E7 Discovery Process

Have you and your team run into a problem and reached out for help, only to find that you were being sold something before you were even listened to? Here at E7 Solutions, we’re about helping you overcome an issue or improve an aspect of your organization by active listening and understanding the everyday functions and processes first.

Starting at your pain points, we figure out what tools may best support the needs your organization is looking to be fulfilled. Then, we build and execute a plan for the end goal, reassuring that your team is following along and learning to use the tools we implement.

It all starts at our Discovery Process.

Click on the video above to hear how Ana Galofre and Michael Abdelnour explain the E7 Discovery process. Or skim through the transcription below.

Video Transcription

Michael: 00:01

Hey Ana. Good afternoon. How are you?

Ana: 00:03

Hey, Michael. I'm fantastic. How are you?

Michael: 00:06

I'm doing good. I got up early. I did my hair today. What else can you say?

Ana: 00:11

Lookin' good.

Michael: 00:13

Thanks. Thanks. Hey, listen, I figured this time we can switch it up a little bit and I'll ask you a question.

Ana: 00:21

I'd love it. Yeah, let's do it.

Michael: 00:23

So oftentimes on pre-sales calls or just introductions with clients or customers, we talk a lot about the tools, obviously, which is what we've been talking a lot about. But a lot of the conversation also goes to why E7? What makes us a good partner? What does your process look like from a consultative perspective?

Ana: 00:46

All right. Industry secrets, huh?

Michael: 00:48

Industry secrets and so what I'd like to do today is kind of peel back a little bit of the curtain and show some folks, or maybe just have you talk a little bit about the first step of our industry secret, which is what I coin as the discovery.

Ana: 01:03

Discovery. My favorite topic.

Michael: 01:06

Instead of just making recommendations out of the gate, we like to try to understand.

Ana: 01:12

Awesome. I would love to speak to that as you know.

Michael: 01:15

So why don't you tell me a little bit about, kind of make sure that we're all on the same page. Tell me a little bit about what does that process look like and why is it so important?

Ana: 01:25

Okay. Well, discovery is one of my favorite parts of our engagements with clients. I have a master's in applied anthropology and so we learn as social scientists through that process, to do something called ethnography, and it's very similar to what E7 does when they go into a client because it's not really, we can't just like they can't buy Jira and by confluence and then we just go in, stand it up, training them on how to use it, and then say, "Have fun. Here are the tools."

Michael: 02:01

Good luck.

Ana: 02:01

[inaudible 00:02:02]... Do that but really would not be effective because what companies are bringing us into do aren't just to implement the tools, but to apply those tools to their existing business processes and the challenges that they face and why they're bringing those in. What are they trying to solve?

So we conduct a series of interviews with all the sort of different teams that might be impacted by using a tool such as your confluence and we have a template that we use for these interviews and we try and get all the players in from the folks that are the day to day using those in the trenches and then also sort of the higher levels like up; the project admins, let's say, the people trying to coordinate all of those resources.

Then understand what are their pain points? How are they struggling to work together? What do they wish a tool could do? And then we take that knowledge from all of the different disparate groups and we build out the platform and then we train them specifically to solve for those pain points and those issues.

Michael: 03:13

Wow. That's fantastic. You know, oftentimes people ask me, "How should I do something?" It's not that I'm trying to avoid answering the question, but everyone is different.

Ana: 03:26

Right.

Michael: 03:26

[crosstalk 00:03:26]... When I talk to, every organization works differently. They have different initiatives, they have different priorities and they have a different way of going about how they do their work and all of those go into a factor in answering those questions. How best to do something? Well, I need to understand a little bit more because everyone's different.

Ana: 03:49

It's important, I think that, we have a lot of experience we've been doing this for years, so we can bring those best practices to the table, which is what I'm sure you get asked a lot as well. But understanding how to tailor that to the specific challenges that an enterprise may have. A lot of times, it's just, this group is doing it this way. This group is doing it this way. This group is doing it this way and we can sort of be that neutral party coming in as a consultant to say, "All right. Let's all sort of align on similar processes. We're going to implement these tools to help you do that," but we kind of come in as the neutral party to say, "Let's all sort of do it this way," And that's extremely helpful for the clients, not just it also helps with adoption of the tools obviously,

Michael: 04:39

Right. No, I think that's great. I just wanted to give it... I mean, that's just a glimpse behind the curtain, right? So we don't want to give too much.

Ana: 04:47

A peek.

Michael: 04:47

But I think kind of giving an explanation of why it's important is always, it's so valuable. So thank you so much for your time.

Ana: 04:56

Thank you. Thanks for asking.

Michael: 04:57

Have a great day. I'll talk to you soon.

Ana: 04:58

All right. Talk to you soon. Bye Mike.