Previously, it was four different people, four different times, making the same modification in four different places. Now, one person makes the change and it pushes out to all four systems at the same time - saving us time".www.promapp.com
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How standardizing process improvement helped ConnectWise integrate business units.
- 1. The impact of leadership on a culture of innovation l www.promapp.com How Standardizing Process Improvement Helped ConnectWise Integrate Business Units Melissa Thelen, Account Executive, Promapp Webinar Presenter: Robert Browning, Documentation Specialist, Connectwise
- 2. About Us
- 4. Silos Go By Many Names… • Business Unit • Division • Department • Team • Site • Country
- 5. Phase 1 – Process Capturing
- 6. PRO’s: – Gained insight into everyone’s current state – A single central repository for processes – Act of capturing processes led to discussions on how to approve and standardize
- 7. CON’s: – Uneven results between BU process- capturing – Slow growth in unified process library – Challenges in maintaining consistent language and information from one process to the next – Deciding how to address BU specific details, post-unification?
- 10. Phase 2 – Process Copying
- 11. 1. Search for an existing process. 2. Copy it. 3. Change and tweak a few steps.
- 12. PRO’s: – Quicker capture of the related processes – Saves time for the process writers (and $$ for the company) – Improves consistency in process and verbiage
- 13. CON’s: – Drives up process library size quickly! – Time gained in drafting < time lost by redundant edits – Similar process titles makes searches difficult
- 14. “Cloned” Processes in SharePoint Similar titling on a “cloned” process in SharePoint.
- 15. How Can We Fix This? An easy fix? Change to style guide helped with searches, but... Redundant edits were still a problem.
- 16. Phase 3 – Solving the Process Variant Challenge
- 17. Controlling Process Variation Management
- 20. Variation Types • Business Unit/Product • Office Building • Country • Business Hours vs After Hours • Customer Tiers • Payment Methods • Budget Lines • Marketing Content Types
- 21. Variation Types • Employee Types (HR) • Internal vs External Hire (HR) • Current vs Future State • Product Versions (10.5, 11.0, etc.) • # of Servers • Cloud vs OnPrem
- 22. How We Manage Variations
- 23. PRO’s: – Many more details captured – Streamlined process library – Customizable to individual users – Significant time savings in maintenance – Easier cross-pollination of information
- 24. Business Benefits • Across the board, up to 75% reductions in our: – Process Library Size – Time Spent Searching for Processes – Time Spent Writing Processes – Time Spent Maintaining Processes • More engagement with process improvement: – 1600+ Processes Created – 400+ Feedback Items – 51,000+ Process Views
- 25. Summary & Recommendations • Start small with variations • Don’t play favourites • Establish a “process monarch” • Keep communication lines open • Permit “variation experiments” • Foster a fun, competitive spirit!
- 26. The impact of leadership on a culture of innovation l www.promapp.com @promapp Questions? www.promapp.com www.linkedin.com/in/robertlbrowning www.linkedin.com/company/promapp-solutions www.connectwise.com
Editor's Notes
- When this screen is on, it’s a good idea to read over the Agenda notes so everyone knows what we will be covering today: Today we will be covering: Who are ConnectWise – setting the scene before process improvement Phase 1: Process Capturing Phase 2: Process Copying Phase 3: Phase 3 – Solving the Process Variant Challenge Business Benefits Summary & recommendations
- ConnectWise – Founded and HQ’d in Tampa, FL LabTech – Acquired by ConnectWise and moved to FL Quosal – Seattle, WA ScreenConnect – Raleigh, NC (Not to mention a UK and AU office!)
- In our case, we were dealing with several kinds of silos – many hierarchical, but all storing bits of key information that other segments of the company would need visibility into. I’m mostly going to focus on the Business Unit level in this presentation and how we addressed this but I did want to acknowledge there’s several layers where process variations exist. Each BU had differences in infrastructure, tools that were used to accomplish tasks, and how work flowed from one point to the next.
- First off, I’ll talk about our experience with process capturing for each BU at the onset of our initiative.
- Just even attempting to start a process capture and improvement initiative had its benefits. As more processes are discovered, you gain insight into what it is exactly that everyone does and it helps our colleagues see the bigger picture of where they fit into one cohesive company.
- Not every BU team had the same level of resources dedicated to capturing Support processes, so this resulted in uneven # of processes captured between the teams. Capturing would progress quickly in some areas where existing material could be re-purposed but would take longer where a team or department was mostly using “tribal knowledge” and not writing things down effectively. Each BU was accustomed to using their own different terminology for the same thing and had their own style guide or templates for writing down information. Finally, there was the question of how exactly to display the specific exceptions – do we bury the variations deep in the text of the process? Ignore and address them later?
- We’d either wind up going super high-level and generic…
- Or super complex, trying to add all the BU-specific components somewhere in a single process map. Neither was going to be very useful to us, so we opted to try something different.
- As we moved further along in our One Company process capturing initiatives, some of our writers started looking for ways to make the generation of processes between BU’s faster and easier. So the second approach we took towards handling process variations was to give every BU their own version of processes.
