Operations & Process Improvement
Process improvement, workflow design, SOPs, documentation, internal systems and implementation.
When people call us about this
Processes change over time. New steps get added, responsibilities move, and workarounds become permanent. We work out how the work is actually being done and build a better way to do it.
What people usually describe on a first call:
- The same task gets done three different ways depending on who picks it up.
- One person is the single point of failure for something important.
- Onboarding takes six months because what a new person needs to know lives in people.
- Software was bought to fix this, and now there is the old process and a system.
- Nobody can say who owns the handoff.
What we provide
- Process mapping and redesign
- Workflow design
- SOP and procedure development
- Operational documentation
- Roles, responsibilities and handoffs
- Knowledge capture
- Organizational assessment
- Internal systems
- Project implementation
- Practical automation
Typical situations
A membership organization whose registration, records and reporting each lived in a different system, none of which agreed with the others.
A manufacturer whose written procedure and actual practice had diverged far enough that new staff were trained on the wrong one.
An association that had bought a platform to fix a process nobody had defined yet.
How the work runs
We sit with the people doing the work and follow one real case from the request to the end of it, writing down every step, handoff, approval and place the work waits. What comes out is usually shorter than the process on paper, with two or three steps nobody can justify and one handoff that explains most of the delay.
Then we build the replacement and help put it into use. Technology is used where it removes work that should not exist, prevents an error people keep making, or puts information where somebody can find it — not because a process could be automated.
What you end up with
- A process people understand
- Responsibilities people can explain
- Documentation people can find
- Systems the organization runs without us
Written down
Take these with you
Reading
Is this what you are dealing with?
Describe it in your own words. We will tell you honestly whether it is something we should be doing.