Over last many months, several senior executives cutting across the business domains have asked me the same question and many out there might have on their mind too – Why have a function like Business Excellence in the organisation?
Business Excellence also known with other names such as Business Transformation or just Transformation started to become mainstream in many modern day businesses few years back. Here in this article I explain the main reasons why businesses should consider setting up a function like this.
About This Function
The first question is really what does excellence mean for an organisation? In the current VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) world where things change often, the north star for most companies remains as customer experience or CX. So this could be a starting point for putting together the definition of excellence.
One of the definitions could be “to have an end to end predictable business process model to deliver a great customer experience at an optimal cost”. It is important to articulate what you want to achieve or the problem statements before you setup this function. The above was just an example, it could look different for you.
While excellence is everyone’s responsibility; it helps to have someone anchor this. This is where Business Excellence comes in to become a key anchor in this journey.
The anchor also needs to be able to pull enough weight to bring this up as a key priority once the organisation has decided to invest into it; hence the reporting of this function and seniority of the leader becomes equally important.
Investment into a function like this is for the long term. While there can be small wins, the real value only gets realised over time, hence it is important to think thoroughly before creating this function.
Why should you consider to set it up?
There could be several reasons specific to your business on why you should consider Business Excellence. I’ve listed a few here, let me know in the comments below what are the reasons why you are looking to set it up
- Scale up your zero to one (0 to 1) journey with predictable processes
- Improve your customer experience through right design
- Improve collaboration across your organisation with x-functional alignments and governance
- Build and deliver to a transformation roadmap
- Bring focus on strategy execution
- Build repeatability and efficiency in your operations
- Mindset change for growth
- Align and deliver digital transformation initiatives
- Build a strong connection between business and technology through processes
Charter Of This Function
It is important to have a clear charter defined for this function for the long term. At the same time it is also important to bring focus on a small part of the business to deliver the results and test out few approaches that work for your organisation. This two pronged strategy is generally what I follow and recommend.
As a starter, the key Roles and Responsibilities of this function could include
- Define, build & manage end to end Business Process Model
- Socialize and lead the implementation of Business Process Model with right digital interventions using levers of Technology, Data and People
- Deliver to an aligned process roadmap (based on organisation priorities)
- Establish process metrics & create visibility across organisation
- Align process efforts x-functionally for mutual efficiencies
- Give shape to ambiguities
- Lead change management for process adoption and movement towards a great customer experience
- Define & build an operating model and operating frameworks with templated approaches to drive organisational efficiencies
- Create and run process certification program
- Drive Innovation projects and experiments towards scalable future processes
- Drive process audits, RCA’s and implement CAPA x-functionally
- Manage highly efficient customer service (High on EQ)
- Thought partner across the leadership on key topics, decisions and execution
Separate Function vs Add-On To An Existing Function
This is a debate which most CEO’s have with themselves. However in most scenarios I’ve experienced in last 22 years across multiple organisations; the day to day operational metrics are always top of mind for most leaders. Hence the transformational or excellence mandates and metrics start to take a back seat – not intentionally but due to paucity of time and bandwidths.
Unless you are confident that this conflict can be managed, it is best to keep this as a strategic separate function with right amount of authority given to it.
Conclusion
Business excellence has become a necessary function for most modern day businesses looking to scale. With the right organisational structure, enough power given to this function, aligned charter and priorities , this function can be a good pillar in your growth journey. So go ahead and invest into it.
If you would like to discuss more about this please reach out to me on mohit@moonshotscaling.com
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