Identifying Key Areas of Improvement Within Organizations
Most corporations and large business organizations are made up of many departments. Functional units like finance, HR, marketing, sales, customer service, IT, the executive team, and more come together to make up a cohesive, functional system that is your organization.
For an organization to work effectively and achieve desired business outcomes, not only does each unit need to operate efficiently, but each of the units needs to work together in a united way.
If you’ve identified key issues within your operations through operational consulting, or know there are flaws and issues in your system but are not sure what the issues are, you need the help of an operational support team.
By equipping your organization with a team specifically dedicated to providing support for units and across units (sometimes called cross-functional work), you’ll increase your ability to hit target business objectives and improve inefficiencies.
At Hunter Stevens LLC, we offer specialty consulting services to identify key areas of improvement within your organization, then help you to equip your business with the necessary operational support staff to keep things running smoothly for the long haul.
Identify Key Areas of Inefficiency
As you resolve to incorporate an operational support team, it’s essential to start by identifying the areas of inefficiency within the organization. You’ll need to determine what’s working and what’s not working, and how you can improve workflow and overall performance, streamline processes, or offer staff training to develop greater proficiency and productivity.
Talk to your teams
One of the quickest and most effective ways to identify inefficiencies is to ask the staff directly.
Since your team is involved in the day-to-day functioning of their departments, they have insight and proximity to issues and incongruences in workflow within the organization. They can also offer feedback about challenges working across departments or cross-functionally.
Through interviews and periodic assessments, and later analysis, you can pinpoint areas of friction, procedural problems, or obstacles that stand in the way of completing work tasks or moving projects forward.
Aside from working directly with your staff to identify operational problems, there are a few other ways you can diagnose workplace issues.
Identifying inefficiencies in the workplace
Inefficiencies surface in various ways. It’s important to identify bottlenecks in workflow to improve overall output and value. Here are a few common identifiers of functional issues:
- Job roles with high turnover rates can be an indication that the scope of the role and actual job demands may not be in alignment.
- Outdated technology can pose challenges in bringing projects to completion or providing deliverables. Continuously check in on industry trends and tech updates to keep forward momentum and scalability for your organization.
- If your team or specific processes are huge time drains for your team, it’s an indication that a task could be further broken down and divided up. It could also indicate that your team needs more training or improved tools and systems.
- Inconsistency in the output of deliverables is a clear indicator of inefficiency. If production time varies greatly, or deliverables are unpredictable in quality, it’s time to revisit processes and improve operations. When a clear, well-designed operational process is in place, the workflow should be steady and dependable.
- What are the costs? If you see that teams exceed budgeted costs or that final billing for an established workflow has been underestimated, there might be a flaw in the process.
Operational issues present themselves with a wide variety of symptoms. What’s important isn’t how you identify them, but rather that you take the time to investigate and find the root cause, then lean on your operational support consultants to review and update the procedure
Restructuring Capabilities
With a clear understanding of what the operational issues are, you can acknowledge existing organizational capabilities, determine which capabilities are no longer aligned, and ideate solutions or new capabilities that will serve your processes.
Rather than eliminating processes, removing partial procedures that do work, or adding brand new capabilities which can be costly (and possibly lead to corporate bankruptcy!) A preferable plan is capabilities restructuring.
Typically, restructuring capabilities looks like shifting workflow to align with function and output and minimize inefficiency. Perhaps particular steps are removed from the processes or support staff is assigned to assess issues and develop a new model of action. Specialty consultants can help identify bottlenecks and provide insightful feedback through evaluation.
Hunter Stevens LLC is prepared to offer guidance and operational support to regain profitability, limit time spent, or correct any other internal inconsistencies within a department or across departments.
A Sustainable Approach to Drive Value and Productivity
At Hunter Stevens LLC we work directly with c-suite executives to address intradepartmental issues and interdepartmental issues to smooth out the workflow, and create a productive, goal-oriented business.
With years of experience and business acumen, the specialty consultants at Hunter Stevens provide strategic planning to identify internal issues, update structures, advise on operational support functions, and help you develop or redevelop your organization. Contact our office today to learn more about identifying and updating your operational support needs.