Do You Need A PhD To Do That?

5/11/2015 | Business Thoughts and Ideas

As our business grows each year, we learn more and more just how we provide the best value to our clients. Initially starting as a company building websites, it has been more apparent that the value we provide most to our clients is not simply creating a website but is by creating business solutions. Most businesses recognize when there is a problem but many struggle with finding the solution, this is exactly where Switchbox comes in.

A few weeks ago, we had a discovery meeting with a company with whom we had potential to work with as a client. We discussed process, problem areas and efficiency. While verbally navigating through each area of the organization, a particular employee stood out to us. This employee was a continued asset to the company’s team. He was a highly compensated employee, holding a PhD and extensive experience in their field of expertise. In the afternoons, this employee worked on high level, complex tasks for the company. However, each morning this individual spent four hours opening envelopes, reviewing applications and working on simple data entry for their company.

We had to ask, why did this business have a skilled, experienced employee working on low level needs each morning for four hours? The answer was simple, there wasn’t anyone else in the organization to do it. Even though it was lower level work, these tasks remained a vital part of their company and had to be completed each day.

We wanted to know more and asked how this employee would spend his time if the morning tasks were removed from his daily schedule. If he no longer worked on lower level items we were told, he would be able to focus his time on research, recruiting and various high level needs that would immensely help the business. So we proposed a solution: What if we made it possible for all employees and customers to go online and fill out their own data instead of having one person doing it all each day? We proposed an online form and detailed review workflow that would make this possible and ultimately free up time for an employee who could be making contributions elsewhere. To put it simply, they were overjoyed. This fix would only take Switchbox about 1 week to complete and in just about a month, the new form would have paid for itself.

This is just an example of Switchbox’s solution-based thinking that saves business’s time and money. Yes, we build websites and web applications but we also look at the bigger picture. We want to find the root of the problem and create a long term solution to keep business running effectively and efficiently.

Can we help free up some of your team’s time? We want to help you find that solution. Give us a call today.