With the current downturn in local and international financial markets, it is imperative that organisations refocus their efforts on becoming more cost-effective and productive to survive the turmoil.
With this in mind, does your business experience the following symptoms?
- A problem that you need to keep on fixing because it always comes back;
- Erratic and unpredictable cash flows;
- A business process that everyone complains about but no-one ever seems to fix;
- Misaligned business practices: the way things should be done and the way things are actually done;
- Financial reporting always late or stressful;
- Irregular fluctuations during stock takes without actual stock losses;
- Constant flow of customer complaints about poor product quality or service;
- Frustrated and demotivated workforce;
- Large amounts of time spent on urgent but unimportant issues; and/or
- Miscommunication within and across the organisation.
The downturn has forced organisations to reconsider non-strategic initiatives and to focus on business improvement projects. A concerted effort is required to identify areas in processes for improvement by leveraging effectiveness, efficiency and quality points of change.
Our team of systemic experts at ENS are able to help in overcoming issues that are hampering the performance and profitability of your organisation. We will transform your organisation from your current state to be effective where you are doing things right, and then to be efficient where you will be doing the right things well.
The systemic assessment focuses on the present position of the business and recommends future actions to improve results to overcome current limitations. We identify strengths and weaknesses, as well as areas of high performance or constraints that are limiting your results. These actions will identify key leverage points for change across processes, systems and controls, and show where resources should be invested to overcome the current situation.
The historical approach of continuous improvement that results in a 5 to 10% improvement is no longer sufficient when the competition is improving at a rate of 20% or more. Recent studies have shown that 70% of process improvement projects for 2012 are focused on improving efficiency, improving customer satisfaction and realising the full potential of existing resources. Approximately 85% of process improvement projects are focused on general business operations to extract the maximum benefit within and across the organisation.*
Our recent assignments have shown that our innovative approach has yielded substantial benefits for our clients.
*Business Process Excellence: Trends and Success Factors 2012 (published by the Process Excellence Network).
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
