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By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  Image by Kampus Productions on Pexels Consultants over the years have earned a bad rap. One thing I've heard frequently is this: Consultants are too expensive, and their engagements don't often empower businesses with self-sufficiency when they leave the engagement. No wonder businesses hesitate to hire consultants! Consultants love a steady stream of income. But that's not a good thing when they do this at the expense of businesses by keeping their fingers in the proverbial pie. I’m illustrating this point because it details a need most customers and clients crave--empowerment to solve their issues and chart their journeys. They don't want to keep hiring consultants to solve their challenges. Ultimately, if consultants or any business can build self-sufficiency as a part of their products and services, they'll deliver incredible customer value! Here are two examples of how I do this with my clients. The first one involved developing a Scrum process for a local manufacturer. The second engagement involved creating a Voice of the Customer process for another local manufacturer. In both instances, I ensured they had all the necessary tools, procedures, and an action item list that contained all outstanding items requiring attention upon my exit. Both projects were a resounding success, and neither client needed to call me back to help solve any challenges related to their particular projects. One CEO said he would hire me again because I empowered them to chart their destinies, which differentiated me from other consultants with whom he had previously worked. I'm giving you these examples because two principles apply, even if you're not a consulting company. Here are two things you can do to build self-sufficiency with your customers: Ensure Everything They Need to be Successful-- During Their Buyer Journey Your buyer journey should be a seamless experience for your customers or clients. Anything you can do to make the process a pleasant experience for them is certainly beneficial. Automated tools ensure customer interactions happen when needed, and the right system can deliver information at the right time to the right people. After the Engagement is Over Ensure your how-to guides or any other information they need to succeed are thorough and easy to understand. If that doesn't happen, your customer service agents could receive too many calls, and your customers might get frustrated. Ultimately, the idea is to empower your customers or clients throughout the process. When businesses can do this, they'll deliver incredible value to their customers or clients! And who doesn't want that? # # # Speaking of empowering your customers, workflow automation tools excel at that. Their use enables employees to engage in higher-level functions by removing mundane tasks so that these tasks no longer consume countless hours of their valuable time. In our best-selling book, No-Nonsense Digital Transformation, Michael Cantu and I discuss this concept extensively. It provides a step-by-step roadmap on how to prepare for and implement digital transformation initiatives in your business. If you’re interested in learning more, click the button below!
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By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  Most business leaders over the years have experienced the failure of at least one project. In those instances, many executives have looked at what techniques would help to ensure success for future projects. One different way to view these failures is to hone in on what didn’t work in those situations. Flipping the switch on these scenarios can provide valuable insight into what could’ve worked. Along those lines, what are some common mistakes that project managers can avoid to help ensure success? 1. Failing to Think Outside the Box to Avoid Potential Problems Unfortunately, many Project Management (PMs) are so focused on putting out fires instead of thinking outside the box to help prevent the occurrence of possible challenges. Great PMs are tuned into what could potentially go wrong. They are forward-looking, ask questions, and are on the lookout for problems before they ever occur. 2. Prioritizing the Unimportant over the Important Too often, PMs will focus on minutia instead of the most important things: ensuring the client is happy, tracking to budget, and keeping the project on time, to name a few. For instance, it doesn’t matter nearly as much if someone hasn’t updated a chart or properly marked a task as 40% instead of 50% complete. A good PM constantly weighs what’s most important and tackles those items first. 3. Under-utilizing the Best Aspects of the Team When PMs don’t take the time to understand their individual team members’ strengths and weaknesses, this can sabotage the team functioning at more optimum levels. For example, Bob may excel at performing a particular task, but instead, the PM assigns the task to Suzy who isn’t as skilled at that particular job. Also, some team members may require more oversight than others. Finding out these abilities and assigning team members to perform tasks that match those skills can tremendously boost team productivity. 4. Neglecting to Regularly Test Early-On Assumptions At the beginning of projects, PMs often have to make assumptions based on a scarcity of available information. When more data becomes available, it’s important to test and revise assumptions against this information. Failure to do so can result in serious errors that can affect project success. These are a few examples of steps PMs can take to avoid issues that can lead to project failure. Speaking of avoiding failure, Scrum is a wonderful project management approach that helps identify problems before they ever become issues. As a certified Professional Scrum Master, I’ve experienced this reality repeatedly in my line of work. I’ve also seen how the use of Scrum typically decreases the amount of time to finish projects, and it doesn’t matter what type of project it is. If you have any projects that you would like to undertake but have limited internal resources to complete them, or you are stuck in the middle of a project with little hope of moving forward, I’d love to have a conversation with you! In the meantime, check out one of my case studies of how the use of Scrum helped a local manufacturer successfully launch a new product in record time. By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  Image by Alexandra Bakhareva - Pexels I've been talking to a prospective client over the last couple days about the benefits of Scrum and how it would be a great tool to use for their CRM implementation.
