In most organizations, measuring productivity should be a straightforward exercise. But our experience shows that even in companies where productivity should be extremely easy to evaluate – for example, with assembly line production – there is often insufficient attention paid to proper productivity measurement, and proper discipline around undertaking the measurement process is never established or enforced. And in companies that deal with productivity processes that are less straightforward, where production activities have numerous components that are hard to summarize in a limited number of KPIs, these challenges are exponentially exacerbated.
Regardless of whether measuring productivity in a given organization is simple or complicated, it’s an extremely high value exercise. The amount of money “left on the table” is often astounding, and enormous savings are frequently uncovered by Trindent during our engagements by simply bringing productivity measurement up to an appropriate level. And yet poor productivity measurement is commonplace.
The phenomenon can rarely be attributed to intentional negligence. Rather, Trindent works with seasoned and savvy executives who lead organizations into this pitfall unconsciously, for reasons like a lack of proper measurement tools, or the lack of political will to change the status quo. Often, an established but inadequate process is left in place for years, its shortcomings becoming less obvious the longer it’s in place. And just as often, organizations are aware of shortfalls in the measurement process, but lack appropriate tools and resources to identify the root cause of the inefficiency and to address them.
In our engagements, Trindent Consulting uses a rigorous three-prong approach to identify the lack of proper productivity measurement, and to establish best practices to fix them:
- Observation: It’s easy to underestimate the power of a fresh perspective, especially one backed by proven methodology and coming from trained process inefficiency assassins. Our consultants dissect and analyze every process, design proper KPIs around them, and identify the proper improvements that need to be implemented to fix them.
- Toolkit: Having in-depth knowledge of a process and how to improve it does not fix the process on its own. The next step in achieving improvement is to build the toolkit to make it happen. Trindent has extensive experience developing and successfully deploying simple but powerful tools to measure productivity. All tools are uniquely developed for each engagement and are never re-used for other clients.
- Experience: Trindent Consulting uses its considerable experience across its three industry verticals to build a base of industry specific process knowledge. While every client is unique, the art and science of identifying the best formula for productivity measurement becomes honed when the exercise is repeated and perfected.
Click here to read more about Trindent’s approach to process improvement in measuring call centre productivity, insurance operations productivity, and healthcare productivity.