For local enterprises of all sizes, employee productivity and staff motivation are two of the biggest stumbling blocks on the path to growth and sustainability.
Within the IT support environment, businesses often suffer from a lack of transparency and fail to gain a comprehensive view of trends and challenges within their operating environment. Having recognised this pattern, custom software development firm redPanda Software has created innovative software that seeks to boost productivity and output by providing transparency and visibility – supported by objective measurements and independent data.
“This is a pioneering tool for the enterprise that has been custom designed to create transparency across a whole organisation and even between organisations,” said Gerhard Nortje, Business Development Manager at redPanda Software.
“It helps companies to identify critical gaps and improve processes by providing actionable information at the point of need.”
Get everyone on board
Having recently introduced the software within partner businesses and implemented the rollout of Novum internally, Nortje says that key learnings have emerged. These insights, he says, are crucial for businesses to be able to maximise the benefits of the platform.
“Critically, all the stakeholders and various parties need to be involved in the implementation from the get go,” he said.
“Any type of change is difficult and challenging for employees and teams, so it is imperative that everyone is on the same page as early as possible.”
Nortje added that training is an essential element, with staff requiring full assistance and guidance before the system goes live. As the system is rolled out, he says that performance monitoring must be carried out, with a constant feedback loop to identify any glitches.
“From a hardware point of view, companies need to make sure they have redundancy in place to ensure continuity and to test current DR plans frequently,” he said.
Demonstrate the benefits
With regards to any resistance from employees, Nortje says that it is helpful to ‘compare apples with apples’ and to clearly compare the old systems and processes to the Novum platform. In this way, employees can have a clear view of the benefits that the system offers.
“Novum essentially provides you with a heartbeat into your organisation, at any time of day,” he adds. “The trick is to make the initial introduction and rollout as smooth and as seamless as possible. With the right preparation, and with training, businesses can quickly reap the benefits of this innovative tool.”
A look at Novum – how redPanda puts words into action
The development of redPanda Software’s Novum enterprise management system illustrates how corporate culture impacts product development.
What sets Novum apart is its ability to make measurable improvements in customer service, productivity and communication across the entire organisation.
“Novum provides generic measurements that can be applied to every department,” said Gareth Hawkey, CEO of redPanda Software.
“The overall goal of the system is to see, measure, improve. It creates the transparency of who is working on what, objectively measures what is being done and allows you to improve the process when you see where the gaps are.”
It also encourages organisations to consider the communication between management and the different teams.
Julian Weber, redPanda Sales Manager, added: “This allows you to respond to challenges more quickly and also identify teams that are doing well.”
Novum’s measurements are valid across the entire enterprise, focusing on productivity and quality, which can measure any role in the enterprise.
The development of the current Novum software started two years ago – and it involved every member of the organisation to decide where the true measurements should lie.
“We didn’t want to scare people off with subjective measurements, so we needed to find a unified objective that we could use across our entire company that is objective, transparent, easily understood and the whole team can buy into,” said Hawkey.
“We are very proud that we have succeeded in this, and it took a long time to achieve.”
The application was created by interns in the redPanda mentorship programme and was guided by more experienced managers and team leaders, helping them to grow their skillset.
“We wanted something new, exciting and fresh,” said Nortje.
“We initially built this for ourselves, and we wanted young and fresh developers to bring their energy to it.
“It was also very important for us that the new system would not change the culture of the team – we still wanted the young energy that we have at redPanda.”
redPanda now offers the system as a product to its clients, and it has been successfully implemented, not only for IT teams, but also for organisations focusing on retail and customer service.
“We have made it as simple as possible since people may be hesitant to adopt an entirely new system,” said Hawkey.
“Very little training is required and it is very intuitive, making it a powerful tool delivered in a simple way, while offering the transparency and objectiveness needed to improve your organisation.”
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