One of the most common barriers people face when trying to coordinate the continuous improvement efforts of groups of people across diverse departments and dispersed locations is the struggle of how to manage and improve communication. A flurry of emails is sent with requests and deadlines, meetings are spent giving endless updates, and it's hard to keep track of who is responsible for what.

Continuous improvement software solutions can make the difference between a successful culture of continuous improvement and one that flounders and stalls out before ever really taking off. Communication is a critical element that such software solutions address. KaiNexus has been solving communication problems for our customers since day one!

Here are a couple of features that have improved communication for our clients:

Daily Digest

Not only is it annoying to be drowning in emails, but it can also limit your Lean progress -- if you get so many emails that you can’t keep up with them all, work can hardly progress. To combat this issue, we combine your notifications -- except for those that you’ve requested come as an individual email -- into one daily summary of everything you need to know and do.

Don’t want to get a digest every day? That’s fine! You can choose what days your digest should be sent out. Our only requirement is that you get one digest a week. You don’t want to completely miss out on updates in KaiNexus.

If no updates have been made to items for which you’re on the team or if no general updates that you’ve asked to be notified about have occurred, you won’t receive your digest. 

In-App Alerts

Suppose a new Improvement has been submitted and it’s your responsibility to assign it. You need to assign it quickly to get the ball rolling on its implementation and so that employees remain motivated to submit their ideas and observations. But how will you even know it’s there?

KaiNexus uses alerts to highlight everything you need to know and do for any item in the system. Alerts can inform you of new Improvements, changes in your role in the Improvement, Project, or Task, and when a new Resolution has been submitted, and much more.

Alerts are listed on each item, and a comprehensive list of all your current alerts can be found by clicking the bluebell icon in the top right corner of the KaiNexus screen next to your name.

Click each item on the list to learn more about it.

Custom Notifications

Decide what you want to know about so that we can send you the right notifications and trigger the right alerts at the right time by customizing your notification preferences in your user profile. Your default preferences are based on your Role(s) but you can customize them for a perfect fit.

You can choose to be notified about any major event in the system, specifying which locations in the Network you care about, when you want to be notified, and how you want to receive those notifications - in your daily digest or as an individual email.

This flexibility in notification options allows leaders to stay in the loop regarding whatever aspect of improvement work is relevant to them.

Smart Email

So far, we’ve talked about improving communication from KaiNexus to your inbox...but what about improving communication from your inbox to KaiNexus?

Every time you get an individual notification that a comment has been added to a piece of your Improvement work, you can reply to it directly without logging into KaiNexus. Just hit the “Reply” button and enter your new comment in the body of the email.

This gives the conversation the speed of an email communication while increasing accountability and visibility by maintaining a permanent record of the discussion within KaiNexus.

How has KaiNexus made it easier for you to keep communication streamlined? We’d love to hear from you!