Continuous Improvement

Continuous improvement is the key to world-class performance

Continuous improvement initiatives are essential for organizations striving to maintain profitability and achieve competitive advantage. Yet, implementing these initiatives can present business leaders with serious obstacles. The tasks of defining cross-functional responsibilities and roles, establishing metrics, and integrating diverse systems in ways that minimize duplication and waste can be a challenge for organizations that are inexperienced in continuous improvement frameworks.

The Hackett Group^® can help. As a consulting firm with deep experience in establishing continuous improvement programs, we enable organizations to achieve and accelerate goals by establishing a clear business case for continuous process improvement and facilitating regular communication among stakeholders and staff.

The role of benchmarking in continuous improvement

As organizations adopt initiatives for continuous improvement, business benchmarking can play a critical role in helping to establish baselines and understanding where opportunities for performance improvement exist. Over time, benchmarking can help to validate improvement plans and ensure that organizations are realizing the expected benefits of continuous improvement efforts. Ultimately, benchmarking provides the facts that guide improvement efforts and ingrain performance improvement into the fabric of a company’s culture.

Effective benchmarking strategy and tools can help organizations to:

• Evaluate process performance as it relates to overall business value and strategy and the performance of peers.
• Identify operational strengths, as well as performance gaps and problem areas, that may hinder growth. These may include areas that represent a risk because of underspending.
• Quantify opportunities for improvement within cost, cash and service levels.
• Develop fact-based business cases for business process change.
• Prioritize areas of focus and new initiatives for continuous improvement.
• Motivate internal teams to understand how other organizations or functions perform more efficiently or effectively.
• Rally executives around common goals and approaches for achieving change, and with data motivate employees on how changes in the way that they perform activities can improve results.

Continuous improvement with The Hackett Group

As a leading global strategy and operations consulting firm, The Hackett Group offers deep expertise and experience in continuous improvement. Our services are grounded in proven results that are backed by empirical data, driving measurable process improvement in our clients’ operational efficiency and effectiveness.

Like all of our services, our continuous improvement consulting is informed by the world’s most comprehensive benchmarking database. Through nearly 26,000 benchmarking engagements with over 9,100 of the world’s leading companies, The Hackett Group has rigorously defined digital world-class performance across a wide range of functions and processes. Our research and benchmarking allow us to share with clients the drivers and best practices that deliver top performance.

Our continuous improvement capabilities include:

• Establishing appropriate qualitative and quantitative performance metrics
• Conducting process benchmarking
• Analyzing root causes to identify the source of inefficiencies
• Redesigning and optimizing processes
• Implementing change management practices

From benchmarking to continuous improvement with Quantum Leap^®

Our Quantum Leap platform supports our clients’ continuous improvement programs by automating data collection and validating accuracy to reduce the effort required to benchmark performance by half.

Supported by extensive data and intellectual property, our world-class benchmarking capabilities provide the foundation for executing and monitoring fact-based initiatives. Our platform helps define performance improvement opportunities, generate world-class solutions, drive accountability and ensure that benefits are realized.

With Quantum Leap, organizations can:

• Collect data through simplified processes to make benchmarking easier.
• Benchmark performance to quantify performance improvement opportunities.
• Analyze and interrogate benchmark data.
• Identify high-impact initiatives for continuous improvement.
• Monitor progress and measure return on investment through personalized dashboards.

Why clients choose The Hackett Group

The Hackett Group is a leading global strategy and operations consulting firm with expertise in performance benchmarking and business process change. We offer digital transformation services that include implementation of leading enterprise cloud services and applications, workflow automation, third-party risk management, integrated business planning, and advanced analytics that enable Digital World Class^® performance.

Our services and best practices are based on unparalleled intellectual property from more than 26,600 benchmark studies and our Hackett-Certified^® best practices repository from the world’s leading businesses – including 97% of the Dow Jones Industrials, 89% of the Fortune 100, 70% of the DAX 40 and 55% of the FTSE 100.

Founded in 1997, The Hackett Group is publicly traded on the NASDAQ as HCKT and has global offices in the United States, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

FAQs

What is continuous improvement?

Continuous improvement is the practice of continually identifying opportunities to improve business processes, products or services. Continuous improvement may take the form of incremental improvement over months or years or breakthrough improvement in a short period of time.

What is benchmarking?

Benchmarking is the practice of measuring an organization’s products, processes and services against other leading companies or best-in-class offerings. Benchmarking is an essential component of continuous improvement, providing metrics that enable organizations to identify areas for improvement.

What is Quantum Leap?

Quantum Leap is a digital benchmarking and continuous improvement platform from The Hackett Group. The Quantum Leap platform streamlines the benchmarking process, enabling organizations to reduce efforts by half while extending the value of benchmarking for continuous process improvement.