Moving from Operational to Enterprise Excellence

Why Enterprise Excellence not Operational Excellence?

At S A Partners, we believe that Lean and the philosophy of continuous improvement can and should be applied to all parts of the business, not just operations or manufacturing. In the same way, we also believe the approach is equally applicable to service and transactional processes.

Operational Excellence vs Enterprise Excellence

The phrase “Operational Excellence” through its wording assumes that the continuous improvement approach is just “an operations thing” or “only applicable to manufacturing” which is just not true and we are passionate about changing this thinking.

Comparatively, Enterprise Excellence assumes that every organisation can and should be excellent and be able to deliver sustainable business results. It also assumes that every single part of the organisation plays a critical part in driving that excellence.

By embracing this thinking, an organisation extends performance efficiencies and effectiveness to their whole value stream, increasing their ability to deliver ideal customer results as well as grow the business in a sustainable way. Understanding how Lean thinking can be applied to all core and supporting processes is key to delivering competitive advantage, for instance, sales, HR & L&D, finance, procurement etc. Equally, the approach and philosophy is something that is generating increasingly impressive results in business service companies such as financial services, retail, and online services.

This thinking is also reflected in the  world renowned Shingo Model for Enterprise Excellence, which expects organsiations to have applied the thinking and model to all parts of the organisation and is increasingly seeing more service sector companies recognized with the prize: https://shingo.org/shingo-model/

So why aren’t more organisations doing this?

The cultural stigma behind Lean as just Lean Manufacturing is strong and there is still the perception that Lean cannot be applied within service-based processes. This however is a cultural perception and should be challenged.

If you go back to the core principles of Lean, the primary focus is driving value to the customer (whether internal or external) and then creating flow and pull to drive optimal value in the most efficient way.

Although it can be more difficult see, touch and feel the processes and key wastes in a service environment, they still exist and can have just as much impact on the performance of the organisation and value creation for the customer. Arguably even more so in a service businesses that thrive on excellence in the customer experience. The principles remain the same – its merely the application of the approach that needs to be adjusted to suit the service environment.

But does it work in practice?

There are many case studies of service organisations that have delivered step changes in performance through embracing an organizational wide approach to Enterprise Excellence.

One of the best-case studies around this topic is the Commonwealth Bank which became the first financial services organisation to win a Shingo Prize. They succeeded in not only driving Lean processes but by creating a Lean system and culture.

• Read the case study
• Further insights can be found in the award-winning publication 4+1: Embedding a Culture of Excellence in Financial Services which explains the simple and structured approach they took to changing behaviors.

Looking to get started?

If you are looking to get started on your Enterprise Excellence journey, you may like to take a look at the recent Webinar recording with Carne Group, one of the leading Asset Management Services business based out of Dublin who have been on the journey for less than 12 months and have already seeing significant improvements.

If you are in the service sector and think that you could benefit from a more effective approach, then please do contact our service sector team on info@sapartners.com to arrange an initial consultation, or drop Megan James a message and she will give you a call.