When it comes to providing network services to state agencies, Enterprise Services and Consolidated Technology Services (CTS) have a partnership. CTS brokers and supplies the services and Enterprise Services handles the billing.Recently, the two agencies worked together on a Lean project to standardize the billing process so instead of receiving a complex bill technically detailing services provided, customer agencies would receive a simplified bill of those services.One of Enterprise Services’ biggest customers expressed concern that the change would create errors in their bills or that they would stop getting information they needed. Enterprise Services and CTS extended this part of the Lean project to learn about the business needs of that agency and ensure that single-line billing would meet those needs for the customer.“Multi-line billing was time consuming, caused errors and was costly to the state,” said Enterprise Services financial analyst Richard Fortin. “Single line billing is much more efficient. We needed to be sure that the new standard process would work for our customer, so we went to the people who did the work to learn about and understand their needs.”Part of the Lean project involved going to the ‘Gemba’ —a Lean practice that involves going to where the work actually happens to observe how it is done. The idea is to improve a process by first learning how it currently works, gather data from the source, and then create solutions. After Enterprise Services team member and business analyst Owen Barbeau completed the Gemba walk, the project team reviewed the process with the agency and subsequently implemented the single-line billing solution. “We learned about which specific billing information the customer was using, why they needed it, and what they were using it for by observing their current process and asking questions,” Barbeau said. “Then we made modifications to ensure single-line billing would meet their needs.”In addition to improving the billing process for the customer, Enterprise Services was able to free up 20 hours per month of a full time financial analyst position that are now dedicated to other work. And the efficiency of the standardized billing process for all customers eliminates about 25 percent of mistakes requiring re-work each month at CTS.“We learned more from that Gemba walk than we did through two years of questions,” Fortin said. “It helped us improve this process and it also improved communication between us and our customer.”Learn more about Lean project results and Lean culture at Enterprise Services.

​