Preserving Processes
Preserving Processes
June 20th, 2006:If you have an irregular workforce with a lot of part-time, remote or contractual workers, keeping your business processes consistent can be a Herculean task. Greg McNevin finds out how Plutonic Zoo subdued the Hydra of knowledge management.
Getting new employees up to speed with the ebbs and flows of your organisation is always a time consuming endeavour, and one that doesn’t stop after two weeks of initiation. So what do you do when 90 percent of your employees are independent contractors who may only be hired sporadically for short periods? How do you teach them how your business works? How do you answer questions that crop up on the fly on site? And how do you keep track of their interactions with your clients to ensure compliance?
With its mobile workforce of nearly 300 contractors and only ten core staff, Plutonic Zoo found itself in this situation, and found a solution in Mavim. Plutonic Zoo offers independent, impartial, service-focused IT advice, project outcomes and support for organisations looking to update their business processes, IT strategy, architecture, software applications or infrastructure.
"We started the business five years ago because we thought there was a gap in the market for asking all the ‘why’ questions in technical projects," says Victor Konijn, managing director for Plutonic Zoo. "We’re called Plutonic Zoo because we operate with a zoo of associates. What that means is all the people we pull in for our projects choose to do so out of the zoo. We select people based on their skill set as well as the match with the client’s culture. They’re all independent contractors, sometimes from niche organisations.
At the moment we work with around 300 individuals, who we approach whenever there is a particular need by a client."
Aside from contractors, Plutonic Zoo has a small core management, sales and administration team working in the North Sydney head office or remotely.
"It is fair to say that the less we are in the office the better we like it. It’s a very dynamic organisation, most client engagements happen on site. It’s very dynamic, very virtual at times.
Decentralised Documentation
Because of the dynamic, decentralised nature of its business, Plutonic Zoo needed a standardised system to ensure its business processes remained consistent in the face of constant change.
"Plutonic Zoo chose Mavim because they are growing, and they realised they can’t grow if they keep all their company information in their heads," says Florian Hoornaar, Mavim’s managing director for Australia.
"They can’t hire a new sales manager and say ‘do it like we do it’ without sharing information."
Mavim enabled Plutonic Zoo to establish a central repository of information, accessible at all times in the office, and on-site. All the processes that have to be in place to direct a project from tender to completion are now centralised.
"It all makes it a lot more visible, a lot more streamlined and a lot easier to oversee", says Konijn.
Mavim says that its software is like a help file on how your business operates. A conduit for access to that essential information locked up in the minds of your employees. Information that takes time to build up, is difficult to access in many situations and can be lost at a moments notice if that employee leaves the organisation.
"The information in Mavim is like procedural information," says Hoornaar. "So, if you’re a city council for example, and you have a front office and a back office, one of which only works two days a week and they handle many different types of requests.With Mavim, they write down all the different situations that can appear so if one of those staff members is not in the office and a question comes up, Mavim can be consulted and the answer found."
Plutonic Zoo has already seen the benefits of centralising, although it recognises that any archive of procedural information requires constant attention to remain accurate. Updating information and making sure your workers get only the most current version is made much simpler with a centralised system like Mavim.
"It’s an ongoing process, but the benefits you can already see are standardisation of staff accessibility and there by increased efficiency of access to documents, processes, policies and procedures," says Konijn. "New zoo members who deal with us for the first time, have a much clearer idea of what it is to be engaged in a Plutonic Zoo project and know what they are saying yes to when they take on a project."
Risk Management
Due to its centralised management and auditing capabilities, Mavim improves an organisations ability to comply with laws such as data retention while increasing the ability to manage risk through tighter organisation-wide processes.
"Mavim is process management software, which leads directly to compliance management", says Hoornaar. "One of the big motivators for organisations to document process in the first place is there are regulations and certifications out there that require them to write down how they handle their complaints.
"It is for compliance managers, financial controllers and quality assurance managers who are fed up with documentation that ends up being unmaintainable. They want a repository-based tool."
Because Plutonic Zoo’s work deals with technological solutions day in, day out, it has a good pool of knowledge that enables it to know exactly what it needed to keep its processes tight and compliant.
"Our technical team looked at a range of solutions", says Konijn. "We do our advisory work in the document management / record management / project management space so we are aware of what is going on and what is out there in the market. Mavim stood out for our own operations. As a result of Mavim, we standardise much more which makes it easier to check compliance. In that regards, it is sort of a risk management system implicitly."
"Our workforce is very diverse, so a standardisedapproach, which is user-friendly, helps. Because of the dynamic nature of our specialist base, our system needs to be very user-friendly, very intuitive. We can use it as a process manager as well as a document repository to provide some structure in our business operations."
Mavim has enabled Plutonic Zoo to manage its extremely diverse and decentralised workforce with ease. It can now devote less time and energy to basic training, and yet still reap greater level levels of efficiency and smoother workflow overall.
There is no longer any confusion over what a staff member is doing what, and the answer to any question is potentially at a contractor’s fingertips. As a result, Plutonic Zoo is able to manage its business in a more streamlined, consistent and above all, compliant way which has, in turn, generated increased business and operational efficiencies, and greater productivity and commitment among employees.