Written by: Larry Goodfellow
The importance of the human side of the offering can be equal to or greater than the technological prowess.
As automation infiltrates our world, the expectation of convenience and efficiency becomes the new measure of usability. In many ways, it is a good thing. Paying bills, doing banking, and communicating online has increased efficiency, and is extremely convenient. New technologies have generated new businesses and new job opportunities. Our Online Community Software, Insightrix Communities, and the staff we have in our office are an example of this. We pride ourselves on the capability of our software, the technological competence of our staff, and our international exposure. However, we recognize the human element of our offering is equal to or greater in importance than the technological prowess.
What does this mean?
To be effective, the human element must be both internally and externally focused, which is a hard act. Our sales team and internal users are always asking and reporting on what users like and don’t like about our software and service. Our software development staff are in daily contact with the sales team in daily scrum meetings, and again in twice-monthly sprint planning meetings so that the voice of the customer can be relayed and operationalized in the shortest period of time. Quick and frequent meetings to gauge everyone’s progress and challenges helps staff to feel like they are part of a team, their contribution both sought and appreciated, and that any challenge they face can be solved together. Open communication between leadership and staff creates a situation where the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts, and helps eliminate feelings of isolation.
The role of the leadership team is to set the priorities for development and to remove barriers to allow development of client-based solutions to happen as efficiently and effectively as possible.
Problems will occur, but the leaders must be there to support their staff by aligning resources to remedy the situation, and to follow up with the customer directly to ensure the planned remedy is acceptable.
Ultimately, recognizing the importance of the human element will increase your likelihood of gaining new clients, keeping existing clients happy, and nurturing a workplace environment of collaboration, open communication and job enjoyment.
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Monitoring is the systematic process of collecting, analyzing and using information to track a program’s progress toward reaching its objectives and to www.dolarmonitor.co guide management decisions.