How to Facilitate Business Improvement Events

The focus of my podcast here is on how to facilitate business improvement events. Business improvement is about efficiency, effectiveness, it is about the business operating as well as it possibly can.

That means with no waste, no duplication, no quality issues. It is all running really smoothly. There are some deep techniques on business improvement, such as Lean and Six Sigma. I am not going to go into depth on those techniques, although what I am going to share with you today is consistent with those, and is in many ways inspired by them. 

I am going to give you is a step by step process, so that if you need to, or want to run a process improvement event for your business, or even if you want to look at process improvement and business improvement in your own business, then you have got some tools and techniques to do that with. I have also provided you with a free  called Business Improvement Playbook. Download it here.

Business improvement can be incredibly powerful. I remember doing a business improvement event for a specialist electronics manufacturer, and they had never actually mapped out the process before, from a customer sending in an enquiry, and them receiving it through to the goods being dispatched from the warehouse. When we mapped it out, it was taking them three months to get from enquiry through to dispatch of the order. With some revisiting of what was going on we were able to get that down to between 6 & 8 weeks depending on the product. It was a very specialist and technical product, so that might sound a long time, but they saved 4 to 6 weeks on every product. You can imagine the difference that makes to customer satisfaction, because the customer is getting the products quicker, and also the efficiency and the cost, in terms of production, so profitability is better. They are also able to grow more because they can get more manufacturing done through the line. This doesn’t apply just to manufacturing. You can do this with any sort of business in any sort of process - whether you're a solopreneur consultant or a massive, global business.