Industry - Content Driven

Getting it right up front really sped up the time-to-value. Thus, your end-to-end visual depicted the future-state of the workflow AND training modules with the right individuals already up-to-speed mentally and experientially on the new workflow—because they helped define their new workflow in analog on-the-wall fashion.

Finally, I recall for our conversation, you had the winning vendor train your operators to the specific workflows as defined by—initially—the rough draft user manual.

TM: Yes. So we wrote our own training manual.

MM: Yes. Fabulous. This gets the central idea of process maturity, where from the get-go you started off with a documented workflow, and then built training into the workflow.

TM: Yes. Well, training was definitely a part of the change-management.

MM: It’s also a part of the mindset called, “There’s no such thing here any more as an undocumented work.” And documented work without training is only half the solution.

TM: Yes.

MM: In the few remaining minutes that we have—as I recall—you installed your team installed the software on a Saturday and went live four or so days later. Take us through the startup process.

TM: Oh, boy. Originally, I think, we were going to do a pilot. But since we were working on live data, there were only a few minor mess-ups in the first two weeks, and we decided to keep everything live. I believe that within 60 days, we were already producing new catalogs. I forget the exact, right now, Michael. But it was one of those things where you go, “Okay. We’re going to take a short step,” and we ended up running.

MM: So from our previous conversation, you indicated that installed the software on a Saturday and started working on live data four days later, using the five days or so as to conduct final quality assurance and training. So in two weeks, you pretty much had operators in workflows producing commercial product.

TM: Yes. They were producing. They were in production flow.

MM: The hand-over process was relatively painless and fast.

TM: Yes. I think that we ran into some obstacles the first month or two, but nothing that was a showstopper.

MM: Excellent. Thanks so much.

Tom Marine holds a BA in Journalism from Marshall University, and has been involved in publishing/pre-press environments since 1977. He is currently the Special Consultant to the Owner of Johnson Ventures, Columbus, IN. Tom has been involved in DAM implementation for multi-channel marketers since 1997, including a 1,000-page catalog and 300+ page catalogs.

MM: Then you said, “Okay. Let’s go find vendors, then, who can automate this new idealized workflow.”

TM: Yes. Well, you know, a lot of that was going on simultaneously, too. By then, I knew who the vendors were.

MM: Right.

TM: Yes.

MM: As I recall, you started off with 15 or so vendors, in terms of your not short-list, but your medium-list. Right?

TM: Right. So I probably looked at 100, and we cut it down to 15 for a more thorough review.

MM: At that point, as I recall, you brought them in and showed them the current and future states. You asked them to speak to how they would automate the future state. Is that right?

TM: We only brought in four. We sat them down in the room after they gave their presentation. We set them down in the room and said, “Okay. Here’s our flow. Now we’re going to leave you here for a while. When we come back, we want you to present to us how you can affect our flow.” So we really put them on the spot.

MM: Not just “affect our flow,” but implement it.

TM: Implement your solution. How is your solution going to integrate with our flow?

MM: So what came out of that?

TM: Well, some things that we were able to gauge. To say, “These people are telling us the truth. These people speak our language and understand what we do. These people are not trying to fit a round peg into a square hole.”

For instance, one group would say, “Oh, yes. We can do all of that. We’ll just make it work.” That’s not what we wanted to hear. We wanted to hear the truth.

One person would say, “You know what? You’ve got a pretty good solution here. We can automate this and automate this and automate this. We’re not sure about this automation here. You may have to keep this as a manual process for a while, until a new version comes out. Or we can implement it as a part of our software.”

Then there were people that would talk about heuristic attitudes and speak a different language. We knew that they didn’t understand the catalog business. So when we started talking to people that not only talked our language and understood what product groupings and SKUs were—and making sure that there was an image that could be saved in a directory as a JPG and the high-res image in a similar place. We understood that they knew what they were talking about.

So it was almost an interview, as well.

MM: Yes. And then you selected a vendor.

TM: Well, we actually went through two stages of that. We had them back to. We actually took some partial data and then presented to us. We cut it down to two, then, after the four. Then each of those two came back and presented to us with our data.

MM: Then at that point, you applied activity-based costing. We already identified that the current-state workflow entailed 300 steps. How many steps did the new, enhanced workflow—entail?

TM: 200.

MM: So clearly, a third of the steps went away?

TM: Absolutely.

MM: Now activity-based costing allowed you to calculate with fairly good accuracy the economic value of eliminating those 100 steps.

TM: That’s correct.

MM: And do you recall what that was?

TM: I couldn’t put my finger right on that number, but I know it was more than the cost of the software.

MM: Right. So in the course of that, you also were able to estimate gains in cycle time. Is that right?

TM: Yes. In fact, that was a major thrust. We knew that we wanted to produce the catalog twice. At that point, we were only producing it once a year.

MM: So basically, you were going to be able to double your cycle time. Not double, but cut it in half.

TM: Cut it in half.

MM: So once you identified that that was a change worth making, the pain associated with the gain would be that there were 100 steps missing with economic value of $500,000 or $400,000. And halving the cycle time would produce incremental sales—as a function of being able to get refreshed content out there.

TM: Yes.

Ancillary Benefits

MM: The other benefit is that now you had your website and your catalog more closely synchronized.

TM: Right.

MM: So you didn’t have one price one place and another in another.

TM: Right.

MM: That would reduce a certain number of customer service cycles. Or discounts that were more like “make-goods,” as a function of satisfying the customer. Right?

TM: Right.

MM: I recall from our previous conversations that while at Hubert, you played an instrumental role in reworking their core catalog production processes, developing an integrated workflow for the print and online catalog. This entailed driving many internal changes around how to produce multichannel marketing communications and, specifically, big-book catalogs

TM: That’s correct. Something we did at Hubert—in 1998 and 1999—was to rework the flow of catalog production. That also then was in the early stages of getting the web online. So there were multiple reasons to do that.

Central went through a similar process. There were a few steps different, because it was 10 years later. But there are an awful lot of things that are very similar in how to approach this new, very integrated relational database situation.

I was basically the evangelist of the Hubert change, and I did that at Central. Along with that, I handled a lot of the database publishing duties for other K+K-America companies. Including C&H Distribution and Connie Safety, at the time. I was also highly involved in their integration into their publishing database, as well.

Change Process

MM: As we develop our master-class profile in this interview, detailing how to facilitate and drive these sorts of process transformations, perhaps we develop combined narrative from your experience with Central Restaurant and Hubert. So, let’s start with what typically kick-starts a change process: a catalytic event. What happened that required a change in workflows, either at Hubert or at Central Restaurant?

TM: ‘Require’ is a strong word. In both cases, the company saw itself as a business leader and having a best-in-class environment. While Hubert did not want to not have the best systems, Central was dead-set on having a best-in-class environment in all of their different technological pieces.

MM: Where did that notion arise in the organization?

TM: In 2006 by Johnson Ventures purchased Central.

As the owner, Rick Johnson just believes that having the best in class for anything—that’s where he wants to be. Now, the best in class doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be the best out there. It could mean it’s just the best for the environment for the company at its particular stage—and looking toward the future.

An example might be an Endeca solution, a guided navigation solution for a website that is best in class. But it’s best in class for the big boys, and maybe that’s not necessarily needed for a company of our size.