Our Approach
Ask the right questions
Looking for some answers? We hear ya! Our goal is to help you find them, and to do this, we ask a lot of questions.
Usually, the first question is just a warm up, and many more follow until we find out what you are really after — the heart of your need. Finding the heart of your need is the basis for our approach. It ensures that when you hire us to solve a problem, we find the exact right answer for you.
Looking for answers
Some time ago, we were contacted by a small business to help them with a mountain of paperwork that was weighing them down. They were looking for someone to help with data entry.
They asked
Can we hire your company to manually fill in customer information into new documents for all of our new business?
Pretty straight forward, right?
Finding answers
Instead of jumping in with an immediate yes, we chatted a bit about the underlying need they had with the paperwork. As usual, we had some questions.
We asked about
their company and what they were selling
their customers and how they were buying
what information they were collecting
how they were collecting the information
and how they were using these documents within the company
As you can see, these are not complicated questions. We usually start with open ended questions to better understand what is going on, and then drill down with specific questions around what needs working on.
This type of questioning helps us map out the problem in context of the bigger picture.
We do this so that we don’t get stuck thinking a symptom of the issue is the issue itself.
Through our conversations we discovered that the company was
storing their client information in several different spreadsheets, documents, and emails
using email to coordinate updates
manually creating the final paperwork for each client
When business picked up, extra time was needed to manage the information and make the documents.
In this case, the small business was reaching out to us about data entry, which turned out to be a symptom of the issue. Our discussions allowed us to dig a little deeper to see that the heart of their need was to create documents based on each client’s information.
Our recommendations were three fold
Store all of the client information (master data) in a single place.
Use a form to enter the data so that the data is standardized.
Use an automation to use the client information to automatically create the required documents.
These three recommendations turned hours of work into seconds of waiting for a computer to do the work.
With all of their client data in a single place, they were able to understand what information they had, and what they still needed.
With the form, they were able to ensure that they didn’t miss anything, and that it was entered the same way every time.
Once all of the information was in the same place, and it was in the same format, we were able to use a computer to automatically create the paperwork for each new customer. This is what they were really after, and the computer did it so much faster.
Final thoughts
The amount of work it took to understand the problem, create a repeatable process, and build out an automation to do the work, paid for itself in only a couple of months (when compared to paying someone to manually do the work). Now, this businesses has a process to manage their data, and a tool that they can use going forward.
This approach works for any problem, whether it is a paper work one like in this example, a marketing one, or an interpersonal problem.
If you ask the right questions, you can better understand the root of your problem. And, understanding the root of your problem will help you find better answers.