Informal processes hold you back: How Technology Systems helped Enrolmy grow
About Enrolmy
The Enrolmy Team
Enrolmy provides cloud-based software to enable easy and fast interaction between parents/caregivers and child activity providers. Parents can enrol their kids into classes and lessons, before and after school care or holiday programmes in a few simple steps; providers can easily manage their customer bookings, payments, communication and other key processes.
The challenges of scale
Over the last few years, Enrolmy has found its market, enabling them to grow steadily. This means they’ve moved from a start-up to a scale-up, where the company operates on a larger scale to meet customer needs. (If you are unsure which phase you are in, please refer to Are you a Startup or a Scaleup?)
But this transition presented three key challenges to Enrolmy. Firstly, they had to clarify the way they proposed new ideas, ensuring that the suggestions with merit could smoothly move from discussion to action. Secondly, they had received a grant from Callaghan Innovation, which required evidence that they were properly managing, reporting and delivering on the intended purpose of these funds. Thirdly, they needed a streamlined, more sustainable way of working.
To overcome these challenges, they reached out to me, David Stokes, the Founder and Principal Consultant from Technology Systems.
When informal processes are no longer enough
Like many start-ups, Enrolmy began with a few informal processes, relying on individuals to know what to do and communicate amongst themselves. As the company grew, however, functional teams were formed to support their growing customer base and the increasing complexity of the software. As such, coordinating activities between individuals and teams became critical.
Let’s make it formal: Developing and refining processes
Drawing on my experience in developing, refining and implementing processes in other companies, I worked with each team to evaluate which processes needed work. Together, they mapped out on a whiteboard the different steps for each process, and their relationship with other systems. I then suggested ways to streamline those processes focusing on the scalability of each one. What would the processes need to look like if Enrolmy and their customer base doubled or even tripled in size? (In fact, at the time of writing, their size has actually quadrupled!)
Ensuring everyone’s on the same page: The Enrolmy Way
It’s not enough to merely clarify your processes. They must also become the standard way of working that everyone understands and follows. That’s why the next step was to develop a knowledge base using Confluence Software.
Similar to the image below, their knowledge base is called The Enrolmy Way. It’s a central resource of information about how Enrolmy works and is an easy way for staff to find, use and update processes.
As well as mapping out different processes, The Enrolmy Way captures the following details of each of those processes. For example, for the Idea Management Process:
Purpose: Which ideas are being assessed and which ones should be actioned.
Inputs: Who generated the idea, for example, customers, partners, employees, etc.
Outputs: Validated ideas that should be implemented.
Tools: The necessary resources that are used to support the process, for example, Idea Tracker in Jira.
Roles and Responsibilities: Who is responsible for reviewing, assessing and deciding which ideas should be implemented.
Process Steps: Includes how each idea is assessed and prioritised against various criteria, such as alignment to strategy, return on investment, market size, and customer importance.
Refer to other reading Oops, I said the “P” word ….
Tools to Support the Processes
Before engaging me, Enrolmy had experimented with various tools. While the software team were comfortable with Jira for task and bug tracking, the other teams weren’t too keen on it and were using several other tools to find one that works.
However, sometimes good tools fail to work or are poorly adopted. This could be because they are not fit for purpose, they are set up incorrectly, or the users may not be fully aware of the software’s technicalities.
But with over 15 years’ of experience with the Atlassian suite of tools, I know Jira and its quirks inside out. As such, I refined the way Jira was being used to better suit each Enrolmy team and introduced agile methods to boost productivity.
For further reading, refer to: Collaboration Tools for remote team members
Success
Dean Pendergrast, Enrolmy’s CEO, describes how working with me has helped get:
“The whole company on the same wavelength. [Introducing] appropriate tools ensure all parts of the company [can be] measured and reported upon. This really helped the company hum along and created a self-regulating environment. I now have a deeper insight into all the different departments of the business. This gives me greater confidence in my team and their activity and results.”
Do your processes need a spruce up?
If you are interested in refining your processes so you can scale sustainably and grow in confidence, please get in touch via: www.tech-sys.co.nz