Performance Validation, LLC Next Generation Pharmaceuticals

Customer Centric Focus: Customer focus has been defined as placing the wants and needs of the customer as the central focus of all business practices within the company; in essence it is the perspective of seeing your business through the “eyes of the customer”.

Challenges
All Commissioning, Qualification and Validation (CQ&V) service providers hire professional personnel who are technically competent to manipulate information from hardware, software, and people into our normal project deliverables. These deliverables may include master plans, risk documents, user requirements, testing protocols and summary reports as the tangible outputs from our work processes, the elements that we can touch and thus our work product. The manufacturing aspect of our work converting information from a variety of sources into a useable output for technically trained personnel is the “easy” part of the job, and does not touch on the soft skills necessary to develop a culture of customer centric focus. As a case in point, services providers normally promote technical personnel to management positions based on exceptional technical performance and then are amazed when we identify shortfalls in their people or soft skills. We forget that excelling in technical work and excelling as a manager requires a different focus and application of different skills. To truly develop a customer centric focus across the organization requires a dual development of both technical and soft skills which are aimed at the following key elements:

Who are our customers?
One of the first questions that we need to resolve on any given project, is who our customers are? This may seem to have a simple answer, however depending on perspective there are multiple internal and external customers where relationships need to be developed, nurtured, and maintained to ensure the successful completion of the project. Even on a small CQ&V project the stakeholders may include multiple primary and secondary customers and each customer will have different wants, needs, desires and may have a unique perspective on how they will evaluate a successful project. Client customers may include, Facilities Delivery, Quality, Maintenance, IT personnel, Management representatives for the facility, and the end users (Operations personnel) who will occupy and work in the area. Other customers may include the Construction Manager, Construction trades, and other service providers who have an integral role in either completing work to specification, in providing documentation in a timely manner to support inspection and verification, or who are involved in rectifying errors identified in the field. Every organization that the CQ&V service provider comes into contact with throughout the duration of the project may have an opportunity to positively or negatively impact the success of the project.

What do our customers want: listening to the voice of the customer
Normally project needs are defined formally as part of the bidding documentation. This information may include facts, figures, and specifications which provide the details on specific project deliverables and formal requirements. The technical side can easily grasp these concepts and use this information to develop the project deliverables. However, in many cases the bidding phase of the project is similar to an iceberg where the obvious requirements are visible and to ascertain the total needs of the project one must identify the visible and hidden needs. The benefit of having technically competent personnel who have developed their soft skills is that this will allow discussions with the customer at various levels and assist in identifying these hidden needs or expectations. Normally, hidden needs can be identified thorough customer interviews to determine feedback on prior projects for example, what were the significant positive contributors that lead to the success of prior projects, what were the significant negative contributors that hindered progress. Or what is the benefit that this project will bring to your work group; division or department often times the benefit will depend on the perspective of the viewer. Seeing the project through the eyes of the customer is meant to allow the service provide the ability to identify additional needs that are not being met or to identify potential pitfalls that may negatively impact schedule, budget or quality. As a service provider we can bring our relevant experience on what has worked well to support project delivery on previous projects with other clients; however we must not allow our internal bias to predisposition our customer communications which may filter customer communications. From a service providers perspective the key to “WOW” the customer is to identify the customers hidden needs and then design the delivery of services in such a manner to meet these needs. Examples of voice of the customer concerns may include:

Quality:

• Client is paying contractors to fix their own mistakes (no first time quality).
• Provide options (what is best, risk-based approach; client needs viable alternatives to zero risk).
• Client fear of contractor switching resources after project award to less experienced less capable resources.

Efficiency in delivery of service:

• Client staff can complete the work as well as and more cost effective than, contracted resources.

Communications & Cost:

• Client is surprised and amazed at the cost to complete projects.
• Contractors should be able to provide service for less than it would cost for client to perform the work.
• Agree to scope and cost of work prior to starting and deliver on budget/schedule.
• Client feels contractor does not fully understand scope, thus many scope changes occur and drive up total project cost
• Clients are trying to do as much work internally because the contractors cost too much.
• The high cost of contactors is not the hourly rate but in the inefficiencies in performing the work.

Prioritize and negotiate customer desires

Once we have identified the customers, and listened to the voice of the customer we can internally prioritize these needs and identify potential conflicts between the various customers that need to be resolved. Again soft skills will be necessary to ensure that the technical personnel are able to negotiate effectively and promote good conflict that is necessary to ensure all key personnel have an opportunity to weigh in on the discussion such that they will be able to buy into the final decision and if necessary disagree and commit for the good of the project team. Without early communication and commitment from all of the stakeholders within a given project, it is nearly impossible to ensure project success. These kick-off meetings/discussions form the basis for the project flow and the guidelines for the work ahead. One of the biggest hurdles facing most CQ&V projects is the amount of risk that a company is willing to assume. Each customer within a company may have a different opinion on the level that is desirable for a particular project.