Not sure what Scrum is? In short, it's a project management framework is used for developing products. Anyway, it got me to thinking--it's been awhile since I've talked about the value of Scrum. So, I thought I would share with you an experience I had with a client to illustrate how this Agile tool revolutionized this manufacturer's business. Prior to my engagement with my client, they had a very cumbersome, rigid product development process. This became evident when it took them two-to-three years to develop their last new product. Considering the complexity of the product involved, it took them waaay too long! They were like a truck stuck in the mud! The CEO knew there was a better way. That’s why he hired me! And because I'm a certified Professional Scrum Master, this project was right up my alley. The first thing I did was to carry over lessons learned from their previous development effort into the new process. I did this to prevent those issues from happening again. Next, I trained them on Scrum and we developed the new process together. In just two months, the process development piece was complete and I left the project in their very capable hands. And the results were great! Eight months later, they launched not only their originally planned product, but five other component systems that fit across their whole product line. If you take the additional products they developed into account, they experienced a product speed-to-market increase of over 100%! They are so thrilled with Scrum, they are implementing it company-wide, including non-product related functions, like Marketing. And the results have been great so far! So, if you want to prevent your project from getting stuck in in the mud and want to kick it into high gear, Scrum could be your answer. And if you're interested in learning more about Scrum or how to transform you business, I'd love to have a chat! Just click the button below to schedule a time By: Kathy Kent Toney, President of Kent Business Solutions  Photo by Olga Guryanova on Unsplash In our post-pandemic business environment, how do manufacturers not just survive but thrive? With tight budgets, how do they also develop innovative products and get them to market more quickly? All manufacturing product managers need to know the one thing that's the answer to both questions! In a nutshell, it's Scrum. And I’m not talking about a rugby move. It's a whole different animal, so let's define it concerning product development: It's a process framework for developing products, all the way from envisioning the product to its completion. To put it simply, cross-functional team members come together to create products in an iterative flow that solves problems in real-time. Benefits of Scrum There are lots of reasons why manufacturers can reap benefits from Scrum. Here are a few worth mentioning:
Scrum for Hardware Scrum has historically been used for software development. To a lesser degree, it's been used on manufactured goods, such as cars, computer hardware, and aerospace products. However, it's not common for Scrum usage on manufactured goods, aka Scrum for Hardware. A genuine need exists (how many manufacturers don't want to accelerate the speed-to-market for their products?)! Case Study With the lack of established precedent, how does one go about implementing Scrum for manufactured goods? I had the same question and therefore began work on an answer. Background Schier Products in Edwardsville, KS, wanted to do what we're talking about: implement a Scrum strategy for product development purposes. Their existing stage-gate process was inefficient and ineffective; their last new product development effort required two to three years to complete! Schier’s goal was to speed up their development timelines. I partnered with them to do just that. Adapting Scrum to Hardware Although my knowledge of Scrum is extensive, I had never before applied Scrum principles to manufactured goods, so there was a short period of trial and error. Hardware is different from software in many ways, so it took some adaptation and ingenuity to make Scrum work for them. Results The result has been fantastic! It required two months to develop and implement the process, and it took only ten months to launch their newest product. Not only that, the flexible nature of Scrum allowed them to develop five additional modular subsystems that fit across their whole product line. If you include that accomplishment into the mix, that’s a +100% increase in speed-to-market! That is a whole lot better than two-to-three years! As evidenced by Schier's success, Scrum is a robust solution for increasing speed-to-market timelines for manufactured goods. They are so thrilled with Scrum; they plan to implement it enterprise-wide! # # # How is your product development process working for you? If it could use some sprucing up, then download my free Product Development Checklist. It will provide you some structure and potential improvements to your existing process. Click the button below to download this freebie! |
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