Are all of the initiatives or projects undertaken by your company well-run, streamlined, and efficient? Is productivity high, employee morale healthy, and communication clear and effective? These common performance issues are leading indicators of the need for process improvement in every organization.

According to CIO Insight magazine, "Given the pressures that exist for executives, managers and workers....streamlining business processes and squeezing out greater efficiency has moved front stage center." (April, 2004)

One way to energize your staff and improve business performance is to encourage employees to innovate – to discover new and better ways of doing their jobs. Plus Delta's process improvement methodology helps create an environment for such innovative thinking. The results for Plus Delta's clients are consistent – more efficient and productive organizations. By increasing alignment amongst all parties in the process, we get the entire team's energy focused on achieving the core business objectives. In order to eliminate waste and reduce overall operating costs,

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you might consider assessing your organization's performance based on these indicators. Then you can redesign your primary operating procedures to maximize performance.

Plus Delta's process improvement approach begins with a review of your current workflow and an analysis of your existing organizational structures. Our detailed improvement plan typically consists of the following activities:

		Definition – Verify your "as is" processes and your existing workflow. This will set a 'benchmark' for measuring your core operating procedures
		Standardization – Design a predictable model for your "to be" processes. Areas addressed include removing bottlenecks, eliminating redundancies, and reducing manual handoffs
		Automation – Incorporate new templates and advanced technologies to streamline paper-based operations and integrate other business functions
		Transition – Implement your "to be" processes concurrent with realigning job functions and reporting structures to better match the new process requirements
		Evaluation – Assess the effectiveness of your new procedures, consider potential enhancements, and refine the process in order to achieve increased efficiencies well into the future

The success of any organization's innovation effort hinges on senior leadership's ability to define a clear vision, create a sense of urgency to change, assign the right people to the effort, and establish "quick wins" to demonstrate success in the early stages of the innovation effort. Such an effort begins with the company's business strategy informing its process objectives. So evaluating critical suppliers, inputs, customers, and outputs helps drive the process as well as eliminate any process waste. The reality, though, is that it doesn't end with creating a new process. Implementing the new process is just as important as fashioning it. To facilitate the transition from the "old" to the "new" processes, all affected employees need to be educated about any requirements, key stakeholder groups need to be made aware of all changes, and clear performance standards must be established. Re-skilling employees is also critical to the sustainability of your process innovations, so be sure to make a comprehensive training strategy an essential component of any implementation plan. Finally, performance expectations should be designed – and agreed to – to enable ongoing evaluation, monitoring, and continuous improvement to occur.

The guiding purpose of process innovation is to reinforce the organization's vision and its strategic direction by identifying opportunities for performance improvement. It is important to encourage creativity and fresh ideas in order for the most innovative ideas and solutions to surface. This is an opportunity to refresh old habits, question established practices, and truly capture the most efficient new processes. Through enhanced workflow designs and strategic leadership of critical imperatives, people will re-think the way they do their jobs and radically enhance the way you do business.

Can Plus Delta help you innovate your current business processes? To learn how to streamline your business operations FOR GOOD, please call Dr. Jeremy Lurey directly at (866) PLS-DLTA or send him an email at jslurey@plusdelta.net. You can also visit the Process Improvement page for more information.

Note: This feature was originally published and distributed in Plus Delta Consulting’s e-newsletter in April 2006.