• Quality’s objective maybe to complete the project with a low risk solution,
• The funding customer’s objective maybe to complete the project within allowable tolerance for quality, schedule and budget and hit a target per square foot cost.
• The end user’s objective maybe to meet schedule and occupancy as his primary motivator for the project for the next series of products.

These positions may be visible but the implications to the project team may not be understood or perhaps these needs have not yet been verbalized and communicated in such a way to make tangible sense to the other project team members. For example, a project sponsor may request 6 approvers on all CQ&V deliverables, assuming there are an estimated 400 documents, with an hour review time per document this would equate to and additional 2400 man hours of labor, can the project support this, does it add value or can we reduce the number of approvers and thus reduce review/approval time and cost?
As shown in the above example it is critical to the project success that each customer voices their concerns and opinions and the team agrees to the level of risk that is acceptable up front and this commitment remains in tact through the entire project. This commitment to the risk level will form the basis for all future deliverables developed, reviewed, and executed. Throughout the project, is will be crucial for the project team to openly communicate any changes to the approached to reduce the amount of impact on schedule and project costs.

Design and execute
Once we have identified the customers visible and hidden needs, and resolved any potential conflict in priorities we need to identify how best to deliver our services to meet all of our customers needs. One method is thorough the use of a modified Six Sigma technique that is specifically adapted for use by service organizations, although any tool that will allow you to map customer requirements to specific service features can be used. This tool is called the Critical-to-Quality (CTQ) Flowdown and provides a graphic methodology to identify areas that are critical to your customer’s satisfaction and identify specific service features that address these concerns. The ability to track what is important to each customer and identify specific customer service features that will be implemented to address these concerns can provide the validation service provider with a customer centric focus and a distinct competitive advantage in exceeding customer satisfaction.

Partially completed CTQ flowdown

Designing the best methodology for delivery of services is of no avail if the plan is not executed well, the key point is that all members of the validation service provider will need to understand the methodology and commit to its implementation. The service provider will need to:

• Focus on customer’s needs and problems, and offer solutions. Understand the scope of the effort and strive to keep the project on track, by following through with the commitments made in the Critical-to-Quality flowdown. When changes do occur and the project scope is increased make sure the team understands the cost and time associated with implementing the CQ&V effort for the given modification to the project obtain the appropriate commitment prior to proceeding.
• If customers do change during the duration of the project repeat this process to ensure the voice of the new customer is heard, that the new customer is aware of commitments made to date and the efforts the service providers are taking to achieve customer satisfaction.
• Follow through with discussions (phone calls, email messages, and/or face-to-face meetings), promptly share both good and bad news.
• Go the extra mile. This means making an extra effort to fulfill customers needs – beyond their expectations.

Monitor and provide feedback

Establish specific milestones throughout the project to conduct formal reviews of the Project progress and take this opportunity to identify obstacles that prevent achieving customer needs. This review should encompass project deliverables, team communication, execution, and any general concerns that the customers may have regarding the project team. Communication during these meetings needs to be open and provided both ways – from customers to contractors and from contractors to customers. This forum to voice praise for projects components that are working well and identify areas that are causing concern is instrumental in providing the framework for the project to move forward successfully. Often times project start out with the best intentions, but fail to meet the customers’ needs because of a lack of continued open communication. A significant danger to the success of the project occurs when the project becomes complacent with respect to open and frank communications. When we assume that all is well because we have not heard anything to the contrary the alarm bells should be ringing. Provided good sustaining relationships have been established there is no better way to identify the good, bad or ugly with respect to the project than to talk to our peers.

Customer satisfaction and summary

If the CQ&V service provider can identify what the customer(s) needs and how the customer(s) would like these services delivered and design the project deliverables and project team to meet these objectives then we have accomplished our first objective to provide customer satisfaction, and to deliver a successful project.

The opportunity to convert a prospect to a new customer only occurs 5 to 20 percent. This is an expensive proposition, when 80 to 95% of your marketing efforts are not successful. The opportunity to convert a one time customer to a repeat customer is 60 to 75 percent and by using these tools to develop a customer centric focus once can build relationships that will lead to long term customer relationships. This relationship will benefit the customer as they will receive services from a known quantity in a consistent manner where the service provider is looking at the success of the entire organizational view.

References:

McGarahan, Pete (2005). Glossary of terms. Retrieved January 20, 2008, from McGarahan & Associates website:

http://www.mcgarahan.com/images/S17/Documents/
Contact%20Center%20Glossary%20of%20Terms.htm

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