Lean Process & Digital Transformation
IMPROVE YOUR BOTTOM LINE BY ELIMINATING INEFFICIENCIES
What to do when your business is struggling?
It is not just you; many businesses like yours have started but failed to streamline their workflows effectively.
Whether your business is new or been operating for some time, you face various challenges. For some, it is about increasing employee productivity to consistently meet deadlines and budgets, for others, it is poor communication between employees and departments leading to long Turn around Times (TATs) and poor customer satisfaction. These are some factors that waste your company’s financial and human resources and are key features of an inefficient business.
The good news is you can improve your bottom line by either eliminating or reducing these challenges significantly. SortAgile works within your business structure, establishing areas of improvements and supporting your team to successfully implement them.
What is Lean Process Improvement?
Doing more things with existing resources is a sign of business efficiency. The focus on streamlining the process is so that things are done quicker and in the right way. SortAgile’s process methodology is grounded on Lean Six Sigma, Business Process Management and Toyota Kata Improvement Philosophies.
At SortAgile, we don’t just give you a ready-made solution, as that never works. Every business is unique and requires a bespoke set of strategies to improve. This can be achieved with the right process improvement approach.
The first thing you need to understand is that there are no standard business rules, as every business operates in a unique way. Rather than copy other business’ models, you have to develop your own winning culture with improved processes driving your business strategy.
Through team led diagnosis, SortAgile will help you identify snags in your workflow and improvements to deliver better customer service for both internal and external customers. You will discover which inefficiencies are costing your organization revenue, and how to remedy them.
Improving your process also involves getting rid of shortcuts by standardizing your operations. If your current Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are not leading your business toward expected, greater results, then it is time to redesign them. Your employees will be able to function to their full potential when they follow the set and efficient procedure. Assigning people according to their skills also adds positive value to your business. You are sure to improve your operations by enhancing interdepartmental cooperation and collaboration in identifying and implementing efficient practices.
Automation is not always the solution, as some operations are better done manually. The common misconception to fully automate your business structure does not guarantee better results. A better approach is empowering your workforce to work smarter and not necessarily harder. In some business models, improving human interaction provides the much needed better results. SortAgile two phased approach of improving processes and human interactions guarantees inefficiencies are not automated.
Benefits of Lean Process Improvement
HOW TO DELIVER AMAZING RETURNS ON YOUR DIGITIZATION JOURNEY
It has been proven that digital transformation is one of the most effective ways to enhance business’s performance. However, for majority of business the positive results from digitization remain elusive despite high investment in automating their operations.
For digitization to be successful, a couple of questions must be answered prior to automation: What are the main steps of the manual process, how long does it take to execute it? How does this manual process affect customer satisfaction (what are the value added steps)? Is the manual process cost-effective? What company values support the automation? What impact will the automation of this process have on the internal and external customer? What impact will the automation of this process have on the company?
Over the years, we have established that majority digitization efforts often lead to faster delivery of inefficiencies. This is due to not fully understanding the role of process and in particular human interactions before automation. Projections of reduced turnaround times, or operations costs are either short lived or not achieved at all.
Recurrent challenges we have observed include:
• Numerous apps/technology interventions that are not integrated or fully used.
• A departmental driven automation focus, enhancing working in silos with limited focus on customer satisfaction.
• Critical steps eliminated to deliver efficiency gains, leading in high costs elsewhere.
• Automation complicates instead of simplifying work.
• Employees work backwards to technology needs and often wait for technology to act,so they can execute their roles.
• High cost of maintenance due to changes required to align technology to the correct workflow.
• Disengaged employees with high resistance towards an app/technology.
In all our engagements, the root cause has been automation of workflows in their current status. These barriers will be eliminated by only introducing technology initiatives when a process is being optimized and not as a quick fix. Skipping the standardization and improvement step denies your company opportunities to gain traction and scale your your digitization transformation.
Why you need a different approach to digitization!
Here are some key reasons why a different approach to automation is needed:
- Automation involves the codification of business rules, but in many cases, business rules haven’t been examined for many years and don’t make sense in the current environment.
- Existing business rules are sometimes described as requiring judgment, but they can be turned into more-accurate and more-consistent algorithms for better, more-consistent decision making.
- In most companies the level of process knowledge and understanding is quite low. The company may have collections of standard operating procedures, but they are often poorly documented and out of date.
- The existing business process is often overly complex, with unnecessary steps that could be eliminated before automation is implemented.
- Redesigning the process before automation can help to ensure that human workers are performing tasks that are worthy of their capabilities.
- It also allows achievement of non-technology improvements, resulting to seamless integration with technology (less disruption and lower maintenance costs).
- Have an in-house change pioneers. Automation is not a perfect system. It isn’t a “set it and forget it” mindset that will win every time. Without the proper team monitoring and nurturing it along the way, many well intended campaigns can wind up working against you. It is important to establish a team that thinks through the flow of information and isn’t automating for the sake of it.
Automation when done correctly will deliver improved customers, but for customer satisfaction, human habits play a vital role and their role must be evaluated prior to any automation exercise. Businesses rely on processes that create value for customers and optimize them in such a way that they drive maximum return on investment (ROI) for the company.
By first standardizing the processes, the technology selection will be correctly tailored to your needs and will guarantee you better business results.
Value Creation Packages
How much of your work creates value to your customers? How much waste is created daily? How much wastes can be avoided?
It is important to first understand the quality of your value stream before you invest in any improvement, whether technology or staff training.
By asking the right questions we will uncover key insights into your workflows, highlighting value-added and non-value-added activities. Having a detailed understanding of your work flow and activities that create value will help you target your investment on eliminating critical wastes that will ensure increased value to your customer and improved business results.
Our business process improvement consulting will help you identify the root causes of problems through a series of on the job training on root cause analysis, risk identification and mitigation.
Next our online business development strategy workshop will guide you to select improvement solutions that will avoid a repeat of observed challenges. This will include improvements that require automation and those can be realized without automation.
The process improvement plan ensures limited resources are targeted to solving the right problem at the right time.
The plan will include required resources, schedule, and Direct responsible person for each improvement plan/value stream.
Do you need to simplify your SOPs, optimize an existing process or develop a new process with Lean Process Improvement Methodology?
We will coach your staff to identify and iterate solutions. They will become experts in developing and implementing key process performance indicators and linking them to overall company performance.
Our coaching will help your team adopt lean thinking tools and habits ensuring increased problem-solving capabilities and an enabling culture where all team members continuously identify and reduce inefficiencies.