On the 9th of June, The Business Transformation Network held a VIP event on Delivering Customer Centric Continuous Improvement, which was attended by Director level transformation professionals from a number of FTSE organisations and alike.
Below are some of the key thoughts and notes from the evenings’ event, which will give you an insight into the discussion points:
The evening was split into two main discussion topics:
– How do you embed an improvement culture when transforming the customer journey and what are the challenges?
– How do you balance innovation and process improvement
Embedding an improvement culture:
– An organisation needs to make continuous improvement part of their DNA so it becomes second nature. The buy in from the leadership board is crucial to a successful Continuous Improvement Programme.
– The question that followed was whether continuous improvement should be called a transformation ‘programme’? Person A thought that CI should not be labelled as a programme as it is a journey with no certain end date.
– Should continuous improvement programmes expect their employees to attend additional workshops, conferences and mentoring sessions or should it be part of their everyday tasks?
– The CI programmes success depends on how it is perceived in the organisation? The perception of this dramatic cultural transformation is the key to the success.
Challenges when introducing improvement concepts throughout the customer journey:
– Person B claimed that the voice of the customer is not just a survey, it requires in-depth understanding of their needs and wants.
– Person C used an analogy of a personal relationship, customers should only want to come back to you and no one else. It should be personal service between the organisation and the individual customer.
– The leadership programme needs to send out the same message to their employees when embedding CI initiatives. With one clear mission statement, individuals will be personally impacted from the Continuous Improvement programme.
– Person D suggested that impactful change would only work if employees take the time out of their everyday roles to develop their Lean skills. However how do you get them enthused about CI?
– When introducing lean improvement concepts, you need to completely transform the organisation. You cannot keep trying to adding improvements in different pockets. For example, you can patch up a house again and again but you will end up with a house of patches.
– If the leadership team do not WANT to change then the culture will not be changed. Introducing lean concepts depends on the existing culture.
– However if the leadership do have a clear mission and programme model then it could be viewed as a dictatorship, we need to empower our people to change.
-The need to deliver lean initiatives should come from the customer and so it is fundamental to know the true VOC.
The balance of process improvement and Innovation:
– Innovation is coming from the new digital age, we need to incorporate digital into our lean programmes.
– Will Robotic Process Automation be the future of Opex?
– Innovation comes from the execution of the CI initiatives. We can all come up with killer ideas but it is the delivery and execution that is key
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– Person E felt that Innovation comes from their competitors, learning from their mistakes and collaboration is the way forward.
Thanks to all attendees for your valued contribution and we look forward to our next event.
Keep an eye on www.thebtn.tv for our next event announcement.
