Case Study: Optimizing the Front End of Product Development for a Large Transportation Company

Description:
• A global transportation company had recently worked with MineLight Solutions (MLS) to design and implement an enterprise-wide process for embedding customer-centric and cross-enterprise analysis into their existing product development process
• The process owner was concerned that the customer-centric and cross-enterprise analysis would be compromised if it was not both user-friendly and well-aligned with the existing product development process. In consultation with MLS, the team’s leadership decided to pursue both process/workflow improvement and automation
  
• As a Fortune 200 organization, there were highly restrictive IT security protocols in place that limited options for tools that could enable process/workflow automation

Approach:
• We first analyzed the IT infrastructure to identify a “typical” user desktop image and determine potential tools for enabling automation
• We then streamlined the manual process by applying the technological enhancements of the chosen tool in a beta environment
  
• After the initial design was completed we conducted four focus groups with likely users of the automated tools and incorporated enhancements/fixes as appropriate
  
• Once the focus groups were complete we further enhanced the business requirements document and developed a series of test scripts to ensure compatibility with existing enterprise processes
  
• To finalize development we conducted a series of demonstrations with senior management personnel to ensure the automated tools were operating as intended

Results:
• The automated tools have become a cornerstone element of the company’s overall effort to embed customer-centric cross-enterprise disciplines throughout the organization
  
• User feedback has consistently exceeded expectations for efficiency, user friendliness and compatibility with existing processes