Solving pain points and frustrations are central to any IT leader's success. But what about pain points your organization or users aren't asking you to address? Identifying and fixing those problems is just as important as solving the problems everyone is complaining about, says Dawn Long, CTO of Direct Relief, a worldwide charitable organization that assists those in poverty or affected by emergencies. In an interview with The Enterprisers Project, she explains how she does it.
The Enterprisers Project (TEP): Can you give us some examples of the types of pain points you've encountered or heard about that the organization did not realize needed solving? Why do these problems go unreported?
Long: At its core, Direct Relief operates a humanitarian supply chain that channels life-saving medical resources to people and communities that otherwise would go without them. The organization is among the world's largest providers of charitable prescription medications, which require specialized care and licensing to handle, are subject to stringent regulatory oversight, and need precise information to ensure safety.
Direct Relief's model is to work with healthcare companies and encourage them to donate their products to serve people in need. This requires meeting the highest standards and having all the same accreditation as a commercial partner. The business functions are exactly the same, but the drivers differ. Supply of available donated inventory is unpredictable. Demand is not determined through normal market signals such as purchase orders since the customers do not have financial resources. This presents a unique set of challenges.
The challenges include not only collecting precise information — expiration date, lot, and batch of medication, etc. — on offers of donated products before accepting and receiving them, but also making use of that information. Gauging demand for a product requires simplifying reporting based on historical requests and where it was provided to make informed decisions. Increasingly sophisticated regulation of how Rx drugs are stored, managed, and distributed was also seen much more as an impediment to fulfilling the organization's mission than as an opportunity to apply best practices, enhance data integration, and deepen trust and strengthen relations with donor companies.
TEP: Why was no one asking you to fix these problems?
Long: It's not that these challenges, or pain points, went unnoticed. But they seemed insurmountable for a nonprofit humanitarian aid organization. When we stepped back and looked at ourselves as a medical distribution company that simply had to get this right, it reframed the issues and brought them into much sharper focus.
TEP: If no one in the organization is complaining about a specific pain point, how can you identify that it's there?
Long: If something has been done a certain way for a long time, it's not perceived as a pain point — just the way things are done. Fresh eyes help. So does stepping back and asking, does anyone know why we're doing this in this manner? Silence is a signal. And, generally, so is frustration. People in our organization are highly motivated, and they recognize if things don't seem to make sense. They also have a strong desire to do their work better and help people.
TEP: Solving problems costs money or resources or both. How do you convince organizational leaders that they need to invest in solving a pain point they hadn't even been aware of?
Long: If the goal is making a significant change, I think the key is starting small. For years, Direct Relief was hostage to a business intelligence system that was unwieldy and only worked for technical users. Again, most people weren't aware that better solutions were available.
To overcome this obstacle, we built a prototype dashboard that we presented to Direct Relief's CEO. After a few clicks, he started asking questions that he hadn't thought to ask before. That, to me, was a success.
We rolled out the new software, and it's been widely adopted by the staff. The CEO even went on to speak at the company's annual meeting, where he raved about the product.
TEP: Any advice you'd pass along to CIOs, CTOs or other IT leaders about finding and curing unseen pain points? Any mistakes they should make sure to avoid?
Long: I've often been told that a pain point can't be fixed. My advice would be to actively listen but also ask why and why not. Listening is important, but if we begin projects by only asking people what they want, we run the risk of having our progress shaped by the old way of doing things rather than addressing the cause of the issue with a new innovative approach.
