Performance Improvement
Whether you are a commercial business responding to fast changing global markets, or a public sector body under intense budgetary constraints, it is likely that you face the same challenge; continuously delivering more for the same, the same for less, or if you are really unlucky, more for less!
Regardless of the trigger for efficiency, you will typically have some tough choices about how you deliver performance improvements, in terms of the approach you take to analysing the organisation, the way you identify improvements, and the way the you engage with staff to implement changes and secure lasting benefits.
Our experience has taught us that the degree of staff buy-in and participation during the analysis and options stages has a fundamental effect on how well the benefits are realised. Our preferred way of working is to tailor the approach according to two sets of attributes. Firstly, we consider the current factors affecting the project, such as the trigger for change, the historical appetite for improvement, and stakeholder views. We then project the anticipated constituents of the solution, such as the degree of savings anticipated, the likely appetite for staff participation, and the timescales for delivery. Bridging the two is our derived approach which is modular, tailored and collaborative. In this way we have found that we are able to deliver the ‘art of the possible’ balancing the human aspects of the project such as skills available, and resistance to change, with the need for hard tangible results.
An important feature of our work is that we manage to create significant benefits (often 30-40% in either hard savings, freed up space or other added value) without recourse to major systems developments. While many consultancies acknowledge the need to address the three aspects shown below, our view is that the effort and focus is not equally applied to the three circles,
and is better represented as shown in the diagram below.
We work effectively at the systems interface with client or ERP vendor specialists to make the few important changes to systems, but otherwise find that it is the process improvements and especially the human behaviours and ways of working where most improvement is derived.
To this end, we have always worked to transfer skills to our clients, whether to internal ‘efficiency’ or productivity cells, or to their customers, the staff affected. The combination of a tailored and holistic approach, coupled with skills transfer means that we avoid two common pitfalls. We don’t simply shift the problem elsewhere in the organisation or process, and we create a sustainable solution rather than a short term fix.
In summary, the benefits of our approach include:
- Input or output efficiencies
- A focus on customers and adding value to the service provided to them
- Creating more streamlined, agile and better prioritised workflows
- Building appropriate organisation structures to support the new processes.
