Explore a sample of past process improvement initiatives that
improved product quality, cross-team collaboration, and workflow efficiency.
athenahealth, inc.
athenahealth, a cloud-based electronic medical records company, serves independent practices and hospitals in the SaaS space, offering mobile and browser charting capabilities unlike many desktop-based competitors.
Intelligent Client Data Collection
To onboard medical practices, multiple customer-facing teams gather over 300 total data points from clients, who often prioritize other tasks like staff training. Internally, redundant requests for the same information occurred due to various dependencies, necessitating a more efficient data collection and storage approach.
Data collection previously relied on fragmented email and phone communications, lacking transparency within the client-facing teams. Categorization efforts clarified responsibilities, reduced duplicate interactions, and aligned data with project timelines.
This involved categorizing each of the 300+ data points based on its impact, process stage, collector, recipient, and relevance to customer success. As part of the process improvement team, I also tested various collection methods such as spreadsheets and web-based forms to enhance organization and facilitate direct data imports into client software, minimizing manual input.
New Product Service Readiness
When Athenahealth expanded to include medical billing and revenue cycle management, my experience in piloting and refining processes positioned me to streamline these new services. Challenges included inefficient communication of critical information, inadequate training, and complexities in manual software setup.
I documented essential client readiness requirements, including activation timelines and responsible parties, while leveraging usage analytics to define success criteria. Centralizing critical information replaced individual Smartsheets. Collaborating with the training team, I developed materials tailored for employees and clients, ensuring consistency in messaging with sales and onboarding teams to properly set client expectations.
Recognizing the limitations of self-guided training videos for medical billing, I championed a more hands-on approach. I also partnered with the software team to automate settings and created monitoring reports to preemptively address activation issues.
By pilot’s end, our readiness criteria were integrated into client project plans, and automation and reporting efforts significantly reduced technical errors.
YP.com
Yp.com (now Thryv), previously Yellowpages.com and a subsidiary of AT&T, provided website hosting and building services for local small businesses. Its clients were entrepreneurs needing expert online advertising support while focusing on their business operations.
Offshore Quality Improvement
Recent changes, including offshore production, led to declines in quality and customer satisfaction. The main issues were cross-cultural communication and a lack of familiarity with US English and business practices. Offshore teams struggled with ambiguity and lacked the same frameworks that stateside team members had for implicit rules.
As a quality team member, I used my background in English and my collaboration skills to diagnose and resolve these issues. My review revealed that unclear instructions from the stateside team were the primary problem. I created guidelines for clearer, simpler instructions and coached the team accordingly.
To improve US English proficiency, I assessed potential offshore hires’ grammar and developed a curriculum on grammar, spelling, American geography, and photo usage. I conducted weekly virtual lessons and regular quizzes over two months to gauge improvement and track understanding.
These efforts increased the web product quality score by an average of 4.01%, with all audited products scoring above 95.93%. Five out of the 13 audited products achieved a perfect score of 100% by the end of the year.
Expedia
Expedia is a leading name in online travel, catering mainly to budget travelers who prioritize affordability over hotel and airline loyalty. It allows both multinational chains and independent lodgings to list on its platform.
Expedia’s self-service listing model, while guided, often frustrated less tech-savvy users due to a cumbersome onboarding process. The lack of a standardized method for collecting listing information led to inconsistent practices among employees.
To address this, I created a process checklist to track collected and pending information. Praised for my organizational skills by account managers who managed client relationships after onboarding, I shared it with my team at their recommendation. The UX team also invited me to provide feedback on client challenges based on firsthand experience. My process document was eventually distributed to the entire North America lodging team.