Q&A with KPI Fire: Choosing the Ultimate Business Improvement Software to Manage CI Projects and Boost Savings
Visual management software, business improvement software, continuous improvement, and operational excellence management systems are hot topics among business enthusiasts these days. Organizations that successfully embrace this type of software are better positioned to
adapt to the 21st-century’s ever-evolving business landscape. Many adopt robust, lean-based visual management systems for transformation, adaptation, and revenue improvement.
CEO at KPI Fire
We sat down with KPI Fire’s CEO, Keith Norris, to enlighten us on the benefits and inner workings of KPI visual management software and share with us how it can catapult productivity and boost savings in various industries. Admired by many, Keith is the co-founder of KPI Fire and boasts expertise in business improvement in light of digital and visual management systems.
What challenges are faced by companies wanting to improve their ROI in the modern business landscape?
As competition intensifies, existing businesses are overwhelmed by the plethora of choices available to help them gain a competitive advantage – especially in terms of providing higher investment returns. Improving results is essential for businesses to stand out from the herd in today’s competitive arena. To overcome this challenge, companies must acquire new and advanced performance-tracking technology and optimize their sales strategies.
That said, to prevent data disorder and analytical woes that potentially and negatively impact ROI, advanced data analytics tools and the ability to make data-driven decisions are becoming all the more essential. Failure to adapt can lead to reduced competitiveness and lesser savings, which is why businesses need to find innovative ways to increase cost savings and optimize their operations in light of quality maintenance.
In light of these challenges, accurately measuring ROI can be particularly challenging. For this reason, businesses need to define clear metrics and align them with goals by investing in advanced tracking tools to gauge their improvement efforts. This is where KPI Fire definitively comes to the rescue.
How does KPI Fire help clients accurately address the need to track improvement efforts and increase cost savings?
By offering a well-structured visual management system, businesses are empowered with enhanced transparency and visibility. KPI Fire creates digital dashboards and displays that showcase key performance indicators (KPIs) in real-time or near real-time. By facilitating easy data visualization through charts, graphs, and other visual formats inspired by the principles of Lean Six Sigma, an organization is better positioned to improve cost savings. KPI Fire empowers clients to set clear goals and align them with actionable results to boost improvement efforts through several functionalities. By ensuring everyone remains aligned regarding tasks, objectives, and strategic goals, KPI Fire allows for high-level goals to be broken down to individual team levels.
Big goals are broken down into more manageable chunks and assigned to team members, while the overall cost savings targets are allocated to specific departments. Then, these goals get prioritized with an “Effort vs. Impact” analysis in mind. In this regard, we advise companies to schedule regular meetings to review and prioritize ideas submitted with the Idea funnel. In this manner, KPI Fire simplifies calculating impact and, therefore, the prioritization exercise. Potential savings get quantified from each project with our Project Benefits Exception Report. As a matter of fact, KPI Fire has saved numerous companies over 45 hours on a monthly basis in building reports and gathering data through intuitive visual management features.
In terms of performance tracking, how does KPI software simplify the process for customers to choose the most appropriate KPIs?
KPI Fire facilitates the identification and definition of key performance indicators (KPIs) for each objective. If there is any uncertainty about which KPIs should be tracked, team leaders can simply schedule a call with the KPI Fire team to acquire best practices and get teams on the right track.
Designated KPIs provide measurable benchmarks to track progress and assess the effectiveness of employee efforts. KPI Fire utilizes reports and dashboards to provide data in a visual format. These features allow teams to monitor progress in real time to identify deviations and make necessary adjustments. In cases where KPIs fall out of the target zone, users receive an alert to initiate corrective actions that may be tracked as projects.
Specifically, KPI Fire makes it simple to create a HuddleBoard to use for the purpose of periodic business reviews. The Huddleboard feature is known to help increase accountability and recognition and significantly assists in the early completion of monthly business reviews where the KPIs are all positive.
What roles do the principles of Lean & Six Sigma play within the workings of visual management software for businesses?
KPI Fire can be defined as lean program management software that helps your organization better execute strategic plans and priorities. Here is a summary of its core lean-inspired features that help boost and maintain continuous improvement within various industries.
- Waste Reduction & Kanban Boards: KPI Fire aligns with Lean objectives including waste reduction, by providing real-time insights on processes and projects through Kanban-inspired workflows. By identifying bottlenecks and areas of waste, teams can efficiently eliminate waste in terms of time, materials, and motion to foster a culture of CI. KPI Fire offers digital Kanban boards that permit teams to visualize workflows, track project and/or task progress, and identify waste. Workflow optimization is essential for businesses looking to improve. The KPI Fire app offers various lean-inspired workflows, including DMAIC, PDCA, and Kaizen, to accurately track progress and improvements. These workflows also assist in problem-solving activities, forming another essential aspect of instilling a lean corporate culture.
- Value Stream Mapping & Balanced Scorecards: KPI Fire is designed to create and display value stream maps and balanced scorecards. These features illustrate the flow of materials and information throughout a process, helping teams identify areas for improvement and optimize value delivery. To keep score of improvement efforts, KPI Fire uses a colorful marking system with red, amber and green colors to quickly and clearly communicate the real impact of KPIs.
- Standardization: KPI Fire is great for storing and sharing standardized work instructions and procedures, ensuring everyone in the organization is on the same page. This feature aids in maintaining consistency in seemingly complex processes. The use of a single source of truth providing a choice of workflows enables the continuance of operational excellence within a company—and this is the area where KPI Fire really stands out.
- Employee engagement & Idea Funnel: With KPI Fire’s Idea Funnel feature, employees are empowered to easily capture and share ideas that promote a culture of continuous improvement. One of the most important aspects of running a successful company encapsulates valuable employee engagement. Effortlessly turn great ideas into DMAIC projects, KAIZEN events, or QUICK WINS to effectively boost improvement efforts.
What is KPI Fire’s best feature for capturing and sharing employee ideas – and how important is this feature in fostering a culture of continuous improvement?
Building an authentic culture of continuous improvement depends on facilitating more improvement projects. When you know your organization has great ideas and people who want to contribute to improvement, you have a pent-up demand just waiting to be unleashed. With KPI Fire’s Idea funnel feature, businesses are enabled to make great things happen. Once a team is on board with the KPI Fire app, they can easily submit ideas for improvement projects into the Idea funnel and store them for easy access.
Next, it’s crucial to identify ideas that need more priority value. Team leaders or project leaders should prioritize new ideas, and awareness of issues solvable by the same person who has submitted them must be in place. In this manner, KPI Fire helps to empower any team to take on and solve their problems by themselves. Be sure to browse the list of ideas and, when necessary, designate a Project Leader for new projects created from ideas. Once the basic setup is complete for a KPI Fire account, users have various workflow templates to utilize for new projects, with the additional option to create unique workflows for improvement ideas.
Taking the next step to business excellence: How do you sign up?
KPI Fire makes the onboarding process effortless. Simply request a demo from our website to get your team aboard the KPI Fire train of excellence. If you are still getting ready and want to try KPI Fire before buying in, signing up for a free trial version is easy. The person in charge of CI efforts in your organization will have a quick onboarding call with our VP of Sales, Randy
Clark. This call is for KPI Fire to collect information such as company size and the scope of your projects. Based on this analysis, your business will receive a long-term quote for using KPI Fire to effectively manage projects and boost savings.
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