BLOG: Don't Survive... Thrive

Don't Survive... Thrive

What Continuous Improvement Can Do To Help Make Your Business 'Fit To Compete' In Today's Challenging Market…

With 2022 (the year the Collins English Dictionary declared the word 'permacrisis' to be their word of the year) just about behind us, what does 2023 have in store for the UK economy?

Undoubtedly, as a nation, we are in challenging economic times, and with Goldman Sachs revising their original prediction of a 0.4% shrink in the economy to a whopping 1%, the consensus seems to be that recession is inevitable.

Doom and gloom?

Challenging for sure, but also an opportunity to ensure that your business is equipped and ready to 'weather the storm' – however choppy the waters might be. As continuous improvement specialists, our mantra would be – don't panic, well not yet, anyway.

Concentrate on maximising your existing assets to drive creativity and keep innovations customer focussed. Keep your team motivated and focused on eliminating waste, strengthening your 'value-adds' and improving your bottom line.

Easier said than done?

If you think your business could be more efficient if you don't understand where the day-to-day 'pain points' are, or if you are struggling to identify the opportunities in your organisation, investing in a programme of Continuous Improvement could not only prepare you for any potential recession, but it could also enable you to emerge even stronger.

So how does Continuous Improvement actually work?

A question we are asked every day, and the answer is relatively simple. Continuous Improvement allows you to identify opportunities and improve the performance of your business.

It is wholly designed to give business owners and managers the strategic overview needed to amplify profits and establish an environment that is prepared for future growth.

A step-by-step guide through the individual stages of a typical continuous improvement project and an explanation of what each stage entails…

Review

Potentially the most important step, after all, if we don't understand the operation, how can we remove unnecessary processes. During this stage, we work with the team closest to the problem to help understand your current processes. It helps us identify your essential assets and identify any potential duplication of unnecessary steps in your existing processes.

A great example of this is some of the work we have done within the construction industry around continuous Improvement and process transformation. To look at this in more depth, check out one of our recent case studies HERE.

Analyse

So, we have gathered the information, immersed ourselves in the business and collated the data. It's now time to analyse our findings, question the processes and establish the real 'value adds' in terms of customer satisfaction, bottom line or both.

This is the stage where we really drill down into your organisation's inner workings and ascertain what is necessary, what is wastage, what is duplicated and what is generating unnecessary costs.

Report

The exciting bit? Possibly, it's certainly the most enlightening stage when we share our feedback, reporting our findings on the operation, highlighting any problems; opportunities along with any potential benefits.

Simplify

The penny drop stage! This is where we work with your team, reviewing the problems or opportunities in more depth and focusing on getting to the simplest solution that deals with the root cause of the issue.

As part of developing these solutions, we consider; benchmarking your organisation against industry performance, reviewing best practices; sustainability, health and safety and regulatory requirements to improve quality across the board.

Improve

So, there are things to fix and steps to take to improve – but how? During this stage, we focus on implementing and embedding successful change.

This could be restructuring your systems, adapting and streamlining existing processes, removal of non-value add activity, training, or personnel requirements, or, more often, a bespoke combination of all of the above!

During this stage, we ensure that key stakeholders have the knowledge and ability to carry forward these improvements, train new team members and monitor progress moving forward.

Save

Although our key focus is all about improving the bottom line, it's not all about saving ££ £'s. Depending on where you are as an organisation, it might be about driving efficiencies to enable future growth or empowering your team to identify opportunities and embrace creativity.

In fact, we save our clients £ m's every year by applying Business Improvement tools and techniques across their operations and ensuring they are 'fit to compete' within their sector, notwithstanding global economic pressures or industry trends.

Ultimately, any Continuous Improvement exercise is designed with one key aim: to ensure the process from taking an order to receiving payment for your goods or services is fast, simple and efficient.

In addition, by giving you the tools to help you understand and analyse key business data, you can make clear, data-driven decisions that will maintain efficiency, identify opportunities and strengthen customer satisfaction.

We help you to be better.

If you feel it's time to improve and are ready to take the first step, drop us a line and start your journey from better to best.

Download the article