Business Services

Clarity of Strategy

Strategy Formation

It is important that there is clear direction for the organisation, particularly in these changing and challenging times. The Strategy should be based on the world-wide consensus of Business Excellence that provides Vision, Mission and Purpose where the goals and objectives are communicated clearly that provides everyone themeaning, alignment and direction. This also provides the direction and reference point for ongoing business improvement activity.

Strategy Deployment

“A strategy that cannot be delivered is not a strategy”

A key area of difficulty that organisations and leaders grapple with is the delivery of the strategy; that of putting into place what needs to be done to Achieve the goals and targets, on time and to the level desired. The Intelog Strategy Deployment processlinks the Strategy to the delivery of the goals and objectives. The Business Excellence model incorporates the five prerequisites with a Customer Focus of:

Shared Strategic Direction
Process Design and Improvement
Performance Measurement and Feedback
Knowledge Capture and Leverage
Leadership and Management of Change

This ensures the development of a strategic plan and steps that will deliver a successful implementation incorporating the Critical Success Factors – the key vital few activities that must be done to ensure the required outcomes.

The Business Scorecard

The saying goes “you get what you measure”

The Intelog Business Scorecard provides the management with the basis for measuring the right things that will ensure delivery of the business plans, aligned to the strategy. The Scorecard includes the four basic elements required to achieve their performance improvement goals:

New issues, threats and opportunities that arise from time to time
The status of current improvement projects and initiatives
A few (typically six) key measures that report on the business performance
The financial status, against targets and goals

Management are able to manage the delivery of the improvement projects and initiatives, to react to difficulties or constraints affecting the plan as well as assessing and qualifying the issues and opportunities that arise over time.

Business Issue Management

A Strategy is always being influenced by the ever changing market and business forces. The Issue Management process provides a structured format and methodology for management to assess and evaluate the issues that continually arise as these can be opportunities, threats, or risks. It provides the means of ensuring the issues are assessed in the context of the strategy and the business plans within a process that all stakeholders can arrive at a consensus that meets the needs of the organisation. It ensures a robust review process that provides the best opportunity of making the right decisions.

Deploying the Strategy

Business Performance Assessment

Sometimes there is uncertainty or lack of clarity about the potential for improvement or outcomes either for the business or a key part of the business. The Business Performance Assessment has been developed to provide management a qualified and quantified assessment in the form of a diagnostic of the extent of the performance improvement that may be available. In conjunction with key personnel from the organisation the diagnostic will detail where the opportunities are and then provide a business case for change that quantifies the potential as well as provide an implementation plan incorporating time, resource and cost. This then enables management to decide on the value of the initiative as measured against others and then develop a structured and resourced project.

Business Transformation framework, Models and Pathways

If you set out on a journey you like to know what is involved, an idea of the direction,steps and the time, as well as any special needs. Typically a business performance improvement program will involve a number of sequenced steps and initiatives to be implemented over time. Accordingly there is the need for clarity of the steps, sequence, resource requirements, schedule, cash flow and timeline to ensure success, as well as provide governance, assurance and visibility. Each organisation has its unique profile and attributes and the improvement projects are going to be different in one way or another so Intelog develops the framework and pathway that will reflect each individual organisation’s needs.

Capability Self-Assessment

To what extent do you have the necessary capability, processes, skills and thinking to take on significant change or deliver performance improvement initiatives successfully?

The Intelog Business Excellence Capability 360 degree Self-Assessment enables management to understand the current businesschange capability measured against world’s best practice. It provides a view of the key areas and attributes appropriate for successful change in a manner that enables management to evaluate the extent of change either required or possible.This provides an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses and the areas requiring focus to ensure success. It will provide a view of what needs to be in place and the key areas to build. Typically this is carried out as a step in the commencement stage of the journey – starting with the right information and understanding.

Customer Experience Assessment

Every good book and research paper says “Start with the customer in mind, or; “Understand the customers’ expectations and preferences”. And yet so many improvement projects start with the focus on internal processes and operations and the reduction of waste and cost.

