In the eyes of your customer, your company's function is to deliver desired products or services, at the required quality, when needed and at the best value price. Few customers actually care how you go about the process of managing your own company's resources to achieve this customer satisfaction. For example, the key customer needs for product delivery, expressed by scores of customers in surveys, are, in order TQAAPP: Time Quality Availability Accuracy Price Packaging: they need your product now, priced right. If you don't have it they'll go elsewhere. So you need to make sure you can deliver.

If you do not have reliable internal processes, you will (for example)

Every business needs to understand its processes. These processes need to work reliably, and to do this they need to be understood clearly by the people who use them. If an IT system is being used to facilitate the company' operations, it needs to fit with the processes. That does not mean every company needs a massive IT investment in ERP systems, or whatever, it simply means the processes should be understood and understood in the context of the business environment and the capability of the organisation.

There are 4 identifiable, key internal processes directly linked to the value chain*  which every company needs to understand and to do well. These are:

Other processes within the organisation exist to support these key deliverables.

To see more on process management, how processes fit within the organisation and how to improve the processes, download the pdf file: Process based Business Management

For more information, call John on 02 9416 8865 or 0418 263 795.

* The "value chain" concept is developed by Michael E. Porter of Harvard Business School in  Competitive Advantage (1998) The Free Press.

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