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5 Transformational Benefits of Consultancy Services to Your Business

StrategyDriven Business Performance Assessment Article | 5 Transformational Benefits of Consultancy Services to Your BusinessAccording to recent studies, incorporating professional services into business management is one way to achieve your objectives fast. This is possible by choosing the right business consultancy services in your area. Besides understanding the ways to improve your operations and motivating your workforce, companies such as FTI Consulting can serve your business interests in other ways. This guide explains the transformational benefits.

Designing a Plan With Realistic Goals

Every entrepreneur has specific goals to achieve in a specific time frame. A plan is crucial in achieving these goals. By working with a consultancy service, you get an avenue to create a plan that will help in meeting your immediate and future goals. They work with you and ensure you understand how designing a plan is crucial in achieving realistic goals.

Focus on Core Business Capacities

It can be a challenge for a business to analyze and focus on its core operations and service delivery capacities. Working with a consultancy firm helps you know your capabilities as a business and how you can focus on getting the best from your efforts. Consultancy services allow you to work with specialists, instructors, and other professionals that ensure you focus on core business capacities to positively transform your venture.


Increases Cost Effectiveness

It might take you months of investing in your workforce to determine their capacities and ensure productivity. This, in the long run, means spending more than planned. The case is different for working with agencies like the professionals at FTI Consulting as they use their expertise to train your workforce and get the best from them within weeks. You also pay for the services rendered and avoid the extra costs of educating and training your employees.

Fills In Knowledge Gaps

While you expect your workforce to give out their best, the knowledge gap present can make it hard. Their strengths and weaknesses can conflict and create a knowledge and skills gap that needs filling. Working with a consultancy service helps you identify these gaps and provide guidance on ways to fill them. They also help identify experts you can hire to fill the knowledge gap and achieve your business objectives.

Catalyst for Change

A business can struggle to identify the changes it needs to make to achieve its objectives. A business consultant sees things from a different perspective. You need a different insight into the problems to come up with solutions. By hiring and working with a business consultant, you get a catalyst for change. They help you embrace the changes and ensure you transform your business for the better.

The decision to look for and work with a business consultancy firm is a step toward transforming your venture positively. By understanding the related benefits, choosing the right consultant is easy. The explained benefits should encourage you to look for and work with one today.

5 Reasons to Optimize Your Business Processes

StrategyDriven Process Management Article | 5 Reasons to Optimize Your Business ProcessesMany of the processes that help a business thrive and stay afloat may seem mundane. However, no matter how mundane some processes may seem, they can ultimately be the reason for declining gains and unsatisfactory outcomes. The optimization of business processes, no matter how mundane they may seem, is crucial for business success, competitiveness, and longevity. To ensure all three, businesses should seek ways to optimize their processes. Here are some additional reasons why every business should do this.

Improved Efficiency

Optimizing your business processes can improve its efficiency. Many businesses still use inefficient systems that slow down their employees and lead to the wastage of a lot of time and money. This can reduce a business’s ability to remain viable in addition to adding a lot of stress to employees. Employee satisfaction and performance can suffer which can lead to the business as a whole suffering.

Automation, one of the most common ways of optimizing business operations, can help business operations flow better, reduce undue stress on employees, and help the business operate more efficiently. The use of software can also reduce one of the most common bottlenecks for businesses, data entry. Business process optimization solutions from TrinityIS.com increase efficiency by reducing the burden of data entry, leaving employees to concentrate on other areas that help a business meet its objectives.

Adaptability

Optimized business processes give businesses the ability to adapt quickly to changing environments and setbacks and take advantage of new opportunities quickly. By helping a business do all this, process optimization can help a business stay ahead of its competition. Having this flexibility and adaptability is especially important right now considering how rapidly the world and the overall business environment are changing.

Higher Quality Results

A major goal of business process optimization is improving the quality of results produced by employees. That may take different forms depending on the business. Common examples include streamlining the fulfillment process to improve customer satisfaction or reducing human errors in manufacturing processes. By making improvements, businesses can deliver high-quality results which can help improve the business’s reputation, retain current customers, and gain new ones.

Regulation Compliance

The regulations businesses have to abide by are always changing and failure to comply can be detrimental to a business. The process of optimization can include helping a business comply with these regulations.

It Helps Track Employee Performance

Optimized and automated business processes make it easier to track employee performance. The tools used to make this possible enable upper management to hold employees accountable as well as find other areas where inefficiencies exist. This way, employees can be urged to improve their performance and inefficiencies can be eliminated to further improve the business’s operations.

The process of optimizing business optimizations is a long one, which is always evolving, and never really ends. Although it can be costly, businesses that seek to continually check, optimize and improve their processes stand to benefit a lot. This can be through better and higher output, improved employee and customer satisfaction as well as savings in terms of both time and money.

StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 3 – An Interview with Forrest Breyfogle, author of Integrated Enterprise Excellence, Volume I – The Basics

StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag posts on the StrategyDriven website.

Special Edition 3 – An Interview with Forrest Breyfogle, author of Integrated Enterprise Excellence, Volume I – The Basics explores how to achieve organizational performance improvements through the use of the Integrated Enterprise Excellence system. During our discussion, Forrest Breyfogle, author of Integrated Enterprise Excellence, Volume I – The Basics: Golfing Buddies Go Beyond Lean Six Sigma and the Balanced Scorecard and CEO of Smarter Solutions, a global management coaching and consulting firm specializing in the design and application of innovative enterprise-wide performance measures and business solutions, shares his insights regarding:

  • the importance of an integrated approach to organizational performance improvement
  • how using the Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control (DMAIC) model at the enterprise and project levels can drive performance improvement
  • acquisition of critical option value insights through the use of the Design of Experiments (DOE) approach
  • how other business management approaches such as Total Quality Management (TQM), the Theory of Constraints (TOC), SMART goals, and ISO 9000 are related to the Integrated Enterprise Excellence system

Additional Information

Complimenting the outstanding insights Forrest shares in Integrated Enterprise Excellence, Volume I – The Basics and this special edition podcast, are the organizational performance improvement materials and resources found on his website, Smarter Solutions (www.SmarterSolutions.com). Forrest also offers free one-day seminars throughout the United States. For additional information regarding these seminars, click here.