The key to business profitable performance is the understanding of the customers and their preferences and requirements and your alignment to their needs. It is therefore critical there is a formal and regular methodology of measuring your alignment to your customers as well as an understanding of the market and sales potential. Intelog will facilitate the engagement of industry leading survey methodologies and the assessment of the results that influence the development of the customer focussed improvement journey. It is critical your value proposition is aligned to, and accepted by, your customers. The design of the improvement program should be influenced by this and directed at improving your customer value proposition.

Leadership Training

Financial and Process Modelling Simulations

We recognise that it can be difficult to visualise or understand the process and financialimplications and requirements for change. Intelog offers several workshop based simulations that outline and demonstrate the financial and process implications and opportunities from a change program. By participatingin these simulations managers and key people can see first-hand and understand either the financial implications and outcomes or the process redesign outcomes and opportunities.

The business modelling simulation can also be used to enhance the key frontlinepeople’s skills and understandingof the financial considerations (margin, cash flow, profit and financial ratios).

The process modelling simulation alsoprovideskey frontline people with an understanding of the potential for change as well as examples of waste, flow, cost reduction and team work; as well as providing the framework for making change happen.

Both types of simulations are powerful engagement methodologiesas well as being effective for awareness and training.

Personalised Executive coaching

The key to business performance excellence is the constancy of purpose of the leadership group. The leadership group play a major role in performance improvement by:

integrating the activities cross-functionally,
clearing barriers in organisational processes,
organisational design and leadership and,
promotingpersonal growth to deliver the targeted outcomes.

The introduction and training of these skills and leadership requirements are critical right from the start of the performance change program.

Developing leadership skills

A sustainable performance improvement outcome is dependent on the development of leadership skills across the organisation at all levels so as to engage cross-organisation stakeholders and staff in participating and delivering the change program. Intelog has a suite of training methodologies and programs which usually incorporate “learning-by-doing”. This is a combination of leadership skills, change management and continuous improvement that incorporates mentoring and coaching. It is our responsibility to train and coach ourselves out of the organisation – leaving well-trained and capable leaders to continue the journey.

Staff Engagement and Growth

Continuous improvement: Continuous improvement underpins the key improvement initiatives as well as eliminating all those problems and causes of waste that exist in every-day work. This means that everyone needs to be able to recognise problems and waste and know how to eliminate the cause. The key to continuous improvement sustainability is training and engagement through“learning by doing” across the organisation at all levels. Intelog provides proven and established world-wide principles; methodologies and tools that are used to ensure industry and training standardisation. The key is to train many people at all levels of an organisation so momentum and improvement passion is maintained; becoming self-fulfilling and self-managed.
Process improvement: The key is for people to learn and understand that they work within a business system that consists of many processes. And that if you wish to improve the performance of the business you have to change the processes to efficiently deliver the desired outcome. This means the role of management is to focus on the processes not the people. Intelog has proven and established world-wide principles and methodologies to support management by enablingpeople to streamline business processes to reduce waste and provide cost effective and sustainable performance improvement.
Internal improvement leader and coach training: Any organisation must develop the skills and capability to deliver performance improvement internally. It is Intelog’s role to train and mentor the internal change leaders and coaches so as to ensure the ongoing sustainable performance improvement journey. This commences at the start of the journey with much of the training incorporating “learning by doing” while later specific skills and capability training can be incorporated on an “as needs” basis.

Business Change

Integrated Business Management

The consensus for Business Excellence incorporates thinking differently about the delivering of the business plan that involves:

Understanding and specifying what adds value from the customer’s perspective
Identifying steps in the whole value stream to highlight waste of all kinds
Creating continuous flow of activities along the value stream
Carrying out only those activities in response to pull from customers
Striving for an ideal state by continually removing successive layers of waste

By its nature this means engaging all the stakeholders that create, deliver and support the organisations value proposition for the customer. The organisational structure therefore should reflect the product or service value streams that best aligns the skills, knowledge and capability of the people to the customer. Intelog has developed the framework and methodologies to assist business leaders review the current state and performance enabling them to benchmark against world’s best practice as it applies to their profile, attributes and requirements.

