Operations Planning and Management

Planning and managing operations well helps an organization to avoid redundant or inefficient work while anticipating and identifying problem areas before they become major issues. Without a proper plan and management structure in place, you and your organization are likely spending more money than necessary, not being as effective as possible, or taking on unnecessary risk. The business impacts of poor operations can be disastrous. A good operations plan requires heavy applications of both art and science, in the form of: people acumen, creativity, rational analysis and subject matter expertise.

How We Can Help

If you and your organization are looking for a sound operational plan and management system, our expert consultants can help. We will come along side you to identify any weaknesses in your existing operational systems, enhance your overall efficiency and profitability, optimize your company’s resources systems and IT technologies, and make your operations as cost-efficient, time-saving and beneficial to your customers as possible.

Our consultants can assist you with a wide range of activities, specifically:

  • Development of an objective, top-level view of your organization’s processes
  • Conduct a complete examination and assessment of process details, strengths and weaknesses
  • Determine key areas of weakness that are limiting your success
  • Develop recommendations for improvement
  • Lay down the framework for process design and/or re-engineering

Future state and growth preparation

  • Successfully handle growth from a “new venture” through “expansion” to professionalization”
  • Help you identify the root causes of problems and develop approaches to resolve issues
  • Help you determining how best to acquire resources
  • Help you develop operational and management systems
  • Help you manage the corporate culture

Help you conduct process reviews

  • Examine key processes in depth
  • Reexamine what is needed from each process and the actual output
  • Determine the most effective processes and make recommendations for improvements

Reviewing and improving your staff productivity

  • Develop and review productivity programs, including workflow analysis and time tracking
  • Develop methods improvement and incentive systems

Reviewing and improving your CRM strategy

  • Create vertical-specific analyses that identify profitable and potentially profitable customer groups
  • Help you to develop customer acquisition and growth planning strategy
  • Identify customer-centric values as a basis for instilling them throughout the organization
  • Help you ensure that the needs of your customers are met
  • Help you effectively manage prospects and customers

Key Considerations

Questions to Ask

  • Do our operational goals, milestones, and activities align with our strategic goals?
  • Has our profit per customer ratio been increasing or decreasing as the organization grows?
  • Are growing pains and inefficient processes doing damage to our bottom line?
  • Do we know if our organization is continually aligned around our customer’s value drivers?
  • What check-points do we have to see if this is being achieved?
  • Do we have enhanced control over the organization through formal, planned systems of organization control with explicit objectives, targets, measures, evaluations and rewards?

Thoughts to Consider

  • Each component of the formal planning process (Strategic, Action, and Operational) should build off of each other as a continuum
  • Operational planning, carried out without the formulation of precise objectives, tends to be sub-optimal.
  • Operational activities affect all aspects of an organization. It is important to consider how seemingly unrelated processes may affect one another
  • Operations planning and management were once considered “dirty work”, a necessary activity to maintain normal business activity. Not anymore. Operations managers are realising more and more the cost saving and productivity enhancing potential a solid operations plan can realise.

By having a well thought-out operations plan and management structure you and your organization will benefit by:

  • Identification of problem areas before they are too large to address
  • Avoiding redundant or inefficient operational processes
  • Having the assurance that you have the most efficient practices in place
  • Achieving increased profits, decreased waste, and minimized risk
  • Being able to determine if additional steps are necessary, such as process reengineering
  • Achieving dramatic improvements in productivity and quality
  • Accelerating information flows and more effective processes
  • Improving quality by reducing fragmentation of work and establishing clear ownership of processes

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