Meeting Management/Process Improvement
Chief Operating Officer credits company's success to efficient collaboration and concise documentation enabled by the Mindjet Mind Manager software.
As Chief Operating Officer of the US$650 million IP networking equipment manufacturer, Allied Telesyn's Howard Kamerer finds that his time is at a premium. Nowhere is the efficient use of that time more valuable than in management meetings.
"I have no use for long memorandums that you need to read through two or three times to really grasp", he says. "If one of my managers tries to hand me a 15-page flowchart, I just ask him or her to go back and map it".
It is because of his need to communicate clearly and concisely that Kamerer turned to Mindjet Mind Manager business mapping software.
Concise documents mean more productive meetings
"I do not have time to sit in a meeting and listen to my managers explain what they want to do", Kamerer says.
"Instead, I ask them to give me business maps that I can review beforehand. Once the meeting starts, I can focus not on trying to understand what the managers want to do - but on helping them do it".
One typical morning, Kamerer received three maps from a new vice president of application management. It took Kamerer five minutes to review the maps. He then had a one-hour discussion with the VP, giving him feedback on head count objectives and his new group's work processes.
"The way I used to work, it probably would have taken me days to go through that complexity - to probe it and understand it. Then it would have taken the VP several more days to understand my recommendations.
The net result is that the Mindjet Mind Manager software helps me do in an hour the kind of strategic business planning that used to take me days to complete".
Record profitability in a down economy
That kind of speed has really paid off for the company.
In the past year alone, Kamerer and his team have used the Mindjet Mind Manager software to reorganize Allied Telesyn's North American operations.
In the process recruiting a new sales organization, creating four new vertical market focuses and redesigning the company's product line amid the worst economy networking has ever seen.
When they were finished, Kamerer and his management team had created more new profitability in 2002 than in the three previous years combined.
Capturing experience to refine processes
Allied Telesyn also uses the Mindjet Mind Manager software to document processes.
For instance, Kamerer and his sales managers created a business map that captures every step in what has evolved into a very intricate and successful sales process.
"When you make a cold call to a new customer", Kamerer says, "what do you do after you call? Do you send a catalog? A letter? Do you set up an in-person meeting? A conference call? We built a map that answers those questions and lays out a clear process".
The company uses this concise, easy-to-understand document to first train its sales force, and then deliver the process to each sales person's desktop.
Previously, members of the sales team had to try to understand a process that was documented in lengthy manuals and complicated flowcharts. Now, they navigate intuitively through a single business map that contains not just the steps in the process, but links to supporting documents.
Managing change
Mindjet Mind Manager's visual interface enables users to follow a clear path as they progress through a sales opportunity. If, at any point, the sales person needs more information, he or she simply opens up hidden levels of the map.
Business maps are not only easier to follow, but also vastly more flexible than traditional text documents.
"We recently lost a major sale because of an unanticipated interruption during the executive sponsorship stage of the process", Kamerer says. "The customer has since come back and opened up the opportunity. But we needed to learn from the mistake and make sure it would not happen again".
This stage of the sales cycle had already been clearly documented.
Mindjet Mind Manager's flexibility, visual structure enabled Kamerer's sales managers to quickly access the exact step, visually highlight the need to watch out for this particular problem, then hyperlink to a document that explained the issue in grater detail.
By contrast, Kamerer points out, "if your sales process is captured in a 50-page document, how do you amend it? How do you quickly draw people's attention to potential pitfalls?"
Anticipating problems by improving strategic vision
Kamerer says that one little game he plays (though he readily admits that it is hardly a game) is to periodically map out each of his departments and see if he can anticipate a problem before his managers do.
If he catches the problem first, he asks the manager why he or she did not see it coming.
"New managers are amazed because I am able to peel the onion much faster than they can. I would like to think it is because I am some kind of genius. But it is really because mapping gives me the ability to quickly develop a strategic perspective on processes.
It is almost like thinking in three dimensions. Mapping is a very useful skill - one that I continually push all of our employees to develop. This is one game that I enjoy losing".
"A manager's greatest asset", he adds, "is his or her ability to analyze and communicate processes, concepts and ideas - and to understand other people's ideas more quickly. That is exactly what the Mindjet Mind Manager software helps me to do".
