Improving the process of capturing clients' needs

Abstract

Understanding of customer’s need is very crucial for any organisation to ensure that their need can be fully realised. Therefore, it is important for organisation to have a systematic approach to capture their client requirements. For Jabatan Kerja Raya (JKR) this system has been developed and implemented in 2000 with the guidance of quality management system. However, based on the recent internal survey conducted in 2009, it is found that Customer Satisfaction Index achieved by JKR under the criteria of quality design is below the expectation. This has raised the alarm for JKR to review back their back their business process related to the addressing their client’s need so that significance improvement can be made. This study is embarked on in conjunction with such effort. The main focus of this study is to propose improvement measure for JKR to reappraise their current process in understanding and translating client requirements into design outputs. The methodologies used for the study include thorough document search, interview with expert panels and questionnaire survey. The data collection involved JKR personnel as well as client form various government agencies in Malaysia. The findings from the study clearly indicate that some limitations existed within the current processes that need to be improved if JKR want to achieve the target of exceeding their client’s satisfaction. Various improvement measures have been identified in this study and proposed to JKR. Among the improvement measures are the need for JKR to conduct benchmarking procedures, establish clear guidelines for the project team and adequate client representation in design development process. Finally, the study concluded that JKR must take a very serious action to realign their current process of addressing the client’s needs coherent with the current business trend aspiration.