Recent photo I took of the Parliment building in Budapest over the Danube.

Communications Process Improvement in Action

To better understand the value of Communications Process Improvement, let’s briefly examine two projects.

Case I

The following project was designed to increase the quality and quantity of customer case studies and was aligned with the company’s objectives to assist sales and marketing efforts with benefits focused communications.

Following a review of the data collected on metrics such as quality and impact, the existing method was found to be lengthy and inefficient. Non-value activity had crept into the process and the areas of the process deemed most important or critical were given less focus than required. The cycle time for completed customer examples took months and in a few instances up to one year, and excessive time was spent pursuing opportunities that were never completed.

The goal: Streamline and digitize the process by which press releases and case studies are reviewed, approved and provided to sales force.

Business Case/ Problem Statement
Customer case studies and customer-focused press releases can do more to engage prospective customers (in this case in the high tech sector) than nearly any other marketing communications effort. The project focused on reducing cycle time from initial consideration through completed case study, and reducing the percentage of opportunities aborted after significant time and resources were expended.

To be successful, this required a continuous process which provided new case studies continually so that a representative variety of new and relevant content was available to the sales force, customers, industry analysts and media.

The first step required mapping the existing method used to obtain, document and approve a customer case study and to evaluate the efficiency of the process.

The mapping procedure involved listing every step necessary to perform the process from beginning to end. This can be accomplished by listing each task on a post-it-note. The notes don’t have to be in any order initially, this is just the collection phase. Once every step of the process is noted, order them sequentially and diagram the steps into a process map or flowchart.

Key Findings
It quickly became apparent that the existing process was not clearly defined. There were multiple impediments including, duplication of effort, manual-intensive procedures, and little-to-no accountability.

After months of intensive effort involving interviews with sales and marketing leaders, rigorous process mapping sessions and implementing a pilot program, the team developed a new process.

The new process was consistent, easy to use and flexible. Information was uploaded onto an Intranet site made available to sales and marketing teams with icons for each customer representing material available – either quote or reference they could use; press release or full case study. Specific communications staff members were assigned ownership of the documentation. Accountability improved and the entire process was visible and easy to track and measure.

The communications team became better equipped to avoid past traps that slowed or impeded the process, such as pursuing the wrong leads, missing opportunities to feature an important customer, or simply losing time to administrative tasks.

As a result, the team reduced cycle time by 86%, while increasing the number of high quality customer examples for use in PR and marketing campaigns. Productivity of the team increased because they spent less time on non value-added activities and more on reaching measurable objectives.

Posted by Reid at July 12, 2006 11:34 AM