Many people resist “systems-thinking” and standardizing operations or think its boring mumbo jumbo. For those of you nodding your head in agreement right now, consider this:
- $360,000 saved in one work group (direct mail services group)
- Achieved ISO9000 in half the normal time (manufacturer)
- 65% reduction in defects (manufacturer)
- Standardized operations across 160 branch locations (commercial bank)
These are bottom-line results companies have achieved that they attribute directly to “systemizing” their operations. Now, I could be wrong, but I don’t think your CFO would yawn at results like these.
Some say their business can’t be “systemized”. Or that systems stifle innovation. Or, “We’re too small. We have a very simple operation.”
The company with the $360,000 savings above set out to systemize “ZERO-Defects” throughout their organization to reduce waste and inefficiencies. They started in one department. This department was experiencing an unusually high number of errors, which was causing a lot of re-work and customer dissatisfaction. They observed that some employees were slow and made a lot of mistakes while others were extremely efficient and had a much lower error rate. By “systemizing” the best practices of their star performer across the department, they reduced their error rate, which they calculated brought in over $30,000 monthly in savings to their bottom line. Click here to
read more stories like this one.
The COMPROSE Good Business Systems Squad has never met an organization or an area or a process that couldn’t get benefits from systemizing and standardizing operations. But heck, we’re up for a challenge! If you don’t agree, or your experience proves otherwise, we’d love to hear from you.
In some posts coming soon we’ll look at some other areas of resistance and debunk common myths that keep organization’s from obtaining the benefits of systemizing and streamlining their business processes.