As mentioned in the podcast, Integrated Enterprise Excellence, Volume I – The Basics, is just one of four books in the Integrated Enterprise Excellence series which includes:


About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Forrest W. Breyfogle IIIForrest W. Breyfogle III, author of Integrated Enterprise Excellence, Volume I – The Basics, is CEO of Smarter Solutions, a global management coaching and consulting firm specializing in the design and application of innovative enterprise-wide performance measures and business solutions. For over 15 years, Forrest has advised company leaders and their teams on how to improve their organization’s performance through the use of his Integrated Enterprise Excellence system. In 2004, Forrest received the prestigious Crosby Medal from the American Society for Quality for his earlier book, Implementing Six Sigma. He serves on the Board of Advisors for the University of Texas Center for Performance Excellence. To read Forrest’s full biography, click here.

4 Areas Your Business Should Be Focusing On This Year

StrategyDriven Business Performance Assessment Program Article | Business Performance Improvement | 4 Areas Your Business Should Be Focusing On This YearThe reality is that if you try to take on too much at once with your business, this approach may backfire on you. It’s better to focus in on a few essential initiatives than it is to spread yourself too thin and, in turn, end up accomplishing nothing.

There are four areas in particular that your business should highly consider concentrating on this year if you want to experience more success. Take time to review the following ideas and then think about which areas you’re performing well and which ones could use more of your time and attention so that you can come up with a plan of action for moving forward.

1. Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is one area you definitely want to focus on this year if you’re going to run a better business. It’s important to collect feedback and track your customer service performance, so you know exactly how you’re doing. The happier your customers are, the more likely it is that your business will receive positive reviews online and that consumers will start talking about you with each other and spreading the word about why it’s a wise choice to do business with you.

2. Health & Safety Obligations

Additionally, commit to following health and safety protocol and running a safer business this year. You’ll avoid unwanted situations this way and be able to retain your employees because they’ll feel safe and protected coming to work each day. Properly ventilate and extract dust and waste by using products from Integrated Air Systems to help you achieve this goal. This way, you’ll reduce the risk of equipment breaking down or someone getting sick or hurt because of unsafe working conditions.

3. Employee Retention

Another area your business should be focusing on this year has to do with employee retention. The truth is that people are more willing to change jobs these days if they’re unhappy at their current employer. Keep your employees satisfied and motivated by assigning them challenging tasks and rewarding them fairly for their efforts. Be willing to gather feedback from and listen to your employees so you can create an even more attractive work environment.

4. Innovation

Your business should also be concentrating on how to innovate your products or services in the upcoming year. Going along with business as usual might be the easy answer, but it’s not what’s going to help you stay relevant or get ahead of your competitors. Hold brainstorming sessions with your employees and use your creativity to come up with new solutions that are impressive and newsworthy.

Conclusion

Achieve better results with your business this year when you’re focusing on improving in the right areas. Use these tips to help you set more specific goals about what it is you wish to accomplish and what challenges you need to overcome in the future. Start by coming up with a plan of action and then writing down specific details about how you’ll properly execute each objective.

Mind The Gap! Can You Cover The Cracks In Your Company?

Cracks have a habit of appearing where we don’t want them. Every homeowner has that unpleasant moment of realizing a new crack has appeared on the ceiling. And, we’ve all cussed about that crack in the road. These are irritating yet inevitable parts of daily life.

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After all, the moment a crack appears, your efforts risk falling down that chasm. Still, even the best entrepreneurs experience gaps in operations sometimes. This is especially likely when you start out and experience teething problems. Don’t fear, though. The appearance of company cracks doesn’t mean you’re doomed to failure. All you need to do is know how to cover them so that they don’t show to the public. Lucky for you, we’re going to look at a few primary problem areas, and what you can do about them.

Terrible team members

When you start your employment journey, you won’t know what you’re looking for. There’s every possibility that you could end up with less than perfect members on your team. It may be that they don’t have a great work ethic, or that they have a disagreeable manner. It may even be that they cause workplace ruptures. A team member like this can cause issues for everyone else in the office. That’s sure to have a knock-on impact. Then answer? Make sure to do thorough background checks before taking anyone onboard. Make an effort, too, to harness experts by offering training. And, if team members still let you down, don’t be precious about letting them go. Your business will be better for it.

Manufacturing messes

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Given your product is the main attraction, it’s also crucial to look out for cracks in manufacturing. These can come in a few different forms. It may simply be that you haven’t perfected a production method which works yet. Or, it may be that your machinery isn’t producing a clean-cut product. That first point is easy enough to cover over with a little careful planning and playing around. The latter isn’t quite as simple, though there is still a clear solution. If you aren’t achieving the finish you want, you should turn to someone like this manufacturer who offer precision equipment which is sure to be an improvement. Recalibrating your machines may also provide the precise measurements you’re after.

Delivery disasters

Many new companies also experience cracks in their delivery methods. This is terrible news as it directly impacts the customer experience. To make sure they don’t notice these problems, you need to focus your efforts here early on. Your best option by far would be to turn to an outsourced courier service like this one when you start out. This ensures your deliveries come from a professional and established company. As simple as that, you can put the risk of cracks here behind you, and see your deliveries on a smooth road to arrival.

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