Continuous Improvement

Designing an organisation to deliver value can be difficult in the face of unknowable potential crises or dwindling resources. Failure to reduce cost today, and every day after, will jeopardise future success. Is your organisation prepared?

Changes that affect the financial viability of organisations come in many forms and can vary drastically in impact.

Change can come in the form of new entrants that disrupt the market, often through pure digital play, with cheaper technology and leaner working principles. This new competition can lead organisations to suddenly require a massive operating improvement to meet their debt‑to‑equity ratio targets and/or ensure their next expansion.

In some cases, one immediately affects another: a change in industry regulations can prompt a drop in the pricing of a resource, which can have the effect of a change in terms of new raw materials or the unfortunate consequence of a drop in employment levels.

Accountability and improvement

We partner with clients to quickly create the demand for improvement by holding the line organisation accountable for performance on their input KPIs.

We then tackle a very prioritised set of levers. Our approach is to not try to do everything at the same time and to build an improvement machine that can keep cranking out improvement, not as a once‑off event, but as an ongoing process to ensure costs do not creep back in.

How can an organisation navigate a 180‑degree turn to become proactive, and fully anticipate and meet fluctuations in customer demand?

Timing can be a blessing and curse for many organisations.

Some may have a limited asset base and need to sweat their assets to the maximum potential. Others may stand on the sidelines in a booming market, missing out on the temporary rewards because of deep‑rooted inefficiencies within their structure.

These are some of the stories that we have heard from clients, to which we have replied that their predicament is not about single‑digit improvement but requires radical change.

Structured improvements

A fundamental rethink of the business is required. Substantial improvement is only achieved by tackling the big levers and implementing them in a very structured way.

Organisations must be able to work more efficiently with what they have and understand the factors inhibiting them from reaching their full potential.

We work closely with our clients to unlock the latent potential in their organisation – to find the ‘factory inside the factory.’ Our goal is to deliver benefits in a few key areas and then keep coming back for more, which most often is significantly more profitable than costly and drawn‑out capital investments.

Digital transformation has quickly moved from a luxury to a necessity, particularly as digital‑first competitors emerge to capture the loyalties of the next generation. Are you innovating at the rate and pace required to remain competitive?

Digital transformation is more than a buzzword. Either part of a long‑term, future‑proofed organisation journey or a quick‑fix to budgetary concerns, the reality is that it is a necessity in environments best defined as ‘innovate or die’.

No matter the industry, new digital entrants are ‘eating the lunch’ of traditional leading organisations that are seen as bloated and reactive by comparison. Without the baggage of decades of processes and churn, new entrants are lightly staffed, adaptable and so far advanced that they pose an extinction‑level event to even the most storied institutions.

End‑to‑end review

In the face of such competition, organisations cannot expect to just improve once; they need ongoing improvement delivered at pace: a complete transformation, not just tinkering at the edges.

Our role begins by conducting a review of a business, understanding where their priorities should be, what the roadmap for transformation could look like and what resources will be required to get first improvements quickly. We do not wait for a full digital redesign.

Instead, we focus on what will move the dial: process optimisation, holding individuals to account for performance and focused implementation of the right technology.