CASE STUDY

From paper tiger to living dialogue

In the survey company Ennova 120 employees from four countries use Gluu to make their common business processes and work instructions an integral part of daily work. Read the Managing Director’s view on why Gluu creates value for his business.

We met Ennova’s MD Claus Schmidt-Laugesen in his office in Aarhus to talk about the company’s efforts to establish a common way of working. As one of the leading providers of employee and customer surveys in the Nordic countries, it is critical to have clear processes that are followed and ensure consistency even in very advanced services.

According to Claus Schmidt-Laugesen, the challenge, before choosing of Gluu platform, was that it was hard to involve the entire organisation in business processes, and make processes and work instructions vibrant and easily accessible.

Challenge: To make processes come to life

At Ennova the work with the processes began already before 2008. Back then, the company was ISO certified. But before Gluu came into the picture, Ennova processes and work instructions lived in a static system based on SharePoint. So even if employees were technically able to access all processes and work instructions, the management system was closed off and processes absent in employees’ daily lives. Claus explains:

“We looked for a way to turn our business processes into practice, and to give all our employees the opportunity to go in and work with them. Everyone must have an opinion about them. That was what we were looking for and that is what Gluu enables.”

It was basically about ensuring a closer dialogue between the people, who are professionally responsible for how Ennova works, and the people who perform the work. According to Claus Schmidt-Laugesen, this has been achieved very well since they in 2015 selected Gluu as the platform for their business.

“Gluu supports a dialogue between users and those who have written the processes.”

After the decision was made it went fast. At Ennova it was Claus himself, who identified the need for Gluu and set the direction for more participatory process work. Initially, one manager was tasked with the responsibility for process work. His task was to create a common standard for business process work and keep the process owners active. Active top management support and a clear responsibility for implementing the management system have been important factors behind Ennovas success with processes.

Processes are now used much more

About 50% of employees in Ennova uses Gluu at least 10 times during the quarter. In addition, key employees, who work actively in the solution, use it more than 100 times in the quarter to adjust Ennova working methods. Claus puts it this way:

“We’ve got a more vibrant system, that users have increasingly embraced. It has gone from being a paper tiger into something more alive.”

In addition, it is, according to Ennova-director, with Gluu now easier to implement and communicate improvements across Ennova departments in the four Nordic countries.

“We have found a better way to announce new procedures and changes than we had before.”

This means, that Ennova may make improvements faster and ensures that they are put into practice. This happens as the process owner makes ongoing adjustments to work instructions and business processes. All employees in affected roles are automatically informed and can ask questions and make comments on the processes and instructions directly in the Gluu platform.

Next step is more visual work instructions

We also inquired into the next step taken by Ennova, when it comes to the use of Gluu. At that point, Claus emphasised that their focus is on the continued optimisation of Ennova’s processes. The routine of continuous improvement must continue. Also, Ennova will start using more of Gluu new features for creating visual work instructions, to make processes easier to execute.

“I believe, that these days most people do not, to the same extent as previously, read the procedures, but would rather have it visually or on video. It will be part of the conversion, which we are going to make and which Gluu has features for.”

The three main advantages of Gluu

Claus summarises the benefits of Gluu for Ennova as…

1. Far better understanding of the business processes
2. More transparency and openness regarding processes
3. Ability to bind employees closer to the one working with processes, so processes and work instructions will be integrated into daily life.

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Ennova A/S was founded in 1988 and is today a leading Scandinavian research company with offices in Aarhus, Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm. The focus is on employee and leader surveys and customer surveys. “Fact-based advisory” helps to translate facts into action through counselling at the organisational level and of the individual manager. Clients include companies such as Shell, Falck, Grontmij and Dong Energy. Ennova is certified to ISO 9001 and ISO 27001.