Achieving operational excellence will ensure your business is firing on all cylinders. This is the point at which everything just falls into place and works seamlessly. If you do not yet have a clear path toward operational excellence, this guide will offer a few practical ways for you to unleash the potential of your organization. But first, let’s break down operational excellence.

What is operational excellence?

This is more than just a catchy phrase to energize senior leaders and project managers. You can think of operational excellence as the pinnacle of performance. No matter what operational roadblocks come your way, your organization will have the necessary systems and processes in place to confidently navigate and overcome any obstacles that may cross your path.

Fundamentally, operational excellence is about developing and implementing strategies that align with your organization’s goals and objectives. This broad concept is not just simply about hitting company-wide targets. True operational excellence is felt across all departments in an organization and provides all stakeholders with an abundance of benefits.

StartingPoint can play a critical role in helping you to streamline and optimize all aspects of your operations. From embracing workflow automation to unifying teams with a centralized digital hub for communication and collaboration, StartingPoint is an all-encompassing, cloud-based solution that is designed to bring a clear sense of clarity and order to your operations.

Why does operational excellence matter?

Operational excellence across your organization will inevitably lead to higher performance levels and improved output. The greatest beneficiaries of operational excellence are your customers. When all the cogs in your operational machine are working to deliver improved services and products, this is destined to elevate customer satisfaction and retention rates.

You can think of operational excellence as a mentality. To continuously raise the bar and push for higher standards, you must ingrain this mentality into your organization’s culture to empower team members. From developing systems to streamlining processes, it all begins with the individual actions of employees and how they choose to approach different tasks.

To summarize, here are the key benefits of increasing operational excellence:

• Empowered team members with a restless mentality
• Improved cross-team communication and collaboration
• Accelerated workflows for greater productivity
• Enhanced customer experiences

How can you increase operational excellence?

While the benefits of operational excellence are easy to identify, the journey to get there is often more difficult. To give you some direction, here are 10 potential ways to increase operational excellence across your organization and set your business on the right path forward.

1 - Encourage a growth mindset

If you want to achieve operational excellence, it all starts with the right mindset. This means encouraging a growth mindset among employees at every level. A growth mindset is essential for innovation and creativity. When team members have a growth mindset, they see challenges as opportunities to learn and grow. This ultimately leads to improved performance.

2 - Streamline workflow processes

Another way to achieve operational excellence is to streamline your organization’s processes. This will help to remove any workflow bottlenecks and keep things running smoothly. When you streamline your workflow processes, this can promote efficiency across your organization and enable team members to get more done in less time – and improve customer experiences.

3 - Invest in workflow automation solutions

Workflow automation plays a vital role in operational excellence. By taking new platforms for a test drive and exploring their potential, you can begin to automate repetitive tasks and leverage the potential of automation. As more organizations begin to embrace automation solutions, it is important to consider how these can fit into - and potentially enhance - your existing workflows.

4 - Foster a culture of continuous improvement

A culture of continuous improvement is important for operational excellence. This means encouraging employees to identify areas for improvement and implementing changes to positively impact the organization. When you foster a culture of continuous improvement, it leads to refined processes, stronger customer experiences, and improved satisfaction.

5 - Implement a lean management system

Lean management is a system that helps organizations to eliminate waste and improve efficiency. By implementing a lean management system, you can streamline your processes, reduce costs, and improve the quality of customer experiences. Lean management is an essential part of operational excellence and should be implemented across all departments.

6 - Measure and track progress

To achieve operational excellence, you need to measure and track your progress. This will help you to identify areas for improvement and ensure that you are on track to meet your goals. By identifying and tracking your KPIs, you can measure progress and maintain focus across the workforce. When you know what operational excellence must look like, it’s easier to track.

7 - Promote employee feedback

Across the workforce, team members can provide you with valuable insights into business processes and highlight potential areas for improvement. Promoting employee feedback creates an environment where team members at every level are comfortable sharing their opinions.

8 - Recognize and celebrate successes

As you achieve operational excellence, it is important to recognize and celebrate your successes along the way. This will help to motivate employees and keep them engaged in the journey toward improved customer experiences and tighter operations. When you recognize and celebrate successes, this contributes to a positive culture of continuous improvement.

9 - Be prepared to face challenges

There will be challenges along the way to achieving operational excellence. It’s important to be prepared for these challenges and develop the resilience to overcome them. By being prepared, you can minimize the impact of any hurdles or setbacks and continue moving forward.

10 - Stay committed to your goals

Operational excellence is a journey, not a destination. There are no shortcuts. It is an ongoing journey that requires commitment from everyone in the organization. By following these tips, you will be well on your way to achieving operational excellence in your organization.

How can you get started with operational excellence?

With a range of workflow automation tools at your disposal, it’s never been easier to strive toward operational excellence. Rather than amassing a disjointed stack of automation tools, it is better to utilize an all-encompassing workflow automation solution platform that is capable of centralizing your operations and streamlining key business processes.

‍‍Simply sign up for free and start using our platform right away!