Enter the Matrix

We came across an interesting occurrence; in fact this has happened a few times before, we thought that this would be a good experience to share to a broader audience.rnSequence of Events: One fine Monday morning the CEO and COO of a company are out on a client visit. Later that afternoon the COO was looking into VA Matrix (her new business analysis/decision support tool) production reports for the hourly update of the progress in their organization. She is startled by what she sees; 1:00 PM and the team has not closed any orders for the day! She hurriedly sends an email to her second in line asking why the team has not closed their business; her second in line gets data by walking around. People on the team frantically close out a few files that they have been working on and report that they have closed three files so far and they even move on to close an extra file before 2:00 PM. The team manager reports back jubilantly that she checked with the team and that they have closed three files. The COO is now concerned that VA Matrix is reflecting wrong data and sends a note to VA saying that "VA Matrix is incorrect, this afternoon I checked VA Matrix and it showed that 0 files were closed but when I checked with the team they had already closed 3 files". 20 Minutes later the report runs again and this time shows that there are 4 files that have been processed and closed, this report is correct. She sends another mail to the VA team saying things are looking good now (Talk about her commitment to the organization even when on a vacation!). VA team gets this information and reviews the time stamps on the business analysis/decision support tool to check when the files were closed the operations team in the office and sends an email out explaining what happened and why the numbers were indeed correct and the files were closed between 1:00 PM and 2:00 PM in the afternoon. What actually happened: Since the CEO and COO were gone things started a shade slowly at the office than usual. This is normal but the team is very conscientious and worked hard but were pulled in different directions all morning long and could not close any sales/accounts/files till 1:00PM, which reflected on the business analysis/decision support tool when COO checked for the progress of her organization. If there was no business analysis tool, there as a good chance that they would have been addressed by the end of the day. There is also a good chance that these files might be missed out and not addressed at all until the next day. Imagine what would have happened if these files were indeed missed out and the COO had no visibility. The conversation would have gone something like this even if the COO was as super driven and had called in to check with the team in the evening. “Hi no. 2, how was the day? How many files did we close today?” No.2: “Well… I am not sure I will check with the team tomorrow and send you an email”. Then the next day if the files were not closed, it would have caused confusion and panic. This could have created a big cascade of issues. Usually when you implement a new business visibility/decision support tool in your organization it's a little strange and you don't see desired results, this is because you see things about your organization that you normally would never see, but with a little patience you will observe the impact it has on you bottom line and the organization as a whole. In this case the business analysis/decission support tool was Vantage Agora’s ‘VA Matrix’ but you can substitute this with any business analysis/decision support tool of your choice. If you need a Business visibility tool tailored to the requirements of yP&C our organization contact anyone of us at Vantage Agora and we will be glad to help!