Last Updated on October 30, 2024 by Owen McGab Enaohwo
Introduction
Mary Pittman is the Process Improvement Leader at IMS ExpertServices, a consultative firm that caters to the world’s most influential law firms. Dealing with such an elite clientele demands excellence. Employees are required to be on their A-game at all times. But achieving that was difficult using manual documentation methods. There was a knowledge gap problem among the staff. Mary understood that having the right system in place was essential to deliver the great results the company needed. Mary’s quest to streamline their processes led to her discovery of SweetProcess. She tells us how SweetProcess made the staff more efficient and accountable. First, let us learn more about the company for better understanding.
About IMS ExpertServices
IMS ExpertServices is a consultative expert services firm trusted by the top attorneys. It supports the world’s most influential firms through rigorous research, strategic alignment, and management services to position them for success on complex litigation and important matters.
The organization mainly works with the top 100 firms across the United States and also offers consulting services. It provides expert witnesses and manages the engagement between clients and witnesses from start to finish. The firm acts as a mediator and resolves any disputes that may arise between both parties.
IMS ExpertServices has built a good reputation in the country with offices in various states including the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Dallas, and Pensacola. It has been in business for about three decades.
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The Biggest Pain Point: Juggling Too Many Systems
A difficult situation sometimes leaves us with many unanswered questions. Mary had her fair share of questions as she grappled with the manual systems in the organization.
“Why do we have so many homes for different documents? Why do I have to be in so many different systems to do something? Why do I have to be in a process chart type of system to create a process chart?”
Making use of different systems to execute the simplest of tasks was a problem. Navigating through hard-to-use systems was more difficult than the actual tasks. There was also a tribal knowledge problem among workers. A select few were privy to some vital information, while others were clueless. Operations suffered in the absence of the employees who had all the information. This was a difficult situation for the organization, and it impacted its outcomes negatively.
Signing Up for SweetProcess: A sigh of relief
Everyone at the organization, from the base to the top, was feeling the brunt of the inadequate systems on the ground. A COO was having difficulty getting his team through a system that was newly implemented. He sought Mary’s help as the Process Improvement Leader:
“While I was willing to take that up from the COO, I knew what I was up against. It’s a new system that we built…so there’s going to be constant changes as far as the user experience. So I was looking for something that was going to allow me and my team to keep up with version history.”
Mary explains that she went on Google in search of a solution to tackle both the challenge at hand and similar challenges. Several systems popped up, but one of them stood out: SweetProcess.
“I ended up going with SweetProcess because, beyond the shadow of a doubt, I knew that I could drop it in the hands of any IMS employee and they would be able to, to any degree, figure out how to use the program, and any manager would know how to build content in the system, and that was not the case with other competitors.”
Security and improvement were Mary’s major criteria for choosing a workflow management system. She wanted the assurance that information saved in the system was highly secured and that the owners would constantly strive to improve the system for better performance. She later reveals that SweetProcess met these criteria.
The 14-day trial offered by SweetProcess also made a good impression on Mary.
“If you don’t have a system, I’d definitely say use the trial of this product. That’s what sold it for me, the 14-day trial. I used this. I went ahead and put a lot of stuff that I had gotten from our executive committee to show them the possibility of where we could be.”
Positive Impacts of SweetProcess on the Organization
An organization that resolves the pain points of its customers also indirectly resolves its own pain points. Most of IMS ExpertServices’ clients had a hard time finding expert witnesses with the specific criteria they needed. The organization was keen on bringing succor to the clients by satisfying the needs.
“We help them find the needle in the haystack and then bring it to them and manage the relationship between the expert witness and the attorney.”
The organization has been able to increase its clients’ satisfaction by leveraging SweetProcess in the following ways:
1. Simple Documentation
People miss the mark by adding too much information in the documentation process in an attempt to be detailed. Any information that does not alter the flow of a procedure should be discarded.
SweetProcess allows the team to walk through their processes in a checklist format, getting rid of redundant information.
