Mobile & Web Applications
Surface Transport & LogisticsFor one leading pharmaceutical laboratory, success and double-digit sales growth came with a cost: an overburdened supply chain that threatened to reduce market share.
The effort vastly improved the company’s planning and execution functions, they knew that in order to succeed in this era of technology their accounting systems needed to be much more robust than what they are. They turned to VCG Digital to improve their accounting systems.
challenge
The biggest challenge was that the client was not utilizing technology properly. Too much of the work was still being recorded manually, which meant that the numbers took a long time to note down and then to be analyzed. Live data was also not available and decisions can only be made after all the required data and been received. This was holding them back; they knew they could corner more of the market if they had the ability to be more mobile. The work addressed three critical issues:
- Improve sales and operations and production planning:
The teams focused their efforts on a few of the highest-value S&OP levers in order to review the current planning process, identify gaps in the planning infrastructure and analytically understand demand and supply variability. - Determine the right inventory level:
With hundreds of medications in the market, they needed a proper method to predict and manage their inventory. Using a mean absolute percentage analysis (MAPE), the teams defined appropriate levels for raw materials and finished products by mapping actual versus forecasted sales on the most important SKUs. - Optimize the supply chain for perfect order planning:
The diagnostic determined the stressors that affected sales and service levels. The teams focused on resolving issues related to higher-than-normal back-orders and lead times, which stressed the entire supply chain and led to delays in medications reaching consumers.
solution
The solution VCG Digital came up with combined cutting edge technology with real world practicality. Everyone knew that the systems had to be updated, the real challenge was updating them without disrupting the whole organization in a negative way. The solution was to introduce proper workload management done through computers, while providing mobile platforms to the stakeholders.
This allowed the workers to be involved in the job instead of feeling like they had been made redundant by technology.
results
The effort vastly improved the company’s planning and execution functions, created and implemented a new stock policy that accounted for specific SKUs and key variables, streamlined the order preparation process and reduced distribution transport times.
By the numbers, the effort:
- Reduced lead time by 43%
- Decreased variability by 50%
- Lowered the risk of back-order by 95%
- Increased stock for finished goods by 10%
While both Design Thinking and User-centred Design are about putting yourself in the shoes of the end-user, the primary difference between the two is that Design Thinking is a method to develop solutions to solve the end-users’ problem, which are not solely user-interface related, as with User-centred Design. Design Thinking relies heavily on innovation and ideation to create solutions, and can be applied to service, policy or process design, or to come up with a new product idea.
Design Thinking utilizes an iterative five-step process, that can be applied to all industries and organizations to reinforce innovation, solve problems, strengthen leadership and boost creativity, while helping users better understand their end-clients’ needs and provide the best possible services and solutions for their end-clients. The five step Design Thinking process includes:
- Empathize phase – personifying end-users to understand their challenges and needs
- Define phase – pinpointing the end-user challenges that need to be solved
- Ideate phase – selecting solutions to prototype with end-users
- Prototype phase – prototyping solutions; initially low fidelity, but increasing fidelity through iterations
- Test phase – testing solution prototypes with end-users
* Continue to iterate between ideate/prototype and test until you have a satisfactory solution to defined challenge(s).
Also placing emphasis on the end-user, User-centred Design is specifically applied to digital processes and interfaces. Part of the ISO92400 regulation, User-centred Design is a term developed by the software industry as a practice for developers who care about the user of their digital tool. The process centres around enhancing user satisfaction with a product by improving the usability, accessibility, and pleasure provided in the interaction with the product.
User-centred design asks designers to employ a mixture of investigative (e.g., surveys and interviews) and generative (e.g., brainstorming) methods and tools to develop an understanding of user needs. The UCD process doesn’t prescribe specific methods or tools to use, however, as with Design Thinking, UCD does provide concrete steps for application. The five-step UCD process includes:
- Research phase – typically contextual enquiry, or interviews
- Concept phase – ideating concept prototypes to design and test
- Design phase – initially medium fidelity, but increasing fidelity through iterations
- Develop phase – building the de-risked design
- Test phase – utilizing the developed product
* Continue to iterate between design/test and build until you have a satisfactory product.
At a high-level it is easy to conclude these terms are very similar; both frameworks aim at insuring the users’ needs are at the centre of the tool created. However, upon closer inspection, the concept of Design Thinking is broader, with more applications than that of User-centred Design. The former focuses on innovation and ideation, and is about finding user-focused solutions to develop products, policies and services to meet user-needs, whereas the latter applies to the creation of user-focused digital interfaces.
With technology become easily accessible, user experience is becoming the differentiator in products and services. Design Thinking is the creative problem-solving process which a designer follows in the mind as well as in action in different phases to come up with a usable, elegant solution that really solves the problem.
It can be applied to solving real-world wicked issues like huge lines in front of ATM, Climate Control, etc or even as an approach to come with a digital product for a startup or in a corporate environment.
Behavioural intelligence is the cornerstone of proactive insider risk reduction and detection. It is a structured approach to the collection, analysis and interpretation of information and observations about people within a work context. Behavioural intelligence analysts use variety of methods drawn from psychology, communication theory, anthropology and other human and data sciences to make sense of the complex patterns of human interactions.
A combination of good leadership and management practices, evidenced-based assessment and technology solutions can provide you with the tools needed to prevent insider attack. Organisations need to take the opportunities presented during recruitment, training, performance reviews, and exit interviews to be more proactive in detecting key risk factors, discourage disaffection and identify those who may be at risk for executing an insider attack.
Organisational Behavioural intelligence services provide decision makers with concise and actionable intelligence to address a wide range of personnel and cultural challenges. Structured and methodical, it allows senior decision makers to avoid the traps of pre-existing biases through the use of objective evidence in understanding the existing culture of the organisation and the attitude of their employees in order to address difficult situations, tackle organisational conflict and gain acceptance for organisational change.
Change engagement is about HOW to engage people and undertake the most effective change.
Change psychology is about HOW to engage people and undertake the most effective change.
Change management is about WHAT we do with people in the change process people.
It’s about winning the hearts and minds of your people, and getting them to champion the change.
how can we help you?
VCG Digital has been instrumental in guiding our Digital change and BIM initiative. This has allowed us to invest objectively with an eye on value and focus on outcomes for the end-users”
