Restaurants on the Run - Lean Sigma

Process Mapping

Identifying A Problem

We selected the TakeOut

‘contract to launch’ process

because they were

experiencing delays in

having restaurants go live

Environment

● Implementation Team spends 15 hours per

week sorting through the same emails

o All team members receive customer

emails and responses simultaneously

● Team focused primarily on customer

responses rather than on production of work

● Backlog of work within Operations team

● Employees & Customers were frustrated

● No visibility of open cases and work

Defining The Problem Statement

Priority Matrix

Problem Statement: Customers are not

receiving email responses within 24 hours.

Problem Statement: Kickin Chicken was not

able to go launch in 90 days.

Through this process we identified a lot of

bleeding from outside of our control, so we

refocused on what we could control

Problem Statement

Responding to all

customers within

one day is

contributing to a

backlog of

operations

Root Cause ● This impacted their ability to work on

launching new customers and other

operational tasks

● To validate we interviewed and shadowed

the implementation team

● We learned that we were finally on the

right track

o Employees were feeling strained

o There was inconsistent workflow

o Team members were responding to

the same customer issues, at times

resulting in further problems

● We identified that the Current email

process being inefficient was the most

viable cause

Solution Development

Decision Making

● Increase production during normal

business hours by 13%

● Worked through two options, which were

to implement a New Support Schedule or

a Support Tracking System

● Implementing Support Tracking System

appears to be our most viable option

Risk Assessment

Implementing a Support Tracking System was

the most viable solution

Solution Planning & Implementation

The Mind Map

Plan Task Sequence

Safeguarding The Plan

Possible Problems Probability Results

Customer usage & adoption HIGH HIGH

Staff usage & adoption HIGH HIGH

No funding LOW HIGH

System failures LOW HIGH

System incompatibility LOW HIGH

Difficulty in learning software LOW MED

Insufficient training LOW MED

Employee buy in LOW MED

Upper management support LOW HIGH

Lack of resources to

implement solution

LOW MED

Unable to launch on schedule HIGH LOW

Back Up Plan

Problems Problem

Elimination

Back-Up Plan

Customer usage & adoption Send weekly communications notifying clients of

transition

Reply to customers and notify them of new email

address

Create automated response notifying clients to send

issues/question to proper email

Delete old email account so customers will get

bounceback email

Staff usage & adoption Monitor number of open tickets per employee and

provide feedback and additional training

Remove support team from ops@takeout.com email

address

Schedule 1 on 1 sessions with employees to review

expectations, and set improvement goals

Gantt Chart

Results

TakeOut Technologies Team Today

During this process, TakeOut Technologies decided to launch a support tracking

system through Zoho Customer Support. The product was launched January 5, 2015.

They have seen a significant improvement in their service, but are still working

through the bearings of the new system. They anticipate the system will be fully

integrated with their software by Q3 of 2015.

Current Environment

● Increased productivity by 31%

● Increased Focus for team members

● Clearer expectations for team and customers

● More Organized - ability to track tickets

● Ability to track response times to customer inquiries

Comments from TakeOut Tech Team Members:

Anita Boivin - “Implementing Zoho has definitely saved us valuable time when reviewing, assigning, and tracking service

emails.”

Jennifer Bolander - “I have seen a significant drop in the amount of emails going to my Outlook inbox. Mondays are way more

productive than they used to be. With Zoho, it is now easy to search for a ticket and see if there was a response and what the

response was. When only using Outlook, this process was tedious and frustrating. Now I can open Zoho and be able to see

immediately the status of tickets. My morning process which used to take hours during very busy times now takes about 30

minutes (give or take).”

Before & After

What we learned!

● Identifying the right problem statement is critical, you may

have 2-3 before being able to move forward

● Don’t jump to a solution without following the steps, as

the initial solution can be the wrong choice

● Follow the process. The most obvious solution may not

be the root cause

● Focus on what you can control

● The Lean process takes time and patience, but when

done correctly, the results can make a significant impact

to the business and the employees

KAIZEN (GOOD CHANGE)

Presented By:

Sean Bates

Melanie Van Rensburg

Lan Chu

Ben Moshinsky

Kristyn Millar

TakeOut Technologies, a Restaurants on the Run Company