“You can take a process that you do day in and day out but it’s complex. So, you want to walk through it like a checklist.”
Doing that is very easy with SweetProcess, says Mary.
“The cool thing is the ease of use of this system. What normally would take me probably several whole hours in a Word document or PDF or PowerPoint to create, I can do it for a fraction of the time.”
2. Seamless Employee Onboarding and Training
It is essential for new employees to be grounded in the business processes. Organizations invest resources in bringing them up to speed. Hitting the mark lies in the training methods. The training challenge is not exclusive to only new employees. Experienced employees could also become inefficient if they are not constantly trained on the latest skillset in their field.
SweetProcess offers several tools, including a task feature that allows the organization to train both new and experienced employees in a comprehensive and timely manner.
“Let’s say I have a new employee come in and I want them to watch a series of videos. I can assign that task to a new employee and say: hey, watch these videos and provide me your top three takeaways. And they’d immediately come to me once they’ve completed the task.
The task feature allows you to do new employee onboarding or hiring and continuing education. But then also in a checklist format.”
3. Continuous Improvement
Maintaining efficiency in the workplace is a continuous process. There has to be a conscious effort to seek ways of enhancing existing tools and operations to achieve better results.
Mary wanted a system that the owners were keen on improving. As the organization uses SweetProcess, she helps to identify areas that could be improved to further meet their business needs.
“We know that every system starts with some basic features, but you always want to make sure that you go with a company that’s going to consistently strive for the next level of excellence.”
“There’s actually one particular incident where I was like, Hey, Owen, when I hit this email, when I assign this task, it’s a little bit confusing, it looks like there are two areas that you can really click. Here’s what I’d love to see.”
The SweetProcess team swung into action immediately and implemented her feedback for better performance.
“His team took that feedback. And in a few days, they were like: We thought that was really good. So, we went ahead and implemented that so we can have a better user experience.”
4. Knowledge Distribution and Accountability
There is a tendency for employees to be oblivious to certain work information. In the face of this, they either ask others for help or do things the wrong way. Both actions are detrimental to the organization as they waste time and resources.
Mary was the go-to person for work-related information. She used to spend most of her time digging up information for the staff.
“When I’m helping them find the root cause of something, it’s a lot easier to find everything in SweetProcess.”
She does not have to help anyone find information anymore. Employees can simply go to SweetProcess to get any information they need by themselves.
“It really helps me to keep teams more accountable because now there’s a real place for them to go and look for the actual process that was signed off on.”
How to Streamline Your Business Processes
Mary and her team are enjoying the benefits of having a streamlined business process. How exactly did they do it? She gives us some practical tips they implemented.
- Research on the best system for your business.
- Audit your current processes to get a clear picture of where you are.
- Meet with each manager and their top employee and outline their contribution to the complete workflow.
- Identify the high points that every employee needs to know.
- List tasks that employees should execute every day.
- Map out the processes using a whiteboard.
- Start the implementation process with information gathered.
- Review your processes every three months to ensure that all information is valid.
Ticking Off the Next Big Goal with SweetProcess
IMS ExpertServices recently acquired a company called Focal Point for its consulting services. Their next big goal is to fully integrate that arm of the business into SweetProcess.
“We are still in the integration process. SweetProcess is helping us get on the same page. We are taking everything that existed or simple daily routine tasks and putting it into the system,” Mary says.
They are taking it a step higher by not only focusing on the important tasks but the obscure ones.
Do you want to streamline your business processes?
IMS ExpertServices moved from having its processes all over the place to streamlining them for optimal performance. The watershed moment was signing up for SweetProcess. You too can streamline your business to achieve the same results or even better.
You have nothing to lose.
“To me, there’s no risk to using SweetProcess because, unlike other companies, you can actually go and export your information right now if you wanted to. And it’s in a really nice format, better than what I’d create.”
Sign up for a SweetProcess 14-day free trial now.