Use Cases
Standardize Operations and Quality
When work processes follow inconsistent or—even random—paths, employees waste precious time “guessing” what to do and re-inventing the wheel instead of accomplishing their goals. What if you could reduce or even eliminate costly errors? Reduce inefficiencies? Get quality control “on lock”?
Much like the principle behind “franchising,” standardizing how everyone should perform their jobs delivers numerous benefits. But most organizations don’t have a good way to make this happen. With our Zavanta software and Operations Mapping method, standardizing best practices across the organization is no longer a pipe dream.
Read some of our Client Success Stories:
Marketing Firm Saves $30,000 a month by transferring best practices of their star performer
A large, marketing services firm was experiencing a high number of recurring errors in their direct mail group. After investigating the problem, they discovered that the “star” performer—who had a very low incidence of errors—followed a different procedure for completing his work than the others did.
Using our Zavanta software, they were able to standardize the best practices from their star performer across the entire workgroup. They were able to reduce overall errors by 75% and saved $30,000 a month for an annual savings of $360,000. Zavanta enabled them to capture best practices from their experts and give everyone in the workgroup access to the most effective method of completing the job. Doing so improved performance dramatically.
Manufacturer Eliminates Inspection Error Rate–Goes from 60% to 0%”
The Quality Systems Coordinator for an international pipe coating corporation found that a certain installation error was causing a 60% inspection failure rate which resulted in increased waste and re-work costs. With Zavanta software, the company was able to streamline this process so that the error was eliminated entirely. Because their subject experts could quickly capture their unique procedures so everyone was “on the same page,” the company found ways to reduce errors in many areas and also improve communication between the company and its clients.
Manufacturer Achieves ISO 9000:2001 in Half the Expected Time
A data storage device manufacturer was able to achieve ISO 9001:2000 registration in record time. They attributed much of their success to Zavanta and our structured Operations Mapping model, which enabled them to create Quality guidelines as well as all the associated procedures and work instructions. According to their Quality Assurance Director: “We achieved certification in 6 months of launching our ISO initiative—this is less than one-half the time required by most organizations. . . . The result has been a highly streamlined process for getting consistently structured procedures written, reviewed and released to the employees—all in a highly controlled, easy to maintain fashion.”
IT Department Implements 8 ITIL Modules, Improves Service Quality
The IT Department in a major pharmaceutical supplier utilized our Zavanta software to help them implement The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL). ITIL is a process-based methodology for improving IT service management and operations. In just over a year, the department implemented 8 ITIL modules resulting in an immediate improvement in productivity and service quality. This enabled them to standardize IT operations across functional groups. They also used Zavanta to capture network operating procedures into a Runbook that the entire staff could use to manage and troubleshoot their network systems.
Software Company Doubles Sales Revenue by Delegating Admin Tasks
The Sales Manager for a software company was spending a large part of every day on clerical and administrative tasks that were detracting from the critical tasks: spending time with customers and closing new business. The company had identified an employee who had them time and experience to take over these tasks. That wasn’t the problem. The challenge was training — how to get all the know-how out of the Sales Manager’s head and delegated. In the Sale’s Managers eyes, this seemed like an overwhelming task.
By applying the principles of Operations Mapping and using Zavanta, the Sales Manager got everything documented and was able to turn over the entire job to the other employee. Within just two days, this task was totally off the Sales Manager’s plate. With more time and focus, the Sales Manager was able to DOUBLE sales revenues the next year. The other benefit: knowledge retention. Because all the procedures were now captured in a user-friendly process and procedure system, another employee could step in and do the job if someone was sick or needed to take vacation.
