Welcome to Monday Morning Cup of Coffee!
Good morning! Every day of the work week I will be doing a short blog post discussing something new each day. I'll have a theme for each day... but more on that as the week progresses!
My goal with this Monday series of blog postings is just to start the week off right with a tidbit of information about NeoCloud Consulting's processes. So without further ado...
Continual Improvement Process
"There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all." — Peter Drucker
One of the goals for NeoCloud Consulting is to continually refine our processes. There is always something that we can do more effectively. I was recently in a training seminar where the instructor said "Efficiency is a word we should get away from. Lots of people do ineffective things efficiently". I think it's a sage piece of advice and something every company should focus on.
I also have this goal for my clients. We are very much a concierge service in that we spend time at our client's offices even when it is not required for us to be on-site. There are two main reasons for us doing that:
Rounding: During my time working in hospital IT departments, I learned the value of rounding. Every week we would set aside specific time to walk the floors and look for broken computers. People get busy and would often just put a note on a mobile cart and put it in an empty room. They would end their shift and forget to submit a ticket or call. These would build up until suddenly someone would find that there weren't enough computers to go around and a high priority ticket would come in. Rounding allowed us to prevent this from happening, build a good rapport with people we may never meet and gently remind them that a ticket would have gotten things fixed quicker. This translates perfectly into what we do at NeoCloud Consulting. While we may be able to take care of everything remotely, we feel the time it takes to drive to a client site is well worth it.
Continual Improvement Process: We're not just here to fix things when they break. Our goal is to be an IT department for our clients. So whether you have 8 computers or 80, we can help you with your continual improvement process. As we get to know how our clients operate, we will often suggest things to help improve their processes. I make it a point when visiting a client to let the entire staff know that we're here to help. There is no extra charge for the work we do. So I encourage everyone to let us know if there is something they are currently doing that they'd like to do more effectively but aren't sure how to use technology to get it done. It's amazing how many times small tweaks to how an Excel file is worked on will improve a process tenfold. We have also taken processes away from clients that help us improve our services so it really is a two-way street.
While we all enjoy what we do, staring at a computer all day every day with our only client interaction being over the phone can get boring! Getting around town to see our clients helps keep us fresh and focused on our clients. We love what we do and thank you every day for allowing us to make a living doing it!
Until next time!
--Jay
