Advisory

Our process improvement practice employs tools and best practices to:

• Create more efficient processes (e.g. eliminate non-value-added labor)
• Effectively manage resources (e.g. improve inventory turns)
• Speed throughput (e.g. shorten cycle times and eliminate delays)
• Improve quality (e.g. eliminate rework/waste)
• Optimize profits (e.g. prioritize for more profitable outcomes), and
• Improve decision-making (e.g. provide accurate real-time feedback/data).

The ultimate goal of implementing technology is to leverage your resources and do more with less. But a poorly conceived process, when technology is applied, can result in automating the mess. Ideally, you establish an exception-based environment whereby transactions flow through smoothly, only requiring human intervention for those which deviate from the standard.

The best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. Thus, we help you prioritize which processes to re-engineer first to obtain the biggest payback and impact on exceeding customer expectations. Depending upon your appetite for change, we may implement transformational improvements immediately or it may be better to take a crawl-walk-run approach involving continuous improvement over time.

We use both the SCOR process diagramming approach and traditional swim-lane process flow diagrams; with each having advantages in different situations. We facilitate the as-is and to-be processes with cross-functional team involvement.

In some cases, a Client needs a global standard to meld disparate practices across multiple sites or business units. We offer a unique proprietary approach for aligning where standards make good sense while still providing limited avenues for regionalization where it offers the business a competitive edge.

Just as best practices exist for various business departments, the technology industry has a specific framework for improving IT processes, namely ITIL.  We can provide ITIL training and implementation. Has your IT organization struggled with implementing ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) as a foundation of best practices for IT operations?  Although the framework is meant to be adopted and adapted, may organizations are either reluctant to start their continuous process journey or sink a lot of time and money into the effort with minimal results. Let us help you make sense of implementing ITIL, with a common-sense approach of “just enough processes”. Using our process assessment tool-kit, we can help you quickly identify shortcomings and prioritize areas of improvement so you can improve your quality, align IT service with business requirements, and provide optimal service at a justifiable cost.