Operations management\u2014whether IT, business, sales, marketing, etc.\u2014has four essential main objectives:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And in any industry, those objectives are driven by the most important goal, which is to generate revenue for the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While every single task or implementation may not directly impact revenue, the outcome of small improvements over time can be substantial. After a Google search for motivational quotes, I stumbled on James Clear\u2019s \u201cpower of tiny gains\u201d concept. In his book Atomic Habits<\/em><\/a>, Clear states, \u201cIf you get 1% better each day for a year, you’ll end up 37 times better by the time you’re done.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although the book is geared toward personal goals and success, it\u2019s a concept that supports business application, as well. It might be difficult to identify what a 1% improvement looks like for Operations Management, but I believe that any number of small changes implemented consistently over time will be impactful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was recently able to check one of my \u201c1% improvement\u201d backlog ideas off the list. And as it turned out, we were even able to leverage our own IT automation product, which resulted in its own 1% better outcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we noticed that web form submissions for Free Trials and Demo Requests had an excess of free mail accounts and invalid email addresses getting through\u2014despite a single API connection to an email validator\u2014the opportunity to improve the validation quickly made its way to the top of the list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Obtaining a valid business email upfront allows our Sales Development (SD) team to more quickly qualify an inbound lead by identifying whether they are already associated with an existing customer or target prospect account. This upfront knowledge may help the SD rep have a meaningful conversation with a potential customer tailored to their unique needs, as well as deprioritize conversations that are unlikely to be a good fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While discussing this influx of non-business and invalid email submissions on a cross-divisional call, one of our senior sales engineers volunteered to help find a better solution. After a brief review of the problem and what we had in place already, Jim, the senior sales engineer came up with a plan: \u201cI can do this in Resolve Actions. Piece of cake.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n