- The main line of thinking here is why have every BU re-invent the wheel for themselves when process capturing? As one BU grew their process library, it made things easier for the others that hadn’t gotten to that process yet.
- Process Copying – With existing blueprints to follow, Helps build the initial library of processes quickly and maintains consistency in syntax and language. Less effort to enforce style guidelines, etc.
- 5-10 minute change to one process is multiplied across the number of BU’s. Missing just one change to one process clone can result in inconsistency and confusion over the long term.
- Similar titling on a “cloned” process, as seen in SharePoint. A colleague could potentially waste time by clicking into 2 to 4 different process variations. 2-5 minutes lost per colleague per search can add up quickly!
- So now, we mitigated the issue of having a colleague here potentially clicking into four processes before finding the right one they want, but then there was still an issue of edits to processes potentially taking 4 times as long. Compounding this problem was that changes for similar BU processes would be asynchronous.
- So we had been looking for a better way to “bundle” processes for each BU together and started to test out using the PVM module in Promapp to solve for this…
- Our Support team processes had the most amount of copied processes, so we started experimenting with streamlining these into a single process map containing variations specific to each BU. A group here in Tampa HQ established what the core STANDARD process would be. They then identified colleagues that were the “experts” for speaking towards how each Business Unit might need to slightly modify or adapt to the core process for the needs of their particular product’s users. For instance, we’d establish a Support Expert for our Sell BU in Seattle, WA and an Expert for our Control BU in Raleigh, NC. Whereas these individuals used to have their own folder of redundant (copied) processes to manage, we could now just make them a “variant expert” on a drop-down option under the same single process. We saw this as a HUGE improvement. These experts are then regularly involved in cross-departmental meetings where large changes to any process can be discussed and disseminated to the individual business units. Another component of the Promapp PVM tool we find very useful is the ability to set default variants for each ConnectWise colleague. The version intended for their BU displays first, but they still have the means to toggle between the BU’s and see what the differences are between each Support team. If someone who works predominantly with Manage has an idea or question on how the Automate Support team handles a step in their version, they can use the system to send an email to the Variant Expert or propose a large change to the Global Expert for an upcoming meeting.
- The optional highlighting makes it easy to review the variations in each process from the STANDARD level. Green = additional info, Red = removed info. Things that might change between BU Support processes include names of service boards, service ticket designations, details that need capturing in a ticket, etc BUT the mainline process of how to work a ticket for a customer remains the same. We don’t need to change steps in the standard process more than once. We make an edit on the STANDARD level and it pushes the change down to each BU variant. The time-saving potential for us in the long run here is massive!
- For this process, because we have more buildings than main Business Units, we created a variation line around each specific building. The variation, mainly how to exit each building in the event of a fire, is accounted for and coexists with all of the other buildings. We were able to load specific evacuation route maps that change depending on which building the user clicks on from the drop down.
- Some ideas we’ve come up with so far on how to use PVM for managing variables… Country – Background Checks, Legal differences Hours – We have 24 hour support, but some steps in the process can change depending on the resources available to escalate to. Tiers (Gold, Silver, Platinum Customers, etc.) – extra steps for larger accounts
- Employee Types – Hourly, Salary, Contractor, Intern, etc Current vs Future State – often used in scoping how improvement projects might change internal processes
- Here’s an example of how we manage variations in some of our more technical processes. Our Consultants here use this to capture variations in steps when installations involve more than one server and variations involving different version releases of our products.
- Process Copying – With existing blueprints to follow, Helps build the initial library of processes quickly and maintains consistency in syntax and language. Less effort to enforce style guidelines, etc.
- So overall, with PVM, we’re dramatically streamlining process improvement efforts while retaining a level of detail that colleagues can find useful, personalized, and actionable. Our continuous improvement efforts are now focused on furthering an ongoing “One Company” initiative. We want to further identify which processes truly need variation lines versus instances where processes can be fused together. Ultimately, there will always be processes where variations must be accounted for, so we’re definitely glad to have a system that provides the capability of handling this.
- Start small with variation lines Don’t open up the flood gates. Adding even one line of variation without effective variation governance in place can cause unforeseen troubles (i.e. unnecessary “fluff” in your process library, searching difficulties). Introduce the “official” permitted variation types to your writers and gradually add new ones whenever the need exists. Don’t play favourites with a variation. Try to give all of your variations equal representation, if possible. This helps avoid alienating users that might log in and see processes skewed to another BU/dept and not their own. Inevitably, individuals representing one variation may differ with another and want to stray too far from the core process. Give one person (or two) the authority to make a final decision on how the mainline process can/cannot be changed. (Global Owner and Expert) Our BU’s are spread out over large distances, so it’s important we have open channels for crosstalk. We use Slack, Skype, email newsletters, etc. to keep everyone informed and to keep the improvement efforts at the visible forefront. Let your process writing teams brainstorm their own variation lines. It promotes better usage, engagement with the BPM tool, and allows those closest to the material the freedom to present variations in the most organized, digestible way. If you have segmented Business Units all providing their own processes, make things competitive! We use stat slides on TV monitors to show who’s in the lead and recently held a “Product All Up” meeting with a scavenger hunt element involving Promapp that helped promote its usage across the organization.