There can be countless factors impacting upon an organisation’s operational performance. Yet typically, if you can identify and solve the 5 biggest issues, you’ll see a startling improvement in productivity and service quality.
The 5 most common and most damaging operational challenges
1. Lack of defined measurements
2. Lack of clear management processes
3. Poor quality management information
4. Insufficient understanding of end-to-end front and back office processes
5. Lack of skilled front line managers
Lack Of Defined Measurements
Without clearly defined measurements, it’s impossible to establish the baseline for staff and managerial performance. And without a baseline, no one will ever know what “good” looks like. Your teams may be operating at just 60% productivity, but unless you’re able to benchmark against industry standards, you’ll be completely unaware.
“Measurement is the first step that leads to control and improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.”
Lack Of Clear Management Processes
Without clear management processes it’s all too easy for your team leaders to lose their way, and to lose a significant part of their day firefighting. By providing a performance framework that incorporates daily, weekly and monthly routines and frameworks, your leaders and their teams will maintain a tight focus on hitting their key performance indicators.
Poor Quality Management Information
It’s all too common to see managers struggling to gain a clear picture of operational performance because they’re working off multiple spreadsheets. Without a unified work and performance management system, data is scattered, inconsistent and often delayed, making it impossible to collate and analyse effectively.
“What gets measured gets managed.”
Insufficient Understanding Of End-To-End Front And Back Office Processes
The main symptom of this issue is that work is often duplicated, which not only generates waste, but adds workload to outstanding backlogs but also hours to what can often be time-critical process flows. Identifying duplication and the root causes is an effective way to eliminate waste and improve service.
Lack Of Skilled Front Line Managers
This is a problem common to almost all large organisations. Many front-line managers have risen through the ranks, so they usually have a wealth of practical experience but little management training. Up-skilling these “home grown” managers enables organisations to leverage maximum value from their unquestioned experience.
How dhp Transforms Problems Into Opportunities
dhp’s consultants are experts at identifying operational problems and drilling down to reveal the root cause. By disassembling your processes and studying your workflows at a granular level, we provide startling clarity of where the inefficiencies lie, and what’s driving them.
Once we have identified the issues, we’ll embed efficient management routines within your operations that unlock your teams potential . And by using Nexus, dhp’s proprietary software, managers will gain access to detailed, real-time MI, enabling them to maintain a tight control over operations and ensure consistency of both performance and quality.