Ms Pienaar is the Head of Business Improvement at Merchants – A Dimension Data Company. She provided insight into the world of business improvement by focusing on creating a ‘value stream’ through a process for both internal and external customers. She also shared interesting background on her role and responsibilities with the students, particularly pertaining to the call centre environment in terms of processes in this dynamic environment.

Ms Pienaar challenged the students to think about the importance of developing good, lean processes and how this could improve the customers’ experience. At the end of Bardien’s lecture, the students were presented with a business scenario and asked to think in terms of a process, identify the possible waste in the process, the impact it might have on both the internal and external customers and to provide suggestions on how to improve the process. According to the students, they did not know that there is so much going on behind the scenes in a call centre.

Angeline Rodrigeous de Franca (student), Dr Gené van Heerden (lecturer in the Department of Marketing Management), Ms Bardien Pienaar (guest lecturer and Head: Business Improvement at Merchants), and students Zetske Werner and Suzanne Blignaut. On the photo behind the students are some examples of students’ process visualisation of the business scenario.