Integrated Business Planning

This is often confused with Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP). While a good S&OP process will provide the data and information regarding demand and supply it is the Integrated Planning Process that enables business leaders and managers to use this information to deliver the business plan.

This process assesses the risks to the business relating to demand and supply – either not fulfilling demand or incurring increased costs. It provides the forum for aligning your capability to the market and to react to threats, opportunities and risks. The key is the engagement of all the leadership, functional leaders and key people in a regular process of reviewing the performance of the business. Data and information relating to the performance of the business as measured by the fulfilment of demand from available resources (inventory or capacity and labour) is presented for assessment against targets. Special causes of variations are discussed and actions agreed.

At the same time market and business issues that have arisen are noted, discussed and actions agreed. The key is that this methodology ensures the continuing and regular focus on the delivery of the business plan by all the functional leaders and leadership group.
Intelog have refined the management review and action deployment process so that Integrated Business Planning manages the business and feeds into the strategic plans and actions.

Operations Scenario Planning and Evaluation

Provides a quantified and qualified business case to better enable project prioritisation and investment value. Intelog provides a means of quantifying the improvement potential and the plan forward that support the business case. This can be for a specific and targeted function within the business or across a number of functions. The idea is to quickly (usually in five days) identify and quantify the extent of a problem and its solution, and the extent of the improvement opportunity and provide a business case for change incorporating an implementation plan.

Organisational Excellence Change Management and Leader Coaching

The integrated business planning approach typically requires a different way of looking and thinking about the business – the change from a functional focus to that of a cross-functional and value stream view and behaviour. Intelog has developed methods and processes for assisting and supporting what is required from management to lead, support and ensure success.

Methodologies and Frameworks

Lean Thinking and LeanSigma

All Intelog people are experienced in the many forms of business performance improvement from TQM, Quality Circles, Quality Thinking and more recently Lean Thinking and LeanSigma. A number have been trained by Professor Peter Hines and all understand the principles, methodologies and training requirements to ensure the right approach to deliver sustainable performance improvement to plan.

Lean Enterprise

Unfortunately too many organisations only focus on the lean and six sigma tools for the reduction of waste and cost. The real message and value of Lean Thinking is the understanding of the five principles of Lean then applying them across the enterprise (internal and external) to provide a “whole of business” performance improvement outcome. The Lean enterprise principles are:

Understanding and specifying what adds value from the customer’s perspective
Identifying steps in the whole value stream to highlight waste of all kinds
Creating continuous flow of activities along the value stream
Carrying out only those activities in response to pull from customers
Striving for an ideal state by continually removing successive layers of waste

Intelog provides clients with an understanding of the “bigger picture” and the value and potential of an enterprise view, delivering Business Excellence capability.

Change Management

We all know it is not just the case of learning about a few new methods and tools and then applying them. It is the engagement of our people at all levels of the business that will determine extent of improvement and the sustainability of effort.
All Intelog people have practitioner experience in managing people and change. We have all been trained in many of the aspects of addressing the leadership, cultural, capability, training and skills necessary for sustainable success. Our role is to support, and where appropriate mentor, the leaders and managers in developing the culture and environment that will engage their people in delivering significant and sustainable change.

Continuous Improvement and Problem Solving

Intelog has a well-developed, robust and proven people engagement and trainingmethodology for problem solving and continuous improvement. This engages many people across an organisation and in a proven and standardised method of improving the workplace and the business processes using “learning by doing” for capability development.

This will enable people to;

Define and understand a problem or issue
Map the current state of the problem and the interfaces to other functions
Apply root cause analysis and problem solving
Develop a future state solution
Develop a fully costed implementation plan with all benefits and improvement s quantified
Develop a follow up and review action plan

This is an accredited TAFE training program.

