What is Process Excellence?
The last few decades have seen companies adopt a host of different approaches to improving the quality and efficiency of their output: Total Quality Management, Business Process Reengineering, Lean, Six Sigma, Business Process Management, Business Performance Improvement, and many more. What all these methodologies have in common is a focus on process, an activity through which something - whether tangible or intangible - is transformed into something else. At its most fundamental level, process excellence is not about a methodology, it is about improving the way that businesses create and deliver value to their customers.
Approaches to process improvement like Lean and Six Sigma give companies proven tools and techniques to solve business problems in a structured and effective way, while Business Process Management (BPM) looks at how aligning people, process and technology and automating key tasks can take business performance to the next level.
But as experienced process professionals know, you're not just changing processes, you're ultimately trying to change the way that people within a company work and behave. That's why process excellence is about so much more than process improvement techniques. It's about learning to solve problems and manage change, performance, and workplace culture to align with overall business strategies.
At PEX Network we believe that no matter which methodologies you practice, the underlying aim is the same: improving business performance. That's why we bring you the tools and most up to date thinking on a variety of disciplines and approaches.
As Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs once argued, diversity of experience and insight is critical. "Without enough dots to connect," he said, you "end up with very linear solutions. The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have."
We think the same is true about the challenges facing organizations today. The more dots you have to connect – whether they be technological trends or information about different disciplines – the more likely you'll be able to come up with an unusual or unexpected solution to a business challenge.
Want to find out more? You might be interested in our annual Global State of Process Excellence report, which showcases the results of our yearly survey of over 250 operational excellence leaders, featuring exclusive analysis from process experts to provide a benchmark for organizations currently undergoing their own process and digital transformation journeys.
