Boost Profits with the ultimate value proposition!

Learning how to work smarter is very difficult. If you like me, then you want results like yesterday. In order to learn, we all must try then do and repeat if necessary. In this post, I discuss a few quick ways to get the process going.

Large and small companies alike are cutting back. They are looking for ways to reduce cost while not compromising service. For a long time now, larger companie, at least while they wher in the black, sought to do this through process improvement. And if their stock holders demended faster results, layoffs and forced retirement where among the preferred methods. Six Sigma and other methodologies are designed to help in this process of improvement. I discuss a more condensed and size appropriate version in this article.

Process improvement can be a very expensive proposition if you are a large organization with lots of interwoven business processes. Larger organizations most often have a very wide and unwieldy set of processes that may or may not be coupled with other organizations within their company and strategic partners. So when I say expensive, I mean it in the context of time to delivery and return on investement (ROI). For smaller organizations, this is not the case (and if it is the case, pay very close attentiion) and you can, with a little planning, make your organization or enterprise more lean and mean.

With that said, how do you get started? And most importantly, when will you find the time to get it done. The answer to both is NOW! I am an advocate of marring process improvement and technology. The value is obvious in that the delivery system and the business intelligence (BI is just a fancy way of saying workflow) can be embedded together thus creating an M.O.D.I.P.P (Method of Delivery and in Place Process(ing) ). Below are the steps you can take to make this happen. Identification

This can be any area of your business you wish. My recommendation is that you focus on either sales and marketing or customer service and retention. These two are notoriously rife with blotted, inefficient and meaningless steps. Tracking

Now that you have identified the area you wish to target, literally write down every step in the process no matter how small. You will need to do this at least 5 to 8 times keeping track of each separately. Things like, "walk to fax machine", "file new request in folder", "existing customer inbound fax in customer folder" or "after sales call write down notes and insights" Decomposition

This step really should be called analysis in that you will take all of your tracking activity notes and look for the following and ask these questions:

* What purpose does this step serve? * Can the step be automated in some way? * Can this be done in an electronic format? * Is this internal to me or external to my customer? * How much time was spent on the process from beginning to end (in hours)?

*there will be a template to help you better understand the output of the decomposition step Reduction

Reduction is both a removing and a consolidation process. It is really self-explanatory. If a step is marked to be eliminated, it must be understood as to what will replace it and why. Keep this in your records because you might discover you needed it after all and you will have a roadmap of how to reintegrate and reengineer the process. Execution

Once you have your process/pipeline created, it is now time to put your plan in motion. But before you do, you need to test out the new process. To do this, you would use the same tracking method mentioned above. The purpose of this is to gage if the new process has reduced complication and saved time. If it has achieved both, it is ready for full scale implementation. If not, continue to refine it.

We have talked about everything you need for this task except for the tools needed to accomplish your goals. For me, I implement my process improvement by using tools like Microsoft InfoPath and SaaS tools like ZOHO CRM and InsideView.com, ZOHO Creator and other web based software products. You can use anything you feel will help you maximize your time and reduce overall cost.