Process Improvement

The first step in process improvement is the introduction of process thinking – what is a process and its role in an organisation. Intelog has various workshop and training methodologies that provide people with the understanding of key and support business processes and how to identify process waste and inefficiency. Incorporated in this are the training and engagement of management and people in how to challenge and improve all processes and activities, eliminating waste and non-value adding activity. An important element of this training is the realisation that improved productivity comes directly from those processes that deliver the desired outcome in the most efficient manner.

Cross-Functional Engagement and Culture Development

All enterprises are developed within a functional framework – people working within structured functions incorporating common skills and business needs e.g. sales, production finance etc.
While a good way to manage people this structure is not aligned to the customers in that all functions contribute to or influence the creation and delivery of the customer offer but often functional measures, targets, and priorities adversely impact the final outcome, for the customer and the business. Intelog has developed workshops and methodologies of assisting organisations in breaking down the silos and barriers by creating a flow based understanding of the value chain with the customer as the focus.

Supply Chain Improvement

End-to-End Value Chain Understanding: An enterprise typically consists of customers, the organisation and suppliers. All parties have an influence on the creation and delivery of the customer offer provided by the organisation. It therefore makes sense that all parties should be involved in developing and delivering the most efficient and effective value proposition to the customers, for their mutual benefit. Over many years and client engagements Intelog has developed an understanding and methodologies on how to engage the multiple organisations that contribute to the organisation’s customer value proposition by creating value chain thinking and activity; the realisation of the joint opportunity and potential. As with all our client associations and offer our experience is based on hands-on practical activity and knowledge; assisting cross-organisations understand the potential and what and how they can make improvements to their business as well as the value chain.
Supply Chain Reviews and Restructuring: This is about getting your offer to the market in the most cost effective way. Each channel to market has a separate cost structure influenced by the geography, volume, service level, and customer profile and transport modes.
The challenge is to be able to develop a supply chain cost model by channel that takes into account the various characteristics and profiles. We assist organisations in optimising the customer value offer in terms of scope, service and cost. Our role is to assist in identifying the current state, developing various options and together with our client selecting and implementing the optimum supply chain.
Inventory Management Reviews and Implementations: We refer to our section Integrated Business Planning where we mentioned the need to balance supply with demand and provide a means to manage on an ongoing basis.
This is one of the most challenging tasks for a business – how much investment should be made in inventory or capability to meet a satisfactory service offer (from the customers view point)? The Intelog approach is to determine current performance and then to use best practice to identify the gap and potential. This provides management a view and understanding of the potential and what needs to change to move towards an ideal state for their offer. Intelog ‘s role is to support management and those key people associated with inventory in developing the methods and analysis of the processes associated with inventory with the objective to improve customer service with the right level of working capital – incorporating Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP). S&OP is an industry standard operating system that provides the framework for developing a process that incorporates the sales forecasts, supply capability, and market and business issues so that risks of under or over supply can be predicted and managed in a more pro-active manner .
Supplier Association Formation: The supplier is a key member of the business enterprise. Too often they are treated in a manner that invokes fear, lack of trust and defensive behaviour. This typically manifests itself in the focus on price and cost with the fear of losing the business. The result is lack of information sharing and product or service improvement. We say that even a good collaborative relationship may not be achieving the potential from an integrated strategic relationship. While all relationships will not be the same there is typically a group of better suppliers who, given the right opportunity and framework, would be prepared to play a role in improving the customer value proposition by which they would benefit as well as the host organisation. Intelog has experience and has developed the frameworks and methodologies for engaging, aligning and integrating suppliers to an organisation’s value proposition enabling the improvement of the customer offer through innovation, speed to market and the reduction of waste and cost.

