Ben decided that the software and tools that he’d tried out prior to Justinmind were not complete enough to allow him to visualize or structure the high-level architecture of the systems he was working towards at Fogora. After this, he decided to get into feature-rich prototyping, bouncing around to various other tools. Beginning with PowerPoint, Ben saw that he was able to gain traction and good customer feedback and engagement with his designs, as his clients appreciated the visual layout. As a result, his lean education has pretty much all been self-taught – nice! Ben started to experiment with what he had learned from lean methodology through prototyping. Ben lives and works in Montreal on the East Coast, where there aren’t that many schools or courses related to the lean startup movement. When it comes to the lean approach, one of Ben’s personal challenges at Fogora relates to the Canadian East Coast: West Coast divide. Justinmind Prototyping at Fogora: the all-important workflow Fogora helps these companies organize themselves in a more efficient way, in order to provide a great experience for their customers. This is where the lean startup approach kicked in for Ben, as he realized that a lot of time, money and resources are spent in the wrong areas. He noticed that the organization and scheduling, namely of staff, has been a real concern of many large Canadian food service providers, catering businesses and restaurants, and the amount of time spent on these activities takes away from their main objective, and core activity, of bringing food to the table: the ‘real experience’ for the customers.
Trying to understand the challenges and limitations of technology in the food service industry in order to provide a better experience for the customer, whilst maintaining a lean working techniques, have been Ben’s primary goals. In launching the company, Ben says that he has been able to explore his passion outside of technology: food. And in 2015, Ben co-founded Fogora, the cloud-based scheduling platform to support the organization and internal scheduling of the food service industry.
Working at Bombardier Aerospace, Hewitt Equipment Ltd and eventually Deloitte, Ben channeled his passion for technology into developing his skills in Management and Consulting. Consequently, Ben’s earlier years were spent in Software Engineering, developing out of C++ – an open ISO-standardized programming language. With the Dotcom Market Crash in North America in the early 2000s, there were very few jobs available in Management. Fogora: an introduction to lean methods in the food service industry In this post, we’ll see how prototyping with Justinmind is helping him to achieve this by integrating lean methodologies at Fogora. In the summer of 2015, Ben got to work on setting up his own startup, Fogora , Montreal based food service platform, within which he uses Justinmind to improve his users’ experiences. But it’s his most recent venture that’s really caught our eye. Applying what he has learned from lean methodologies to his experience in IT, Ben has launched a number of side projects over the past few years.
Having recently moved into the startup sphere, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Eric Ries’ and his lean startup movement have had a substantial influence on Ben’s professional ventures. Let’s see how he’s getting on! Ben Melchionno has been working in IT for over 15 years, with experience in consulting and management in a number of fields including aviation manufacture, architecture, professional services and intergovernmental environments – namely, the United Nations. Integrating lean methodologies, prototyping and food, Ben Melchionno shows us how he uses Justinmind as his primary prototyping tool to improve his customer experience.
Posted By: Emily Grace Adiseshiah | April 25, 2016