The Big Cheese-IO summons me to his office on the top floor.
When I get there my counterpart who manages operational activities is already seated in the only chair opposite the BC (Big Cheese-IO).
BC tells us that he has to bring about some efficiencies and that ourmost expensive costs are human resources.
He makes it clear that everyone’s teams needs to be more efficient or there will be cuts to headcount.
Ops manager, who always has his sleeves rolled up, barks that it is impossible and that his teams are maxed out firefighting various issues in order to maintain the businesses ability to… erm do business.
Keen to also protect my scant resources, I counter that the pipeline of projects planned to improve the business are already almost 3 months behind schedule precisely because of delays because of lack of resources.
BC asks us to provide reports with compelling evidence to support our respective statements and waves us out of his office abruptly.
We both leave, Ops manager returns to his desk and I can see him chewing his lip and sweating over the resource scheduling spreadsheet that he uses to manually schedule and track his staffs activities. He has been using it for a decade.
I spend 2 minutes at my desk on Insight™ . Within a few clicks I have compiled a report showing resources dedicated to various project tasks, their skillsets, what team they are in, what specific hours, days that they have been working on projects, AND their unfinished activities projected out to the end of the financial year. Its very clear that we don’t have enough project resources but those that we have are using their time very efficiently.
Knowing that the Big Cheese-IO won’t login to Insight™ to view the Exec dashboard that I set up for him, I click to generate the dashboard report as a pdf and send it to him instead by email.
Minutes later he appears at my desk which he has never done before. He wants to know how I managed to produce the report so quickly yet Ops manager wont be able to submit his report till next week!
I glance at the office clock.. its hands are pointing to 18:10.
I smile and offer to tell him about it over a drink on the way to the station.
He counters with an invite back to BC’s office where I hear that facilities ensure a well stocked cabinet of fine brandies are always maintained.
As we head towards the lift I look back and see Ops manager still peering at his spreadsheet…
Back in BC’s office with brandy glass in hand I notice that BC’s office has panoramic views, I can see the London Eye and also most of the City of London.
It looks serene at night.
Counterpart Insight™ is a work management platform to unify your enterprise initiatives resulting in resource optimization, work efficiency and real-time collaboration. Out of the box, we provide a client with configurable set of tools that can be used to get you up and running within days, providing gains in every area and a return on investment and measurable savings within weeks.
For more information go to: www.counterpart.com
