Undoubtedly, this is the most strategic focus that companies have set for themselves in 2024. The impact of the war on the economic situation of many companies requires the development of a practical and pragmatic plan to achieve comprehensive operational-business-organizational excellence, including achieving savings and efficiency wherever possible. The true meaning of this focus is that organizations will aim to do much more, much better, in far less time and with fewer resources. How is this achieved?

By examining and improving business and operational processes, from customer-facing processes to internal core processes in the back office and operations, with a focus on business areas with the greatest potential for savings, such as sales, service, procurement, human resources, and any other relevant content area. The initiative will include evaluating current business processes and providing detailed recommendations on how to improve and optimize them to enhance service levels while maximizing efficiency and savings wherever possible. This involves establishing optimal processes and implementing them throughout the company, from the planning stage to actual execution.

Based on this, a practical action plan can be developed, focused on quick wins to improve core business processes in the targeted content area, establishing operational-business excellence, while enhancing the customer experience and providing strong tools to support the organization’s growth.

Based on our experience at Strauss, the process of building a practical plan to achieve operational-business excellence and demonstrating potential savings includes three main stages:

1. Discovery Phase: This stage involves defining the focus areas for operational efficiency, goals, and targets. It includes examining the structure of the various divisions, identifying key business focuses, and outlining future plans.
2. Analysis Phase: This stage includes analyzing core processes based on KPIs, identifying strengths, weaknesses, and pain points, and pinpointing key areas with high potential for improvement and efficiency. It also involves mapping out high-level processes and providing a detailed specification for selected processes with a multi-dimensional approach.
3. Action Plan Development Phase: This phase includes prioritizing and recommending necessary improvements, developing a specific and pragmatic action plan with a forward-looking approach, addressing all components requiring change: processes, organizational structure, financials, and technology. It includes implementing new and efficient processes, creating a prioritization matrix based on defined metrics, incorporating both Quick Wins and long-term projects (based on collaborative workshops). A roadmap is laid out according to prioritization with a multi-dimensional perspective (resources, systems, regulations, etc.).

Based on this pragmatic action plan, a quick transition to implementation can be made within relevant business units of the organization, with continuous and iterative measurement of benefits across all the dimensions mentioned above. Developing a practical plan to achieve operational-business excellence usually involves analyzing and selecting from several possible implementation alternatives. These alternatives depend on the business trends in the sector/vertical in which the organization operates, as well as the KPIs defined at the beginning of the process—for measuring improvement and savings.

The article was written by Nava Lavi, VP of Strategy at the company