All the way to A&E in Leicester I was worried about what had happened to my son. How bad was it? How much pain was he in? Was it permanent?
People sit right at the top of the triangle for good reason. Without good people, you do not have a company that can service your customer’s wants and needs. On the afternoon of receiving the call, I was working on a time-sensitive piece of work with a fixed deadline for the end of the day. Leaving work without warning at such a time is extremely stressful. As the co-owner, letting my employees down is a bitter pill to swallow.
The Wyser team all stepped up at a moment's notice and “swarmed” to get the required customer deliverable over the line.
What is the most important thing in the world? It is people. No amount of process or technology could have completed what was required. Having a team of people who are truly supportive of the organisation and also of each other is paramount. In our opinion, there is nothing more important.
When IT is your constant focus, it can be easy to forget that IT exists solely to provide value to the people who are your customers. How do we ensure that at Wyser? We use a virtual office environment, Gather, and begin our day with a 15-minute stand-up across the whole team. In addition to ensuring value for our clients, a significant proportion of this is devoted to us, the people inside Wyser. After more than 20 years in large blue-chip organisations, the chance to focus more on the employee is a change I find deeply satisfying.
People are the “who”, and Process is the “how”. I arrived at A&E at approximately the same time as my son; we have been fortunate enough to have had very few dealings with hospitals over the past 15 years.
How do I find out what is wrong with my child? What do we do now? Where do we go? What do we need to do? How long will it take? All questions which are asked 000s of times a day. Processes need to be followed to answer these questions and when those processes are well travelled, they can often degrade over time. This is especially true in change-rich organisations; technology changes, companies have re-orgs, and new products. Our world is by no means static and therefore we must follow the approach of continual improvement.
At Wyser we are brutal with our processes, both internal and external. We ensure they remain fit for purpose by constantly re-evaluating their validity. Customers often find their employees are not “following the process”. If that is happening, first re-evaluate your processes, not your people.
Our whole customer experience was made far less stressful by the easy-to-understand processes followed at the hospital. Every member of the NHS staff who dealt with us clearly understood what was required, by who, and by when. To say I was delighted would be an understatement.
How was our technology journey in A&E? The tech that had been deployed made the experience understandable and as easy as possible for both the customer and the employee. There was a vast array of technologies deployed throughout our hospital journey - the check-in, queuing system, patient tracking, X-ray and diagnosis. All of these, (and more), were key in delivering value to the employees, the customers, and indeed the organisation as a whole.
When technology works it is a joy, it can feel effortless, helping to provide the best outcomes for internal and external stakeholders. Having a computer that crashes or isn’t stable enough to work on can be intensely frustrating. At Wyser we help our clients realise that effortless customer journeys are both possible and financially achievable; because of our decades of experience and independence, (we are not tied to any single technology provider of any description), we can bring your deliveries in on time and to budget.
So what was wrong with my son in the end? He fell off a climbing wall; there are some free climbing establishments which do not have safety ropes as they are comparatively “short” walls. The People were amazing, Processes were clearly implemented and followed, the Technology, however, did let him down somewhat.
If he goes again, he has decided to try somewhere which utilises the Technology of “safety ropes”.
Broken bones = 0
Badly sprained ankle = 1
At Wyser we are transformation specialists and the areas in which we excel are People, Processes and Technology. We’ve worked for blue-chip organisations, ombudsmen, and nationwide dispute conciliation services, all in highly regulated markets providing complex professional services to their customers. We have helped these organisations by using a mixture of targeted organisational and process optimisation, which is:
I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it and that it helps you take a Wyser approach to your PPT journey. If you'd like to find out more about the work we do, take a look at our range of services.