Business Lessons Learned From The Check-Out Aisle

When there is an issue at your neighborhood chain grocery store, the cashier doesn’t call the CEO of the company for help. The cashier goes to his or her manager and they figure out a solution. This process is followed at grocery stores, retail outlets, and fast food chains all across the world. Why? Because it’s efficient. The manager will know better how to resolve the problem than the CEO would.

When it comes to deploying software, we have implemented a similar process. If an employee in accounting decides that some new software needs to be installed on his or her machine, instead of calling us to install it, the employee goes to the manager, and if the manager agrees with the request, inputs his or her password to allow the software to be installed. Why? Because it’s more efficient.

We don’t know the software that everyone needs and we don’t want to be responsible for making that decision. By putting the decision-making power in the hands of the employee’s manager, we have allowed the person who knows best to make the determination. If there is a problem with the installation of new software, the employee or the manager can contact us and we will work to solve the problem.

Just because the problem is technical does not mean that a technician needs to be involved.

If you want to learn more about how we did this, please drop me a line.