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process improvement Tagged Articles



Marketing needs Six Sigma Methodology to Improve
Marketing needs to do a better job of using statistics and especially variation. When I start talking numbers to people, and what they mean, I get looked at like someone that is just trying to complicate a creative process. Improvement is about numbers. Measurement is about numbers. The truth is, marketing is about numbers. So why not employ more of the Six Sigma methodology? I understand that achieving the quality that Six Sigma represents may be difficult but the principles and tools should, nevertheless be utilized.

Productivity Improvement from Employee Engagement, Process Improvement
Imagine having to achieve the same amount of output with half the number of people doing the work. This is a real challenge facing companies big and small in North America. By being a workplace of choice and relentlessly pursuing ways to boost output from existing resources, you can get a leg up on the competition in the short term and ensure survival in the long term.

Home Business Opportunity - The Importance of Ongoing Process Improvement
To improve your overall business strategies, you should look at integrating process improvements to optimize every aspect of your business operation.

Getting New Managers to Deliver Quickly
As companies start transforming their businesses in response to changing market conditions, they need their people to deliver. Every CEO faces two main people challenges. The CEO's first challenge is to develop current high performers into good leaders who can put in place a multiplier effect on their talents. The CEO's second challenge is to induct new talented people and get them off the block quickly. Organizations that have a strong process culture can get their new manager's off the block quickly and with less pain.

Is Six Sigma Still Relevant in a Dynamically Changing World
The following is the overview of a just released white paper on Six Sigma, Lean and Integrated Enterprise Excellence with a corresponding link to download the paper itself (as the work was funded there is no charge to obtain the paper). I am certain that it will inspire a spirited debate - and that of course is beneficial to everyone.

Executive Coaching or Sales Coaching Is Not New Because It Is an Almost 2,500 Year Old Proven Process
Executive coaching or sales coaching is a popular trend of the 21st century. Yet, do you know the roots of this highly effective performance strategy? Maybe it is time for a brief history lesson.

Five Reasons Agency Compensation Should Not Be Relationship Based
Don't get me wrong, measuring and managing a high quality relationship is important between agencies and marketers. But at the ANA Marketing Financial Management Conference last week in Phoenix, Arizona, there was a presentation by Sarah Armstrong on Value Based Agency Compensation.

Reengineer Your Sales Cycle: Reduce your time-to-sale and increase your lead-to-close rate
The sales cycle is a system of activities that starts when a new lead is generated and ends when a sale is booked. Like any business process, the sales cycle can be streamlined to reduce inefficiencies, decrease time between lead and order, and increase the lead-to-sale conversion rate. We've provided a way to streamline your sales cycle.

Preparing for Successful Process Improvement
An integral and often overlooked step in improvement work is the preparation work: defining the project and gathering the facts that are essential to gaining a good understanding of the existing process. Too often this initial phase of a project is given cursory attention or ignored altogether. This is the first in a series of papers dealing with the up-front work in process improvement projects.

PROCESS MANAGEMENT AND CONTINUOUS PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
In effective organizations, processes are constantly evaluated and improved. The ultimate goal of business process optimization is to better serve stakeholders; which includes establishing a process framework and effort involved in modeling processes to allow better delivery of services. Process Management is a very effective tool for management consultants to help focus their client organization and help achieve increased productivity.

Lean Marketing
The number one complaint from CEOs of companies who are trying to rapidly increase sales is that they can’t measure their return on marketing investments and that the sales process performs unpredictably. When considering the bad habits and waste that they allow to exist in marketing and sales planning, execution, and management it is barely any wonder why there is so much money, time, and resources thrown down the comode in the sales process and marketing operation.

Other process improvement Related Articles

Preparing for Successful Process Improvement
An integral and often overlooked step in improvement work is the preparation work: defining the project and gathering the facts that are essential to gaining a good understanding of the existing process. Too often this initial phase of a project is given cursory attention or ignored altogether. This is the first in a series of papers dealing with the up-front work in process improvement projects.

Getting Everyone on Board for an Improvement Project
A previous paper outlined the elements involved in setting up a process improvement project. With a project well-defined and management support secured, it is time to spread the word. We want to ensure that everyone involved in the process to be studied is aware of what is going on. We do that with a public announcement.

Collecting the Facts for Preparing Process Maps
In two previous papers, we outlined the elements involved in setting up a process improvement project and getting the word out with a public announcement. With everyone on board, it’s time to get into the trenches. Fact gathering is an integral part of understanding reality and preparing a good process map. Yet, it is often dismissed or given cursory attention as superficial process maps are created by an individual or group of people some distance away from the work…and thereby some distance away from reality. If you want your process maps to reflect reality, you must go to the work and see it happen.

How often do You Think ‘Outside the Box’?
‘Thinking outside the box’ is a bit of a buzz phrase at the moment in the business world. That said, it really is an extremely effective process. Each process (and there are usually many) in a revenue-generating, production, operational, financial or personnel activity can be improved anywhere from 3% or 4% all the way up to 100% and more. What would happen if there was always room in nearly every process for improvement... always! A process is only as good until the next idea that improves it further.

Customer Focus in Process Improvement
A process is a series of steps completed to achieve a particular result. It is hard to imagine a process improvement effort that doesn’t start with a focus on that result with a question like “What is the purpose of this process?” - whether the customer is actually engaged or not. Sometimes we have a strong sense that our product or service is good. Sometimes we choose to “get our own house in order” before we step outside the organization. Sometimes we base the result on a prescription provided by the customer. However, sometimes, our focus may be misdirected to how we do the work without considering why it is done in the first place...particularly where slick new technologies are involved. But, without actually engaging the customer, we can’t really know how well the process is working to provide the customer what they need or want.

The Service Factor during Economic Turbulence
Improving and maintaining good customer service is not an exciting endeavor. It involves detailed study and steadfast execution rather than temporary brilliance or inspiration. Therefore, customer service improvement is fundamentally an effort of continuous improvement. You must develop a basic competency in process improvement to attain and sustain high levels of customer service. This means that it is absolutely critical during tough economic times that you don’t make the mistake of cutting resources that support service excellence in your attempt to control operational costs.

Increase Productivity Through Business Process Management
Business Process Management (BPM) consists of powerful tools to generate dramatic work process improvement. It helps organizations cope with the detrimental after-effects of staff cuts during the recession.

Leadership and Learning are Indispensable
The great American founding father, author, and statesman, Benjamin Franklin, was highly devoted to life long learning and continual personal improvement. His book, The Art of Virtue (edited by George Rogers), is an inspiring account of Franklin's life and an instructive guide to his improvement process and personal effective system. Franklin once said, "If you empty your purse in your head, no one can take it away from you. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest."

Matching Team Types and Focus
Managers' growing understanding of the power of a team-based organization has created an explosion of teams. We're now seeing a profusion of high-involvement teams, high-performance teams, corrective action teams, service and quality improvement teams, project teams, task forces, steering councils, process management and improvement teams, problem solving teams, cross-functional teams, departmental teams, work teams, regional or branch teams, self-directed and self-managed teams, semi-autonomous teams...to name just a few.

Process Management Pathways and Pitfalls (Part Two)
Make sure all your process improvement activities are clearly and tightly linked to your strategic imperatives. Each effort should also have highly focused and specific improvement goals (that are an aggressive, major stretch) and measurements. Establish feedback and follow-up steps for each process management and improvement team.

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