The What
In over ten years of professional services engagements, we at Kinney Group have learned a lesson or two about how to really deliver the unexpected experience for our customers. As you can imagine, there are hundreds of elements that factor into delivering a “good” engagement.
Let’s focus on one engagement. You gather your NPS score and feedback in areas like the quality of your technical expertise, project management team communication, and the end solution that your team provided. Then, you place a bet on what made the project a win.
Now take hundreds of engagements, like the 500+ engagements Kinney Group has delivered on behalf of Splunk. This is where you start to identify trends and consistencies that truly made your engagement a win.
Historically, the secret to setting a team up for success on every engagement has been a mystery. But with years of data and customer feedback, we’ve created a new approach that ensures customer and company success… every time.
The How
There are four foundational elements essential to our business operations, each of which ensures a successful delivery framework:
- The Three Returns on Investment (3 ROIs)
As a company, we focus not only on the financial savings that our services provide customers, but also on the human and mission returns on investment that a successful delivery brings. Saving an organization the financial dollars, minimizing time spent on human intervention, and ensuring impacts that align with business objectives are the cornerstones of our delivery approach. Heck, we don’t even “close-win” our sales deals without nailing down the 3 ROIs to ensure we’re molding our offerings and services to best fit the customer’s needs.
- Culture
At Kinney Group, our CEO Jim Kinney (known to colleagues as JK) likes to say, “culture is our number #1 advantage.” A positive culture lays the foundation for direct communication, strong team structure, and colleague empowerment that ensures our people do good work. And in today’s age of remote work, the work from home stipend doesn’t hurt, either!
- Talent & Expertise
It’s no surprise that our world-class talent at Kinney Group is the result of a kick-butt recruitment team and high-quality colleague referrals. We like to think smart people know smart people (and then recruit them to join other smart people at KGI). This technical talent provides the expert knowledge and skill to deliver unparalleled work for our customers. Every team of well-equipped KGI colleagues are experts in their own fields, ready to offer support to customers and colleagues. Our robust recruiting efforts, from sales and marketing to project management and finance, all lead our engineers to deliver the best work for our customers.
- Methodologies & Systems
We are a highly technical company, so an obsession with effective systems is built into our operations. With the power of our analytics and automation experience, we “eat our own dog food,” as JK says, when it comes to investing in our systems and automating process to scale. We encourage transparent and consistent practices between our teams through team playbooks. Every internal team has a playbook filled with our documented processes, so when it’s game time, we have the play-by-play ready to hit the field.
The Why
Now for the why. The Kinney Group’s Delivery Framework is inspired by Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle: the What, How, and now the Why. Each of those layers became thoughtful steps we worked through in order to deliver the best services for our customers.
- A formula for customer success
If we use the 3 ROIs to truly understand what our customers need, everything we do should be focused around creating business value. Showing up and just completing the items on the statement of work is boring, and it doesn’t always provide the outcomes that leaders are seeking. Getting to the bottom of why our customers engage industry experts is crucial for our team to live up to our potential and showcase what our technology can do.
- Enable scale and consistency
Over the last year or two, we’ve really been able to focus on our delivery process. In that time span, we restructured our delivery department, added a customer success team, and implemented post-engagement support. We’ve been able to boil down the process of delighting our customers to a fine science with a consistent rhythm.
- Remove risks
With so many different teams working to ensure a positive customer journey, inter-departmental communication is key. We do this by installing an agile champion in each and every department (even the HR and Marketing teams)! Believing in the agile mindset is no small feat. We all have regular team stand-ups and syncs with others across the company. This allows us all to be on the same page and have our eyes on any potential issues that may arise. Keeping these meetings short, sweet, and to the point is crucial to moving at a Silicon Valley speed–even here in the Midwest.
