As a Product Manager within BigChange, it is my job to liaise with customers and really understand their problems and how we can solve them. I then create requirement/work items for our cross-functional teams (we call them PODs) to work on.
We often do this via online meetings, but we find a true understanding of how customers work on BigChange, and any difficulties they face, actually comes from me paying a visit to the customer’s site. To gain a stronger understanding of customers’ needs and obtain a true appreciation for the way they use our system, it is much more beneficial to visit our customers on-site in a face-to-face environment. A good alternative is watching users work in BigChange over a video conference.
It’s the tacit knowledge that people don’t even realise they hold. When your job becomes second nature, you start to perform it without consciously thinking about what you are doing. For us, being there and watching an expert perform those tasks can often lead us to have a much deeper understanding and prompt us to ask questions that we may not have thought about if we were just having a conversation.
A prime example of this was a few weeks ago when I paid a visit to R&S Services. I had the pleasure of meeting Gwen who looks after the warehouse and inventory there.
Gwen was able to walk us through the long-winded and manual processes she has to go through every day to enable her and the team to keep stock levels correct for engineers’ vans, order stock for delivery to the warehouse and the selection of stock for specific jobs.
In turn, I was able to share with Gwen my vision for how the stock module will develop in the very near future and offer some reassurance that her concerns are being listened to and acted upon.
With the forthcoming redesign of the stock area, we intend to introduce many features designed to make the stock module reliable and one that our customers can trust.
These features include:
- Bringing in the use of warehouses
- Better auditing of stock movement
- Adding to the status of stock items
- A more user-friendly experience
- Kits and bundles
- Better reporting tools
Keep an eye out for more updates coming soon!
