Rigorous research

Discovery Review: Tell me how to fix my Business?

You know your business best but do you have to tools to diagnose what is not working for you?  Do you understand the root cause of the problems?  I refer to some examples below and further state how our diagnosis and research can provide you with a solutions focus for improvement.

Further, we will implement the solution with you and set up metrics to assess progress, mitigate against risk, and ensure that momentum is in place to see the changes become reality.

The Nature of Organisational Problems

You may not be aware of this fact but many problems experienced by many businesses have been with them a long time.  Often, when we engage in diagnostic work to uncover what ails an organisation.  Often, we recognize that a long standing problem is surfacing in many different ways displaying a variety of symptoms.

Insufficient Testing & Risk Assessment

Maybe a temporary fix had been put in place that no longer works. Frequently, testing to see if the problem has been resolved is never completed fully.  This may be down to insufficient collection of data, information and metrics have not been applied in a robust manner. If this is the case then it is time to undertake a Discovery Review.

Organisational Leakage

People frequently are unaware that the solution to a problem has never been implemented.  Further we often find that although we assume others were committed to fixing things and setting up new processes and systems – they never really finished the job.

Leakage of the 'symptopms' of the problem is common.  Although we think that things are going well, the problem arises elsewhere.  Let’s look at three Case Studies,  examining first the important issue of Customer Retention. 

A Case Study: Customer Relations, Acquisition & Retention

In some sectors, organisations can lose as much as 30% of their customer base in a year.  Prospecting for new clients and customers, forming new contacts, writing new business with customers and winning life time loyalty at the same time as retaining past customers is a challenge for many organisations.

Some try to resolve all these problems using a CSI (customer satisfaction Index) to map leakage and loss to the business.  It’s always a good idea to manage core activities that you know trigger consumer or customer behaviour.

Just when you think your customer satisfaction index is operating well, you understand that although you map satisfaction, it’s only a historic measure and not a predictive measure, identifying where you are most at risk in the customer base.  It tells you that customers deserted you but doesn’t tell you about what led to that decision.

If your organisation is dependent on paid membership have you tracked why they leave and traced through the critical incidents that cause them to move on?  (Note, the causes may be emotional rather than cost, and if you are measuring the wrong things you do not have control of the process and will not influence events.)

This is an example of failing to diagnoses the root cause of the CS issue.  Let’s look at another example.

A Case Study Example: Process Improvement

Increasing numbers of organisations are committing to process improvement but are they really improving the core processes, currently poorly performing, that put them at huge risk? 

Committing to Process Mapping or Six-Sigma may be only part of the answer.  There is no point having professionals located throughout the business who can Process Map at Olympic proportions, if we don’t restructure around a matrix structure. 

In many cases, organisations are still structured functionally and hierarchically, and If all your processes are functionally based, how can you use process improvement to reduce cycle time, force down the cost of transactions and improve your CSI and customer growth?

In the following example the strategy of ‘partial change’ failed.  Although the business used Six-Sigma and Process Improvement as legitimate change tools – the context in which they were applied was 100% conducive to failure.

A Case Study: Vision & Strategy

This is the final case example.  Just suppose, you were a large business in Financial Services and had committed to a strategic review.  Months later, after the consultants had left, after developing new systems and protocols you discover a key issue for resolution.

Just when we thought everyone knew where the business was going you find out in Sales and through your IFA or third party intermediary network there is little commitment to using business plans mapping your sales plan, core activities, costs and operational targets.

What you may discover is that at a ‘high level’ the problem may have been resolved in the corporate mindset - but in reality, with those you expect to transact business nothing had really changed.

We encounter these issues all the time which is why we are expert at ‘closure’ and leaping the gap between the 'current' and 'desired' state to put in place the culture, processes and behaviours to fix things once and for all.

So Where Do You Start?

Each intervention or research project has to be tailored 100% to the needs of the Client, so an initial Discovery Review & Diagnostics Phase maps out the key issues so the client can clearly see and agree to a planned course of action whatever the problem.