There are almost no But if you don’t put in the “You have to have leaders out CADVenture, a design software firm with 26 employees, “Prior to revamping our customer resource management Communicating to your “We want to try to minimize Everybody gets to address By being efficient with your The ultimate goal is to gain the “Some of the best advice that Your efforts at getting new “We look at what’s the ultimate goal,” Zebracki says. Once you begin looking, make “Be willing to spend the time While the initial training to “In some of our systems that One of the best ways to get the “Every one of the team players Employees can also help you “It all doesn’t come down to HOW TO REACH: CADVenture Inc., (440) 954-9589 or www.cadventureinc.com
boundaries to the ways
technology can help a company both increase its productivity and the efficiency with
which it conducts business.
time and effort to figure out
exactly how technology can
help you, the result could be a
lot of confused employees, says
Ken Zebracki, president of
CADVenture Inc.
on the floor who understand
the vision of the company and
understand what you’re trying
to establish,” Zebracki says.
“They, in turn, have to be good
at communicating and articulating that vision to the employees
so they embrace the technology
and understand it’s really trying
to make their jobs easier.”
has spent much of the past four
years upgrading its technology
to help its employees to be
more productive. But part of
the problem in the past had
been that employees were not
fully aware of the capabilities of
the technology that was already
in place.
system, it was really difficult for
people to get data into the system simply because it wasn’t an
intuitive system,” Zebracki says.
“Rather than embracing that
technology, people looked for
shortcuts around it, and we
weren’t necessarily getting
everything we needed out of it.”
employees about the technological changes that are being
made at your company is crucial. But you need to structure
the meetings about the changes so that people are getting the
information they need but are
not being bogged down with
details that don’t directly affect
their work.
unnecessary time that we might
have at meetings,” Zebracki
says. “The first part is when we
deal with core issues, the things
that everybody needs to know
about. The second part might
be the noncore issues of that
meeting, like a flex meeting. A
lot of people might have issues
that are important to them but
not necessarily to other people.
In that part of the meeting, if
anyone feels that what’s being
addressed is relevant to them,
they can stay. Other people
have the ability to leave.
what’s important to them.”
meeting time, you help ensure
that people get the information
that is most important to their
jobs without taking away from
other tasks.
buy-in of all your employees. So
you need to tell them — and
more important, show them —
what the new technology that
you’re considering can do to
help them so that you can gain
their support. You may be surprised what you get in return.
we got on how to put some of
our new systems together came
from those employees at that
level,” Zebracki says. “They are
the ones who use it every day. …
Listen to your employees.”
technology up and running as
quickly as possible will be
helped if you figure out what
you want before you start
looking at actual hardware and
software.
“That’s where we get everyone’s
feedback. We would define really what it’s going to take for our
business to be more productive,
and then we’d start seeking out
some of the solutions that may
or may not be available.”
sure you find vendors who are
more interested in helping you
than in simply touting the value
of their product.
to sit down and flow chart and
map out what we want the
products to do,” Zebracki says.
“Look for people that offer true
solutions, not just a piece of
software or hardware.” Make training a priority
introduce employees to new
technology is important, the
need for education never really
ends, says Ken Zebracki, president of CADVenture Inc.
we use internally, we have weekly training sessions that everyone attends,” Zebracki says. “It’s
actually through a lot of those
sessions where we still find new
and better ways to utilize the
product.”
most out of training is to allow
your own staff to conduct the
sessions.
would be responsible for different aspects of the training,”
Zebracki says. “Everybody was a
stakeholder. That’s what really
made it so effective. … No one
understands the business better
than they do. No matter how
hard you try, you just simply
can’t get that from the outside.
They know the product, but they
won’t know everything you do.”
improve the efficiency of your
systems.
money,” Zebracki says. “It can
be a simple everyday work flow
that employees have. They are
the people that go through it
every day. They figure out a way
to address something and make
it more efficient, for instance,
take something down from
seven steps to four steps. Listen
to them.”
