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Titorenko A.M., Dautova L.Sh., Domaratsky S.V. Specific features of using TRIZ using neuron networks GPT in sales management
Abstract. The article is research of using TRIZ in management of sales departments in the federal IT-company Kontur. A specific feature of sales departments functioning consists in the fact that linear employees and managers work at high tempo, regularly trace market tendencies and variations in the company's products, which does not enable to spend much time on studying the methodology of generating new solutions. Traditionally TRIZ application in industry has its reverse side: large time expenses on personnel training, on the analysis of the problem and search for solutions, the necessity for gathering the team many times and motivating the team for continuation of work as well as the absence of quickly obtained results of the activity. The authors propose to simplify the process of searching for the solutions and to offer the managers of departments finished lists of solutions of their problems, taking up the main part of the work.
The methodology consists in identification of frequent contradictions occurring on the way to strategic tasks of the company and to resolving each of them, simplifying the process of ideas generation and not spending time for personnel training. In this case, seeing the usefulness of such solutions, the employees start to be individually interested in TRIZ methodologies without any pressure from the manager. To generate solutions via techniques for eliminating the contradictions, neuron network GPT 3.5 was used, which made the process dozen times quicker. Based on these solutions Business-TRIZ Navigator was created, in which heads of department could see 68 contradictions relating to 9 categories, which correspond to trends in the team activity.
During the period of 3 months of work with a navigator, 13 managers of various levels used Business-TRIZ Navigator and successfully implemented 61 solutions in their teams. Proposed methodology could be used in different spheres of activity, which are characterized by constraints in teaching traditional TRIZ methods to the employees.
Key words: TRIZ contradictions, techniques for eliminating contradictions, sales management, TRIZ application.
INTRODUCTION
The research was performed as part of the federal IT-company Contur, in its sales departments. The company has more than 2 million clients and more than 11 thousand employees. And these facts bear witness to the following: it is very important for the company that all problems, which are encountered in the course of work should be solved as quickly as possible and at a high degree of precision. When it comes to sales, each day has its own cost, therefore, the management actively seeks new methods for enhancement of productive capacity and this process is constant. The team is also responsible for resources, which are received by it: valuable customer databases and personnel, carefully selected at the labor market. Each IT-company, which produces services for business, depends upon the applicable law, situation in the world and in the country, therefore, sometimes it is necessary to change conventional rules and habits rather quickly, so that business should continue to bring stable profits. TRIZ is one of the methods for finding new unstandardized solutions of the problems, which exactly correspond to the goals of the organization.
The factors of negative influence of the sphere of sales upon the efficiency of management:
- The number of appropriate personnel at the labor market is insufficient
- Expenditures on on-boarding of one new employee - hundred thousand rubles
- High personnel turnover rate
- Rate of training a specialist, mastering of basic knowledge and skills as well as attainment of a target result - no less than 6 months.
- Rate of adaptation of line managing personnel - no less than 1 year
- High information pressure - more than 10 news blocks intended for studying are issued daily
- Change of economic environment and - as a consequence - of business activities.
Factors of positive influence of the sphere of sales upon the efficiency of management:
- Known brand, reliable IT-partner of Russian business for already 35 years;
- High quality of development of IT-products;
- Detailed portrait of candidates;
- System of adaptation and training of linear and management personnel to solving business problems;
- System of marketing support of distribution activities;
- Accessible information field for obtainment of all necessary information;
- Operating system of sales and sales management system.
We also have to take into account modern challenges, which motivate us to apply new tools as quickly as possible:
- Average age of the employees is 30 years. Generation Y and Z becomes the basic resource. This is the principle of YOLO (you only live once)
- Fragility, instability and anxiety of the modern world
- Trend for ecosystem quality offers an impetus for permanent evolution
- Profusion of such proposals at the market, commoditization of proposals
- Immersive character of training and enhancement of its quality
- Ecological quality of taken decisions without any pressure upon employees
- Win-win strategies (taken decisions should bring profits to company, employees and clients, which requires high skills for conducting negotiations and system-based mentality of participants of the process)
- Tendency of the company to client centricity within the frames of accepted strategy.
It becomes evident, that the application of TRIZ under such conditions could be helpful in taking more precise, interesting and non-standardized solutions. In this case, in order to implement TRIZ in an organization, it is necessary to apply a lot of effort. It happens quite often that the companies encounter the following difficulties in implementation of TRIZ:
1. A lot of time is spent on personnel training, analysis of the problem and search for solutions.
2. Because of the growth in scale of problems being solved no quick results of activity are attained.
3. It is necessary to gather team members many times and to motivate them for continuation of
work.
The authors understood immediately that the application of TRIZ in its classic form in the given sphere of activities will be unsuccessful. Therefore, a decision was taken regarding reduction of work concerning finding new solutions to the least possible, however, not accompanied by the loss of efficiency of implementing the results. Thus, Business-TRIZ Navigator appeared within the pattern of solving contradictory problems (Fig. 1).
