Overview of Business Process Engineering

Businessways, Nashville consultants, are experts in identifying and removing the causes of defects and errors in business processes and in manufacturing, overall. Using a set of quality management methods, we can help your organization improve processes in all facets, such as: supply chain and production support, recruiting, data intake, reporting and more.

What can you expect from our process improvement services? Using Six Sigma, Lean and other tools and techniques for evaluation, we can help your organization:

• Eliminate waste
• Reduces costs
• Reduce cycle time
• Enhance quality
• Do more with less: increase productivity
• Perk up on-time delivery
• Boost customer satisfaction
• And, the ultimate result: improves the bottom line

Six Sigma and Lean Program

Businessways utilizes Six Sigma and Lean tools to facilitate and enhance our customers’ ability to quantitatively and qualitatively assess, measure, improve and control process, thereby minimizing defects and improving emerging opportunities.

Six Sigma:

Fundamentally, the application of Six Sigma methodology focuses on the implementation of a measurement-based strategy to affect process improvement and variation reduction. This is accomplished through the use of two Six Sigma sub-methodologies: DMAIC and DMADV.

The Six Sigma DMAIC process (define, measure, analyze, improve, control) is a qualitative improvement system to revise existing processes falling below specification by establishing incremental improvement. DMAIC can also be employed if a current process requires more than just incremental improvement.

The Six Sigma DMADV process (define, measure, analyze, design, verify) is an improvement system used to develop new processes or products at Six Sigma quality levels.

Here is an example of the Six Sigma DMAIC process, as BusinessWays would implement it at your business:

Stage 1 : Define

What’s the problem?
Why is it important?
How long will it take to fix it?
How much is it going to cost?
Who’s going to solve it?

These questions need answered up front, using tools and templates such as “project charters” and “critical to quality” diagrams. The more work done defining the problem, the more likely the problem will be successfully resolved.

Stage 2 : Measure

If you don’t know the process or how it’s currently performing, how will you know you’ve fixed it?
The measure phase is about understanding and quantifying the current reality, by using tools such as process mapping, collecting and validating data. If it moves, we can measure it!

Stage 3 : Analyze

At this phase, our analysts are busy finding the root cause of the problem. We use sophisticated tools to determine the rotten apples spoiling the barrel.

Stage 4 : Improve

Now that we found the root cause (the rotten apple(s), it’s time to throw them out. The improve phase is about eliminating the root cause of the problem and/or implementing a solution that will flag early if the process is on a slippery slope to defect land.

Stage 5 : Control

The control phase is about getting the process back to business as usual. The project team hands over responsibility to the team in charge of the everyday process, with the added benefit of having prevented the problem from occurring again, or giving them the tools to monitor the process and nip problems in the bud before they grow. The project charter is reviewed, to ensure all project charter objectives have been met, such as cost reductions and quality improvements

Lean Practices

"Lean," also known as Lean Manufacturing, Lean Production or Lean Practices, is set of process management tools used to optimize the process of producing goods or services through the removal of waste and implementing flow, as opposed to utilizing a flow process of batch and queue. Implementing lean can help your company ensure that you are focusing on getting the right things, to the right place, at the right time, in the right quantity to optimally achieve work flow while minimizing waste and being flexible and able to change.

The Lean manufacturing process management philosophy derived mostly from the Toyota Production System (TPS). Through the identification of seven wastes, it is renowned for its focus on reduction of these wastes to improve overall customer value. With Toyota’s steady growth from a small company to the world's largest automaker, it is one of the most successful case studies for the effectiveness for lean practices. Today, the reduction of waste as a means of optimizing process is largely being adopted in companies outside of manufacturing, from healthcare to IT.

The seven wastes, as established through Lean Practices include:

• Defects
• Overproduction
• Conveyance
• Waiting
• Inventory
• Motion
• Overprocessing

Enterprise Performance Management (EPM)

With an Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) framework in place, organizations use the analysis of business methodologies and integrated reporting and metrics to align tactical processes more closely with strategy. Also known as Business Performance Management (BPM), Corporate Performance Management (CPM) or Operational Performance Management (OPM), EPM helps accelerate organizational change, coordinate internal initiatives, and generate ongoing feedback.

EPM has often been referred to the next generation of business intelligence, since it can affect the efficiency of finance, human resources, materials and more. As companies struggle to create and conform strategies into actionable, measurable business drivers, utilizing EPM can help organizations optimize their business performance.

There are many tools commonly used to implement EPM, including: six sigma, strategy articulation, balanced scorecard, activity-based costing, performance dashboard, and process management.
Design and execution of targeted marketing campaigns to optimize marketing effectiveness
Design and execution of specific customer campaigns, including: customer acquisition, cross-selling, up-selling, retention
Analysis of customer behavior to aid product and service decision making (e.g. pricing, new product development, etc.)
Management decisions, e.g. financial forecasting and customer profitability analysis
Prediction of the probability of customer defection (churn analysis)

Sales Intelligence CRM

The data-driven Sales Intelligence CRM offers a similar toolset to Analytical CRM, but it is intended as a more direct sales tool. The Sales Intelligence concepts and methods are fact-based and transactional to support improved decision making by sales people.

Although it has been primarily used in manufacturing, distribution and wholesale, Sales Intelligence CRM can positively affect companies in most business sectors. With narrowly specialized features, such as delivery of alerts to sales people, Sales Intelligence CRM is based on the following:
Balanced scorecard
The most widely adopted EPM methodology, the balanced scorecard concept was introduced by Kaplan and Norton of the Harvard Business School, the balanced scorecard technique ensures organizational metrics are developed with a broad perspective and concrete linkages to financial measures, customer relationship status, internal processes and employee potential. From public school systems to the world’s best-known entertainment companies, it provides a framework for defining and tracking critical data about the health of an organization.

Strategy articulation

The strategy articulation methodology of EPM enables BusinessWays to help you establish your goals, create a roadmap of strategies, and subsequently monitor and manage performance from your high-level objectives down to the detail of operational metrics.

Performance dashboard

Companies frequently use performance dashboard methodology, or key performance indicators, to "value" difficult to measure EPM activities such as the benefits of leadership development, engagement, service, and satisfaction. Typically tied to strategy, the performance dashboard differs from business drivers & aims (or goals), as it consists of both financial and non-financial metrics to help define and measure progress towards your goals.

When identifying key metrics in the performance dashboard, BusinessWays applies the SMART process:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Result-oriented (also referred to Relevant)
• Time-bound

Process management

In a functional company, it’s unlikely that anyone has overall responsibility for anything beyond a narrow segment of process. In an enterprise-driven company, however, the shift from functional thinking to process thinking is a key driver of business transformation. With the guidance and leadership of BusinessWays this methodology represents a truly new way of thinking about the way will function as an organization.

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