Techblog
Driving Business Excellence
By maintaining a continued focus on achieving business excellence, companies are better-positioned for higher productivity and enhanced performance.
How do business excellence and productivity relate to each other? More importantly, how can companies drive business
excellence to achieve their desired results? In a panel discussion at the 4th Business Excellence Global Conference, panellists from different industries explored this timely topic and shared their unique perspectives.
Several broad themes related to business excellence emerged throughout the discussion, including the importance of a holistic approach. Ms Teng Soon Lang, Executive Vice President and Group Head, Quality & Service Excellence Division
of OCBC Bank noted that when a company makes improvements to processes that add value for customers, it is important to ensure that related support processes in the organisation are also updated to ensure alignment.
Effective employee engagement and using incentives were also identified as key factors to achieve business excellence. The panellists highlighted several best practices in this area, such as empowering employees through positive influence rather than command and control tactics, and maintaining transparent communications so employees know what the
company is doing and why, as well as aligning employee incentives with corporate objectives.
Achieving productivity breakthroughs
The panellists all agreed on the importance of companies taking a step back to put their business ‘under a microscope’ and assessing it objectively before they can achieve productivity breakthroughs.
Ms Teng commented that initiatives aimed at boosting productivity should be assessed from different perspectives, taking into account the needs of customers, the welfare of employees and the impact on the bottom line. "It is important
that whatever we do, it is aligned with our business goals."
Heiko Rauscher, Principal at Porsche Consulting, stressed the need to look beyond obvious areas such as automation. To boost productivity, companies should seek out and eliminate waste in processes throughout every facet of an organisation. This, he noted, would allow a company "to reduce or eliminate everything that does not add value to customers".
Building on this idea, retired CEO of Premier, Inc., Mr Richard Norling, shared how his former company mapped out its entire business into 180 unique processes. This allowed him and his colleagues to better understand their organisation by measuring which processes had the most influence on individual corporate strategies. Mr Norling said it empowered them to boost productivity in a targeted manner because "we focused on and prioritised those processes that were most associated with the results that we were seeking."
Noting that initiatives aimed at boosting productivity can be disruptive, Mr Naris Cheyklin, Senior Executive Vice President and CFO of Central Pattana Public Co. Ltd, added that these changes need to be managed with care and consideration. "We need to focus on the management team that has been put in charge of this change management because there will be some resistance from the people, as sometimes they may have to work harder in the early stage
of change."
Climbing ever-higher
Regardless of the industry or the type of changes being implemented, the panellists all felt that the quest for business excellence must be an ongoing endeavour, not a one-off event. Although implementing major changes can provide a big one-time boost to productivity, the key to business excellence lies in working towards continual, incremental improvement, which will stand any company in good stead.
Reproduced with permission from SPRINGnews January 2013 Issue. Published by SPRING Singapore.