Figure 1. Pattern of search for solutions
APPROACH TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF BUSINESS-TRIZ NAVIGATOR
The authors decided to use Bloom taxonomy in order to simplify the problem to be solved by the users. Creators of Navigator themselves analyze and prioritize the contradictions, which can emerge (or already emerge) on the way of the company to strategic goals, which are sometimes inaccessible for the line managers even to the full extent. Creators formulate contradictions and seek for solutions using the techniques for elimination of contradictions and consequently select the most the most relevant solutions, put the finishing touches to them and offer them to the users in an easy-to-understand and visually compelling form. The users have only to read the variants of solutions, understand the essence of them and to compare them with the contradictions encountered by their team and take them up for adaptation (Fig. 2). Thus we excluded teaching all aspects of TRIZ to line managers.
Figure 2. Bloom taxonomy
This method offered a possibility to obtain quick and long-term effects. Quick effects: solving contradictions without immersion («I found it - I did it»), ecological acquaintance with TRIZ without complications, understanding among the employees that even such problems can be solved which seem to be non-solvable at a glance, as well as an opportunity to individually work on a contradiction in a more detailed way in such a case, if an appropriate contradiction is not found in the Navigator.
Long-term effects: the acquired habit of the employees to identify contradictions in the work, reliability of the tool for resolving contradictions, enhancement of the level of self-sufficiency of the user and general interest in TRIZ.
Given below are screenshots of the navigator: introductory information (Fig. 3) and an example for resolving a contradiction (Fig. 4).
Figure 3. Introductory information on navigator
The client wants everything, but he has no money
X
— Divide the client's requirements into basic and additional ones and plan them for the future.
— Offer the client alternative payment methods: credit, budget redirection from other departments.
— Find ways to increase the monetary value of the product to increase value in the eyes of the customer.
— Offer the client a solution that will meet their requirements in the future. Show investments in service as an investment in the development of the company.
— Invite the owner to invest personal money in the development of the company.
— Offer the customer the opportunity to receive a discount on products if he fulfills some additional conditions, for example, sharing information about the company on social networks or referring a friend.
Figure 4. Example for resolving a contradiction
APPLICATION OF NEURON NETWORK GPT 3.5 FOR RESOLVING CONTRADICTIONS
Since the authors came across a large number of contradictions, a search for solutions was tested, which implied the application of a neuron network GPT, version 3.5. Complications were encountered at the stage of forming the prompt (search request addressed to the neural network), however, after the completion of this stage the neural network started to formulate applicable answers, comparable to the solutions, which can be generated by the humans. Thus, time was spared, which might be spent for compiling a list of resolutions of contradictions. We evaluate the search for 10 resolutions of one contradiction by the human approximately as 15-20 minutes. Neural network can solve this problem in 10 seconds (let us add 10 seconds more for entering the search inquiry and copying the answer).
While the project was put into practice, 82 contradictions were formed, for each of which 10 solutions were developed (totally 820 solutions). After checking the relevancy, 68 contradictions relating to 9 categories were left. Out of all generated solutions 333 (48.9% of the total number) were
added to the Navigator. According to preliminary evaluation the authors saved 20 hours of human resources with the obtainment of the same results. Complexities of working with ChatGPT:
- It is difficult to formulate effective prompt (search inquiry)
- Neural network knows the techniques of TRIZ, however, tries to invent new ones
- Neural network is repeated in case of absence of clearing between inquiries
- Inability to furnish full data in the inquiry because of the commercial secret. Advantages of working with ChatGPT:
- After the formulation of prompt, the answers are formulated quickly
- There is an opportunity to find an unlimited number of solutions
- Neural network approximately knows the theory of TRIZ and can answer follow-up questions
- Less than one minute is spent on 40 solutions
- GPT as a language model feels comfortable in solving textual problems. CONCLUSIONS
According to the results of 3-months work with navigator, 13 managers of different level used Business-TRIZ Navigator and successfully implemented in their teams 61 solution. During 6 months 612 pageviews by 146 users were registered, which means that the employees averagely 4.19 times addressed Business-TRIZ Navigator.
The authors came to the following conclusions:
1. The use of artificial intellect as a helper is rather efficient. It significantly decreases the amount of labor expenditures on the generation of a multitude of solutions.
2. High-quality use of TRIZ in organizations is possible without deep immersion into the tool. It is important to give the employees a method to take a professional decision regarding their department.
3. Each tool should evolve (reusability, scalability, applicability in other departments). TRIZ already starts to exist not as a project but as a finished product. Proposed methodology can be applied as different spheres of activity, where the capacities for teaching traditional TRIZ methods to the employees are restricted. Existing navigator is also partly applicable for other companies, in which there are big sales departments, since the contradictions relating to personnel and clients are in many respects identical. It offers an opportunity for an organization to quickly identify the problem and to find the solution of it.
4. If necessary, each employee can go deeper. It is necessary that such an opportunity should be offered.
REFERENCE
1. G.S.Altshuller. Find the idea. Introduction to the theory of inventive problem solving. - Novosibirsk: «Nauka publishers», 1986. - Academy of Sciences of the USSR: Siberia department. Series «Science and technical progress».
2. G.S.Altshuller. On trends of engineering systems evolution. - Baku, 20.01.1977.
3. Bloom taxonomy http://sykt-uo.ru/files/---------------------------------.-----.pdf
4. Management tools https://www.metodolog.ru/node/1619
5. TRIZ for business and management https://www.xtriz.com/publications/Souchkov_TRIZfor-BusinessAndManagement_RUS.pdf
6. Proceedings of the conference TRIZ Developers Summit 2019. June 13-15, 2019, Minsk, Belarus.
