There is a simple, well proven methodology that can be used to achieve these goals.
The first step involves defining the critical success factors and setting challenging but realistic improvement goals.
The next step is to select the business process that has the greatest impact on these success factors. In most businesses this would be the order fulfilment cycle. The process is analyzed to find what goes wrong and why it goes wrong.
The process is then modified to fix the root causes to ensure problems to not recur. This is done over and over again, fixing the biggest problems first then the smaller ones so that over time performance improves, costs go down, quality improves, cycle times get faster.
Why does the methodology work so well? Most performance problems have simple solutions and are organizational in nature. They don't get fixed because people are so busy doing the day to day work. By using a methodology to systematically improve performance you can, over time, bring about dramatic improvements.
The methodology is based on well established techniques such as quality management, socio technical analysis and process re-engineering. All have been researched for decades, they are sound reliable and effective.
This is valuable to you as an owner or manager because every dollar saved is money in your pocket. Improvement in perceived quality or responsiveness provides an competitive advantage enabling you to charge a small premium.