Operations Improvement

Manufacturing Operations

Intelog will carry out an operations diagnostic and review which assesses performance, layout and flow as well planning processes and supervisory performance. We can provide recommendations that include changes and implementation requirements. Our focus is on operations excellence that incorporates the physical, process and skills requirements. We typical provide facilitation and training on lean manufacturing, process improvement, process and materials flow, materials handling and organisational skills and development. This includes the basics of cost management, capability measurement and cross-functional engagement.

Warehouse and Logistics Networks

Intelog will carry out an operations diagnostic and review which assesses performance, layout and flow as well planning processes and supervisory performance. We can provide recommendations that include changes and implementation requirements. Our focus is on operations excellence that incorporates the physical, process and skills requirements. We typical provide facilitation and training on lean logistics, process improvement, process and materials flow, materials handling and organisational skills and development. This includes the basics of cost management, capability measurement and cross-functional engagement.

Project Management and Implementation

One of the major constraints for improvement and a key skills gap is that of project management. While all Intelog people are experienced project managers and will provide these skills as part of their involvement in any improvement project or as a stand-alone service we also train people in order to ensure sustainable success. We provide a success structure, methodology and ongoing support.

Business Case Development and Justification Scenarios

Intelog provides the view and diagnostic from the outside to ensure the real potential is identified so management can feel confident about their decision process. Often organisations miss the big picture view of the opportunities as well as what is required to successfully implement. It is well known that timing estimates can be a challenge so Intelog will provide the reality of the necessary schedule thereby reducing risk and cost.

IT Systems

It is easy to get lost in the subjective review of capability and generalisations of functionality. Many systems will appear to offer the same level of functionality and many companies have experienced unfulfilled expectations. Our experience from being involved as practitioners, some as suppliers and implementation support people is that the most successful software implementations result from:

Clear understanding of the business needs
Clear and detailed definition of requirements
A rigorous and fair tendering and evaluation process
A rigorous and searching requirements testing process of the preferred supplier/s offer and capability in meeting your requirements
Project management that ensures milestones and deliverables are met against a tight and specific set of requirements

Intelog will assist inthe development of functional requirements, tendering, and selection and implementation management.

Training

Lean and LeanSigma

All the Intelog people are experienced in Lean and LeanSigma and all have delivered most of the methodologies and tools. The key differentiator for Intelog is the practical hands-on experience in working at all levels of organisations to ensure success. The methodologies and tools will deliver sub-optimal outcomes unless the people and culture considerations and requirements are integrated. Capability and culture assessments and change management are integral elements of the Intelog support and role with management; engaging peoples in the journey a key requirement.

Leadership

Often business leaders have not been involved in significant business change programs and are unsure of the role that they need to play to ensure success. The role of the business leaders and functional management is critical to ensure success and the sustainability of the outcomes – continuous improvement does not happen without the persistent involvement and support of the management team. Intelog has developed the frameworks and methodologies to assist the management in understanding the change processes and what is required of leaders for success, and will provide the training and mentoring support as required and agreed.

Team Building

Good companies have good cultures and get on well but most do not have a team culture where everyone knows the role of teams, team leaders and the team members for success. As a component of our engagement with an organisation we train the improvement teams in Team building and management process. This will significantly improve the chances of success as well as introduce a structured process with accountabilities so that there is less need for management to be involved other than mentoring and supporting.

Problem Solving and Continuous Improvement

There is often the confusion of improvement projects and that of continuous improvement – continuous improvement is the cultural and management engagement of all the people in an organisation of challenging the current state and adopting a “root cause” based approach to improvement.
Intelog has a well-developed, robust and proven people engagement and training methodology for problem solving and continuous improvement. This engages many people across an organisation and in a proven and standardised method of improving the workplace and the business processes using “learning by doing” for capability development.

This will enable people to:

Define and understand a problem or issue
Map the current state of the problem and the interfaces to other functions
Apply root cause analysis and problem solving
Develop a future state solution
Develop a fully costed implementation plan with all benefits and improvement s quantified
Develop a follow up and review action plan