leveraging social business tools to better manage performance improvement projects

Strategy Manufacturing & Quality Project Management Sales & Marketing Operation & OrganizationSupply Chain

Leveraging Social Business tools to better manage Performance Improvement projects

Tefen © 2014 All rights reserved

MARKET DYNAMICS

Dynamic markets push Business organizations to shift from “rigid, vertical structures” towards more flexible “collaboration frameworks”

“Web 2.0”: A booming IT market is developing an increasing amount of web based solutions and social technologies to meet the collaboration need

EMERGING TREND

“Social Business” recently emerged in order to improve products, services and internal processes / organizations via widespread people involvement

Communication & knowledge sharing between people across geographies and different organizations (internal or external, e.g. clients, suppliers)

Coordination & integration in idea generation / creation as well as during the implementation

Participation, collaborative work and co-creation (instead of mere “consumption”)

Background

Social business as the new way for sustainable performance improvement

2


Identification of criticalities & improvement areas through:

• Internal initiatives review

• Interviews

• Surveys

• Desk research

• Observations

As-Is detailed analysis

Identification of improvement solutions

To-Be design

Definition of performance targets & metrics (KPIs)

Planning of required activities & resources

Implementation of the improvement actions

Change management, communication & people mobilization

Performance (KPIs) / progress monitoring and benefit tracking

Trouble-shooting

Issues / Criticalities Areas with improvement

potential

Initiatives development Financial impact assessment Work plans design

Financial benefits Sustainability / Continuous

improvement (CI)

ISSUES IDENTIFICATION OPPORTUNITIES ANALYSIS IMPLEMENTATION

Continual cycle of driving

success

Pilots & Rollouts

3 Phases

How to

Pilots and early implementation to generate immediate benefits and momentum

Standard approach to Performance Improvement projects

3


Strong sponsorship from Top Management

Bottom-up involvement as “Change engine”

Ideas generation & improvements to performance are driven by employees through brainstorming, co-creation and actual implementation of initiatives

High organizational mobilization

Simple, challenging and measurable targets

Clear responsibilities & accountabilities

Targets cascading and empowerment of resources ensures implementation and sustainability

Detailed action plan; hands-on implementation approach

Strict adherence to work plans, strong PMO and transparency in project progress reporting Pilots and subsequent roll-outs to generate immediate benefits

Key Success Factors of Performance Improvement projects

4


People’s involvement and tools to facilitate interaction at distance

Open Communication & Cooperation

Joint development & implementation of project work streams (often within sub-communities)

Crowd-sourcing and collective intelligence e.g. among Divisions / Functions, different Technical Experts, etc.

Co-creation

Distributed Ideas

Generation

Sustainability through Continuous Improvement culture development

Transfer of best practices & ideas across Sites / Depts.

Stakeholders’ involvement in the development process e.g. Efficiency plans with clients / suppliers

Inputs, challenge, open brainstorming and feedbacks (discussions / core competences groups)

A Social approach strongly enhances bottom-up involvement and organizational mobilization

5

Removal of political / hierarchical hurdles

…and facilitates interaction within the entire business ecosystem (clients, employees, partners, etc.)


Repositories

Forum / Blogs Communicator / chat

Social Business tools boost collaboration and communication

Editable files / Wikis

6

Collaboration tools facilitate file sharing and working contemporarily on same documents

Enables instant messaging among

team members

Boosts experience sharing and

brainstorming under organized titles

Facilitates file sharing among the members

of the community

Enables working on same documents contemporarily

Communication tools enhance interaction within teams / communities

Customization & users / customers experience is fundamentalto facilitate adoption & effectiveness of social tools


A. Small / Medium Enterprises

B. Limited geographic scope

C. Pure functional / divisional organizational structure

D. Organic growth context

E. Companies with strong informal integration

A. Medium / Large Enterprises

B. Widespread geographical presence

C. Complex (e.g. matrix or hybrid) organizations

D. Non-organic growth context (e.g. M&A)

E. Companies with strong integration needs

INTEGRATION NEED Complex organization

Sta

ble

e

nv

iro

nm

en

t

Simple organizational structure

Dy

na

mic

e

nv

iro

nm

en

t

Social performance improvement

Bottom-up and widespread opportunities identification and implementation

Cooperative definition and development of improvement actions

Fully integrated and facilitating interactions, for cross-divisional / country implementation

Ongoing, fast communication on projects progress within the organization

Traditional Performance Improvement

Fine-tuning and continuous Improvement

When to apply Social Business tools to reinforce Performance Improvement projects

