Anticipating the User

My hat is off and I graciously bow to the product and production managers for Delsey Toilet Paper.

You might be wondering why the president of a project management software development company is blogging about “TP”. Read on.

We’ve all been there, facing the dreaded “end of roll” conundrum. If you are lucky, a replacement roll is visible and within reach. If not, fear of the unknown strikes with vengeance. Such was the case for me recently while attending a BBQ at a friend’s home. With trepidation and great care not to waste any, I pulled on the meager spool. Within a couple of perforations the rolling came to an abrupt stop. Drats!

To my surprise and delight, when the last of the roll broke away from the cardboard cylinder, I found that the Delsey team had double-folded the last few perforations. This effectively doubled my options. What a relief!

By thinking ahead to anticipate what the user would do next, the Delsey team—with a simple and kind gesture—has earned my future business. I’ll even plug their commercial (well, a vintage 1961 commercial at least).

Well, now you might really be wondering how this relates to our Spitfire Project Management System.

During our production presentation, we often speak of workflow automation and “closing the processing loop.” We talk about how properly designed and configured systems such as the Spitfire Project Management System will flawlessly follow a company’s Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). We explain that by leveraging the strength of software to do the mundane, repetitive and boring stuff accurately and efficiently, a company can guarantee that proper actions and activities happen in the correct order, in a timely manner and with everyone in the loop. Back this up with automated alerting for future events as well as past-due escalation routing and projects will stay on schedule and on budget without impacting margin.

So, just like the Delsey team, Spitfire’s development team designed the project management workflow to always be prepared for “what the user will do next.” While we aren’t delivering TP, we are delivering “Through automated Processing.”

And now, anticipating that you will want to schedule a demo to see how the Spitfire Project Management System can work for you, I’ll include this link.