How One Marketing CEO Uses CD PRO

I've mentioned the name Jenn Neal in the past. She's the CEO of the marketing company Kane & Associates LLC, and someone who loves to try out new technology. She had done some mind mapping years before with pencil and paper, but moved into the present age when she got a copy of ConceptDraw MINDMAP.

When Jenn opened up her new copy of CD OFFICE, she also discovered CD PRO. I have some excerpts from a case study we did about her that explains what happened next:

Jennifer Neal remembers the night well. She had gotten a phone call that day from an upset client—a rare occurrence for her company. Now it was two in the morning and she was wide awake. She knew she’d never get to sleep again until she figured out how to make sure what happened that day never happened again. So she got out of bed, opened up her brand new copy of ConceptDraw PRO, and started thinking.

“I knew the problem was caused by us not having a defined work flow process,” Neal says. “Before, our products were simple enough that we could keep all the steps in our heads. But the things we were offering are more sophisticated now. It was pretty clear to me that we needed a new way to keep track of what we were doing.”

She says ConceptDraw PRO proved to be so easy to learn that even in the middle of the night, even though she’d never used it before, she was able to immediately start creating a flow chart of the Kane & Associates production process. She even added some new steps she thought might improve the process.

By ten o’clock that morning Neal had finished the process flowchart. But instead of heading back to bed, she headed off to work.

“I was so excited about having created the flow chart that I wanted to show it to my project manager right away. I said, ‘OK. Do you agree that chart this represents our process? Do you think these new steps will make sure we don’t have the kind of problem we had yesterday?’”

Once she and her PM came up with a final version, Neal created a cleaned-up process flow chart and gave it to the disgruntled client. Once he could see how many moving pieces there were, she says, he was much more understanding of the problem that had surfaced. Now Kane & Associates provides all clients with the process map.

“The chart helps our clients visually understand our process. ‘This is the first step. This is how long it’s going to take. This is what to expect. These are the deliverables.’ It helps clients appreciate how complicated it is to do something that can look so simple once it’s delivered. And being able to provide this flow chart alleviates a lot of stress for me because, from the start, clients see how many moving parts there are.”