DDC-I Organizational Structure - Focused on the Customer

In the traditional corporate hierarchy, everybody works for the President. The organization can be depicted as a pyramid with the President at the top. The employees, who do the real work and have daily contact with the customer, are at the bottom. Decisions are made somewhere higher up in the pyramid, and the folks at the bottom are not empowered. That doesn't do much for the customer.

At DDC-I, the organizational pyramid is turned upside down, with the focus on the customer. The structure is also flattened, so that DDC-I employees are cast in only two roles. They are either "front-liners" who interact directly with the customer, or they have support of our front-liners as their primary objective.

The front-liners at DDC-I are knowledgeable, experienced, and empowered to solve problems. They can allocate resources (people and money) to solve problems. They have the training and authority to deal directly with customer issues. We have aligned responsibility with capability. This ensures a timely response by a qualified individual to every customer issue, and it reduces both bureaucracy and cycle time.

Here are the DDC-I front-liners:

Product Champions: Each product has its Champion. Product Champions are highly skilled senior engineers with a deep understanding of the product line for which they are responsible. Unlike most software companies, DDC-I allows their customers direct access to these lead developers. Technical questions or problems relating to specific products are handled directly by the Product Champions. Within the framework of their budgets they decide the best approach to each customer issue, providing technical advice, temporary work-around suggestions, critical program patches, or regularly scheduled maintenance releases. Naturally, the development of a new release must follow specific procedures, in order to ensure conformance with overall company goals and coordination among all products. Otherwise, the Product Champions have substantial latitude and discretion in solving customer problems.

Project Leaders: Each custom development project is headed by a project leader who is a senior software engineer with leadership and communication skills and with proficiency in the field of embedded application programming. The customer deals directly with the project leader during all phases of the development of his or her application.

Help Desk: The help desk respond to a wide variety of customer inquiries about product licensing, installation, configuration, and usage. Product specific technical issues are dispatched by the Help Desk to the appropriate Product Champion for investigation and resolution. The Help Desk is also responsible for all shipping and product documentation.

Sales Representatives: Each customer is assigned a Sales Representative, based on geographical region. The sales representative is the direct administrative link to current and prospective customers.

This organizational structure is not a new concept. It was first implemented by Scandinavian Airlines, and it has proven to be highly effective. It fosters ownership and pride in the front-liners. When properly managed, this approach ensures short cycle times, a lean and efficient organization with few administrative procedures, and a high degree of customer satisfaction.

DDC-I adopted this structure in April 2000. The result has been resoundingly positive for both customers and employees. Customer maintenance renewals and employee retention are at all time highs. When we say "DDC-I - #1 in Customer Care", it is not just a marketing motto. We have restructured our organization and fundamentally changed the way we do business, in order to make this a reality.