7


A practical example – A sample Project Plan

1-2 weeks 1-2 months 3 - 6 months

Project Set-Up

ImplementationProject Scope

& target

Community onboarding

Social platform

& tools set-up

Project work Plan

Community engagement and mobilization (general)

Grouping of ideas in main areas of

improvement

Action plan

(macro)

Piloting & roll-out

plan

Best practice / experience sharing

Change management

Detailed work plan development

Performance monitoring

Idea Generation

Idea Evaluation & roadmap

Soft launch - Pilots

Development & assessment of proposals by the community

Kick-off Meeting (in person)

Community efforts for opportunities identification (specific)

Full initiatives rollout

Tools and processes integration into managerial practices

Interaction with content experts

Work teams definition & assignment of members

Opportunities Evaluation

• Feasibility• Bus. Case

Selection & prioritization (on the basis

of targets)

Prototyping

Check Point

Face-to-face / calls

Where?“Restricted” team meetings face-to-face / calls (offline) + online on

the Community

Mainly Online with intermediate checkpoints face-to-face with

Team Leaders

Online on the Community + “Restricted” team meetings

face-to-face / calls

Day-to-day coaching & fine-tuning

8

1-2 months


Applying Social Business tools to Performance ImprovementRecommendations

Assign clear objectives and scope (projects) to Social tools utilization

Balance both online and offline interaction with the whole Community & Sub-communities

Provide a strong on-going support to the Community (Coordination Team)

Provide guidance on new “social” tools / processes / routines

Leverage on graphic alerts and “visual engagements” for community engagement

– e.g. use posts to remind upcoming meetings / milestones, etc.

Ask open questions and opinions, request / give tasks

Provide as well as stimulate feedbacks and comments on proposed ideas

Review contributions and provide direction (focus on “contents”)

Measure people contribution and performance (and state it clearly at the beginning)

Take into consideration the Corporate culture during Community management

9


Benefits of a Social approach to Performance Improvement

Greater amount of innovative ideas

Quicker and more effective execution “Change engine” (i.e. bottom of the organization) directly involved from ideas to implementation

Social tools enhance collaboration, communication and pro-activity by people (being a “showcase”)

Quicker decision making process vs. an offline-only initiative:– less hierarchical structure / processes

– unique virtual workplace where all project-related activities are carried out

Enhanced tracking possibilities (of ideas, project status / progress, etc.)

Easier staffing

Possibility (for everybody) to work in every available time slot (between meetings, in “spare” time)

Both online and offline (physical presence not needed for projects staffing / execution / coordination)

Efficient, less travel “costs” (time and expenses)

Possibility to re-use, re-cycle and replicate processes, knowledge / documents, models, initiatives / projects (e.g. for rollout to other sites, countries)

10


Improvement Projects

Beyond Performance Improvement … a Social Organization

11

Performance improvement or similar initiatives can represent a pilot to adopt social tools…

…a further step is to change the way the entire organization works (processes, activities etc.)

• Social networks

• Extranet

• Relationship management

• Digital workplaces

• Intranet

• Change management

Development New Business Routines

Clients

Suppliers

Commercial Partners

Local Communities

Others

Sta

ke

ho

lde

rs (

Ec

os

ys

tem

)

Text

Text

Changing modus operandi requires a more “social” organizational structure

Innovation Projects

Needs

Feedback Higher Value Added

STAKEHOLDERS INVOLVMENT EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT OUTPUT

How?How?


The Pillars of a Social Organization

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Distributed decision making

Crowd-sourcing, broad idea generation process & involvement

Cross-functional / departmental / countries groups of experts

Experiences / best-practices sharing within communities

Collaborative implementation of innovation & improvements

Result oriented approach based on skills and experience

rather than functional role

Employee EmpowermentExternal Stakeholder

InvolvementSocial Technologies

Reduced barriers between external stakeholders and internal organization

Active participation in products development, services supply and other processes (Co-creation)

Communication of feedbacks and support to insight development

e.g.. Customer services satisfaction

Participation to brand communities

e.g.. Ducati

Endorsement and advocacy mechanisms

Digital workplace (intranet, interest communities, forums, etc.) for

Top-down internal communications

Joint implementation of routine processes & ad-hoc initiatives

Knowledge sharing

Extranet for external stakeholders to interact (also among themselves)

Company apps / widgets to study mobile consumer behaviour and gather insights

A new organizational structure focused on collaboration and networking (employees, suppliers, clients etc.) for business improvement & innovation

StrategyStrategy Manufacturing & Quality

Manufacturing & Quality

PMOPMO Sales and MarketingSales and Marketing

Operation and Organization

Operation and OrganizationSupply ChainSupply Chain

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