Assessing Business Excellence

By Rupert Turton

During a recent Monday morning operations meeting, our Marketing Manager pondered (out loud) “how would you assess Business Excellence?”  Then the words we have all come to dread they turned around and said, “great answer, I think you should write a BLOG on that!”

So here it goes…….

In a bid for inspiration, I Googled “Assessing Business Excellence” and I got a lot about the European Quality Award and ISO9000, which is great for implementing standards of Excellence into an organisation but doesn’t really describe excellence! So I went and got a mug of tea…

I realised I needed to look closer to home for the answer. The ActionCOACH definition of Business Excellence is in fact  – “A Commercial, Profitable, Enterprise that Works Without You.”

If I was looking for an Excellent Business, I’d be looking in 5 key areas;

To start with the business must have Faultless Delivery

In basic terms, the business does what it says it will do and by doing so has happy customers. It will have a clear vision of the type of business it wants to be, and the staff love their work and focus on what is needed to drive the business to success. This is great right?  Well, yes, it is!  However, the business also has to be financially sound with great financial management in place and deliver its products and services consistently, only then will it ‘wow’ its customers.

The business has to have consistent revenue streams to be viable

The business will have a recognised market segment that it operates in and a clear understanding of who its customers are.  The marketing clearly describes what it does and is interesting and engaging to its target customers. Their marketing has cleverly planted the seed that the business will provide them with solutions to their problems and given the prospective customer easy means to further enquire or purchase the product or service.

Having got people to interact with the company, they also have a great sales team who focus on the customer’s needs and wants, and not just thinking of their own commission! The sales team really cares about every customer which helps to encourage customers to return and spend more.

To develop, the business has to have consistent and efficient delivery

To this point, we have a sustainable business.  To be excellent the business needs to invest in its processes, technology, and tools to allow it to operate efficiently. This will enable the business to maximise its profit whilst ensuring it constantly delivers a great service to its customers to ensure they continue to be wowed as it grows. This consistency will change your customers into advocates. Who doesn’t love receiving a new customer purely off the back of another recommending your business?

Your business has to be a great place to work

An excellent business has great employees. A team that understands what the business is about and their role within it. Therefore, they are motivated to do a great job and work as one big happy family!

For this to happen they must have clear leadership. A leadership team that defines clear values and ways of doing business. The company cares about its staff and regularly shares its successes with them. How do they achieve this? They start by hiring great people and then actively developing them in their role. The leadership team will also be supported by management and learning professionals, whether it be utilising the experience of a business coach or by attending leadership courses.

The company knows what it is about

The Leadership Team runs the business and is not buried in day-to-day delivery, it already has a great team to do that! Leadership has time to look to the future to identify opportunities and potential threats so that the business can capitalise or mitigate. Finally, the business is structured so that is not dependant on a few key employees for its continued success thus in a strong position to survive almost anything.

Simply put…

So, in short to assess Business Excellence, I think you need to start looking at the basic criterion: happy customers, happy staff, good leadership and a profitable business.

Love ‘em or loathe ‘em I think I’ve just described Amazon – Sorry!

If you would like advice on how to assess your own business excellence, please email rupertturton@actioncoach.com