Collaborative: Sharing knowledge to improve services
By Nicole Eaton, Charlotte Communications and Marketing
Our organization is full of talented people scattered across departments. Each person brings their own skillset and knowledge to the job, from communications to engineering to quality assurance. When we start sharing information across departments, amazing things happen.
Meet Muthuraman Annamalai, quality assurance engineer with Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS), and Eric Lewis, business process improvement manager with Management and Financial Services (MFS).

Both Annamalai and Lewis have been with the City of Charlotte over a year. Like many of us, the lure of making Charlotte a better place for all people to live in and serving the community is a huge draw to working for the city. Annamalai says he was also interested in applying his skills to lay a foundation and implement best practices for quality assurance.
Lewis says, “I have a passion for helping people and organizations succeed saw an opportunity to be a catalyst for change and improvement.”
Quality assurance is a part of quality management focused on providing confidence that quality requirements will be fulfilled to internal and external audiences. For example, Annamalai works on the LYNX Blue Line Extension. The project is audited by the state and he will check designer, contractor, supplier and internal operations activities to ensure compliance with contract requirements. He also works with divisions on processes and establishes quality requirements for operation and maintenance.
Lewis has a different job taking quality assurance to the next level, called process improvement, often referred to as continuous improvement process (CIP or CI). This is an ongoing effort to improve products, services or processes through tools. He works with the Financial Services team, among others. He’s currently looking at the revenue process and developing ways to reduce time in the process and being able to communicate it across teams.
The two were linked through another employee and the American Society for Quality (ASQ) Charlotte section, where Annamalai serves as the president of the Charlotte Section. This is one space where they can share information about their different fields.

Dive deeper into their views on the collaborative core value and why it’s important:
For Annamalai, It’s being able to partner with cross-functional teams and other departments to provide the best service.
“We want to quickly improve our results by not reinventing the wheel. We get different perspectives and have the opportunity to work as one team to provide the best value to our internal and external customers.” — Muthuraman Annamalai, Quality Assurance Engineer, CATS
For Lewis, it’s a commitment to helping his team and others succeed. It’s about Team Charlotte comprised of employees, residents and our work environment.
“By utilizing the collective wisdom of our people we are able to make incremental improvements and changes in the way we do our work which leads to quantum leaps to make Charlotte a city where everyone wants to live and should live because it creates opportunities for all citizens.” — Eric Lewis, Business Process Improvement Manager, MFS
How can we (city employees) collaborate?
An important part of collaboration is building relationships and this involves looking outside of divisions and departments. Try meeting people who do similar tasks in other departments. When you do, you can bounce an idea about a new project, gain a new perspective on a process and learn about other successes that you can apply to your own work.
One opportunity is the city’s internal Business Intelligence Community (BIC). This is a group for employees to come together and share information. It focuses on applications and processes shared by many throughout the city and county. Employees who want to get involved with this group should contact Rebecca Hefner.
We all are experts in an area. Let’s start sharing our skills and experiences with each other!

