Improving your processes

In today’s fast-paced environment, service users, supporters, members and other stakeholders don’t just expect high-quality service provision – they demand it. At the same time, organisations need to keep control of overheads and remain cost-effective, efficient and competitive.

The key to achieving both of these objectives is to have an operationally efficient, well-run organisation. Yet, changing established practices can be difficult; it is your people that will ultimately own the change process and make it happen, and the concept of “engineering” best-practice, lean processes that efficiently produce the required outputs will only be of benefit if you have also won the hearts and minds of the people that will be carrying out those processes.

Staying focused on what the organisation is trying to achieve, being objective about the most efficient and effective way to achieve that, and fully addressing the people issues, is therefore essential during a period of fundamental change to your organisation.

Our approach is to help you review your internal processes whilst taking into account the people issues, so that comments such as “but we’ve always done it that way!” are replaced with constructive, creative ideas for improving your ways of working, and are supported by a high level of staff engagement and enthusiasm.

We tailor our approach to your individual objectives and readiness for change, and facilitate client teams to deliver the required results whilst remaining objective and introducing best practice into the organisation. They key stages in a typical project are as follows:

Stage one

 Understanding your objectives and the improvements that are required (e.g. improved service delivery, reduced costs, etc)

Stage two

 Identifying the key high-level processes for improvement, based on your objectives

Stage three

 Gap analysis, in order to evaluate existing processes and where they fall short of your requirements

Stage four

 Development of new processes, taking into account the organisation’s readiness for change and what can realistically be achieved

Stage five

 Implementation of the new processes

Stage six

 Ongoing process improvement and equipping your organisation with the ability to continually adapt and improve the processes as your needs and objectives change in the future

Our approach will bring you effective and efficient processes in one or more of the following:

  • Improved service delivery (higher quality and/or at lower cost)
  • More effective and efficient use of resources
  • Fewer delays in completing processes
  • Less duplication of tasks and information
  • Fewer processing errors
  • The right decisions being made by the right people at the right time
  • Improved team working and more effective working relationships between staff and internal departments
  • Improved job satisfaction for everyone involved

We have helped a number of organisations improve their processes, including:

  • Overseas Development Institute – Improvement of core business processes and selection of new software to support these processes
  • GirlGuiding UK – Improvement of business processes and implementation of new web-enabled membership database system

For further information, contact Iain Pritchard or another member of the consultancy team on 020 7841 6360 or via svinfo@sayervincent.co.uk.