Multi-Year Compendium of Information Technology Company Case Studies (2005 to 2007): Meeting Proceedings

Information Technology companies share space in one of the business world’s most competitive industry sectors. IT firms also share many of the same challenges of other industries including, customer service, continuous process improvement and employee engagement. The IT case studies in this compendium were delivered by leaders at Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, IBM and others at Global Benchmarking Council meetings between 2005-2007. This compendium is a valuable tool for any IT executive interested in improving the customer experience, managing virtual teams or “rebooting” an organization’s Lean Six Sigma initiative.

COMPANIES AND CASE STUDIES
Best Practices, LLC analysts distilled company presentations into brief summaries that highlight the key challenges each presenter and their company faced, their action plans, and the results and lessons learned.

Enhancing the Customer Experience
· Intuit Inc. shared how the company manages its seasonal call center operations during tax season. The presentation offered insight into how this unusual, highly-seasonal business model manages to enhance the ability of the CSR to deliver great customer service “Utilizing VoIP & the Web to Create Great Customer Experience.”
· Teradata delivered examples of how significance, relevance and timing are key in the training of call center employees to ensure success in driving high value through “Winning Strategies for Customer Interaction Management.”
· Hewlett-Packard shared innovative approaches to reach the client through the creative use of visualization tools. By using these visualization tools and focusing on what the customer needs, as opposed to what the company wants to sell, HP is “Driving Exceptional Customer Experience in the B:B Environment.”
· Fujitsu lent the company’s IT perspective to explain how consolidation of staffing and administrative support allows for economies of scale and better leveraging of resources. Fujitsu leverages what works well internally in “Establishing a Center of Excellence Surrounding Call Center Services.”
· Microsoft explained the strategy behind its detailed customer surveys – aligning employees with the company vision is the first step toward “Increasing Customer and Partner Satisfaction Step by Step.”
· Texas Instruments illustrated the importance of intensive customer satisfaction surveys and how to best develop and use them as part of “Driving Continuous Customer Satisfaction Improvement.”
· Intuit revealed how its matrix of sales and service teams synchronizes its customer service strategy through best practices in sales force deployment, sales and service training and operational effectiveness. The company’s practices are all part of “Building a Customer-Centric Telesales Strategy.”

Winning with a Virtual Team
· Cisco Systems shared its paradigm-shifting perspective on trends in real estate and IT as they relate to an increasingly mobile workforce and “Virtual Teaming in Virtual Organizations.”
· IBM presented the company’s perspective on effective virtual teams, enabling technologies and language issues faced by global virtual teams as part of “Managing Global Projects in the Virtual Environment.”

Process Improvement and Change Management
· Hewlett-Packard gave an overview of the company’s MarketVision portal for managing market research through a single point of access for all business intelligence and market research. It’s all part of “Market and Industry Research – Bringing the Outside In.”
· GE Infrastructure shared best practices in applying Lean Six Sigma principles in New Product Introduction processes with respect to customer focus, innovation and commercial execution. Process improvements must range across functions and impact the external customers to be implemented, according to “Lean Six Sigma on New Product Introductions.”
· Sun Microsystems outlined the warning signs in an organization that point to the need to revisit a Lean Six Sigma initiative. System slowdowns, fatal errors and resources unavailable are all signs that beg the question, “Is it Time to ‘Reboot’ your Lean Six Sigma Initiative?”

Employee Engagement
· Hewlett-Packard discussed approaches and practical solutions to leverage employee engagement programs to meet the needs of a dynamic, diverse and global workforce as part of “Employee Engagement…Across Distance and Difference.”
· Teradata discussed gathering and retaining knowledge of detailed processes, using analytics to foster teamwork and manage employee resources by “Driving Employee Relationship Management through Data and Business Intelligence.”

METHODOLOGY
This report was compiled from notes taken from speaker presentations at Global Benchmarking Council meetings from 2005-2007.

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