Process Structuring
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Case Study: |
Background
Litle & Co. is a highly successful provider of payment management services, transaction processing and consultative merchant services, for businesses that sell directly to consumers in so-called "card not present" segments. It was founded in 2001 by serial entrepreneur and direct marketing industry veteran Tim Litle.
More details at:
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"Sergiu was able to boil down the sales process to its elemental compoents and identify positive, negatives and areas to be further discussed. Sergiu also made several recommendations that I have already implemented with positive results. All in all workign with Sergiu was a very positive experience." Tom Murphy, VP, |
Problem
Featured as #1 on the Inc 500 list in 2006, Litle & Co has grown into a powerhouse. Its sales and business development organizations have been the cylinders in the company's growth engine. As with so many rapid growth companies, the company sought to perfect sales and business development processes that would enable it to predictably grow Litle's customer base at a constantly increasing rate.
While Litle's leadership team is truly first class, they wisely reached out for an external viewpoint to make sure they are not blindsided by being too close to and steeped for too long into these challenges.
Solution: Assess, Map and Analyze
When the call came from Tom Litle, the company's CEO, and Jason Pavona, its EVP of Sales and Product, we decided that I needed to deliver two outcomes:
- A suite of visual representations of the current marketing, business development and sales processes, and
- A detailed analysis of these processes with concrete observations and solutions. We formulated 39 core business questions this analysis was to address.
The first step was to interview many of the sales & business developent organizations, as well as surrounding groups, from the vice-presidents to the informational infrastructure administrators, and everywhere in between.
Why?
Because to a fresh eye, most of the answers to building perfect process are already inside a highly-successful organization. I've learned that over and over in each of the tens of projects of this sort I've carried out over the past decade or so. One of my tasks was to bring these answers to the surface, structure them properly, and deliver them in a useful, actionable manner.
Additionally, I documented current processes in detail, resulting in several large workflows.
Results & Samples
I completed this project in roughly two months, delivering the process flows and the 30 pp. prioritized* analysis that addressed most of the 39 driving business questions we formulated at the outset.
* Every point in the analysis is color-coded. Issues of concern and broad scope are listed in red. Issues of mild-to-medium important & scope are listed in blue. Recommendations are listed in green, while neutral observations & facts are listed in black. This method enables one to structurally read the document with a specific goal per reading.
The first step of the delivery consisted of two interactive Q&A sessions with the relevant executive management. At the time of this writing, the company is implementing a substantial suite of changes emerging from this work. We expect a follow-on Q&A session in the near future, as a check-point during the transformation process.
For this Case Study, I secured my client's permission to only share the highly sanitized version of two sample flows. Most step descriptions, annotations, and other objects have been renamed to generic "XYZ" names. Some steps, actors and documents have been removed.
To view the sample flows:
If you have any questions about this Case Study or about structuring your business processes or info products, please do not hesitate to email me at SSS@Clepsydra.net (please refer to Case Study: LITLE & COMPANY) or call me at +1-617-731-3132.
Enjoy!
Sergiu S. Simmel
Clepsydra Systems, Inc.