We have developed a business improvement process that has been honed to drive immediate results while at the same time, sustaining the improvements over time. We employ a simple, but powerful 4-step process to ensure opportunities are identified, initiatives planned and executed and value is realized and retained.
Current State Assessment
We help assess the business performance through a rigorous analysis of the current state that includes looking at the systems, technology, analytics, process, people and performance management culture. We engage with the leadership team to formulate the key objectives, review and document current processes, assess the organizational capabilities and map the current technology systems and how they are adopted within the business practices. This phase also helps identify early opportunities and quick wins that help build momentum. Key output of this stage is a maturity map as it relates to technology, process and organization. The value provided is the clear definition and clarity of the current capabilities.
Target State Design
Based on the rigorous analysis of the current state, we are able to benchmark against best-in-class processes and harness the power within the organization to identify key opportunities. We are also able to dive deep in key opportunity areas to value them. These opportunities form the gaps based on which the business improvement plan will be designed.
Working with leadership, we are able to drive a target state that aims to bring the business performance to a new level – new performance targets, new expectations. We start with deriving the key value drivers from the gap analysis, and using them to design the target state. We jointly develop the business improvement strategy, developing and prioritizing initiatives based on return on investment, costs, constraints and other factors. This target state design results in a detailed business improvement plan, encompassing the three essential components – analytics, technology and process and organizational capabilities. The key outputs at this stage are the target state design structure, business improvement plan and the go/no-go decisions on initiatives. The value of this phase is the clarity of the target state and the associated benefits.
Execution
We have spent our careers in executing the business improvement plan – it is what sets us apart from consulting firms. We specialize in managing large-scale change programs, with multiple stakeholders and complex team interactions. From business case development, putting together the ROI case and justifying the investments, to planning the details on the implementation, rigorous follow through on commitments, accountability to execute, understanding key value drivers, staying on top of the complexities, we have worked on multiple business improvement initiatives to successful completion.
We work with a belief that partnership and collaboration with the organization will lead to lasting value; at the same time, we engage the leadership in a productive way to address issues that come up during the process. We establish the right governance, team structure, roles and responsibilities in addition to developing the leadership team to provide guidance and support to resolve issues during execution. For large initiatives, we provide the overall program and change management capabilities to ensure success.
Value Capture
Lastly, while most implementations end with the project closure, we believe that value capture is a distinct phase – we plan for and execute a value capture phase, where we ensure that the process capability, people skills, performance management systems are all developed and fully operational. Without this phase, we would be in the familiar territory that plagues many organizations – “we have done this before, but it never really worked”.
Our engagement model is flexible – we have helped our clients conduct short diagnostics that span a few days to a few weeks, develop business strategies leading to the target state design (typical projects last a few months), lead business improvement initiatives (that last in the order of several months to over a year), and execute value capture projects (a few weeks to a few months). Our simple goal is to maximize value for our clients.