Process Improvement Consultants - Faster Processes Today

Process Improvement Consultants UK

Imagine….

It’s Friday afternoon the Operations Manager walks through the factory safe in the knowledge that orders are going through on time. Confident that Lead Times, Raw Materials Stocks and Labour Costs are in control.

The Finance Team have made sure all the payments and receipts are processed. They have all the data ahead of monthly reporting next week, ready for the FD and the Executive Team.

HR have ensured that the departments have followed the recruitment process and those new recruits will be heading into your business in a few weeks’ time, with the skills you need.

That IT software, you were promised, is up and running and saving hours of effort.

Recognise this? No of course not…

That’s why you’re here, right? Looking for a firm who provide Process Improvement Consulting.

If everything was OK, if the processes were on time, if your gut wasn’t telling you “we could be better, we could do more”, you wouldn’t be looking and we wouldn’t exist.

That’s not too say everything is wrong. The processes did work really well, you are successful, you have good order books, sometimes too good, many of our clients are at this point.

Our clients call us because;

They’ve grown larger, they have more clients, they need to make more
They product range and service support have increased; the business seems more complicated
The business no longer delivers to clients fast enough
There appear to be too many errors or checks in the current processes
Or now, due to Covid and remote working you realise they may not be fit for purpose.

You want to discover if your processes can be made to deliver on time, all the time, whether they can be more responsive, adaptable, to what’s going on.

We exist because you’re not alone. Whatever the problems you face in your processes, we’ve seen them before in our 15 years of delivering improvements to business processes.

Business Process Improvement Consultants – Deliver Faster, Become More Responsive.

What Do We Deliver? TIME.

Yes, we know you came here looking for Process Improvement Consultants. You were expecting we’d say improved processes. Faster, with reduced risk?

Of course we deliver those but the reason you think your process are broken is time, right?

Your processes take too long. There are steps in the process which don’t deliver so you have to go back and make corrections. Processes seem to stop and wait for no reason. All of these waste time, time you could do so much more with.

When they are going too slowly people take Short Cuts and that is where the risk comes in.

We know how to get your processes to flow quickly, effectively and efficiently.

We know how to create time in your business from improving the processes. It’s what we’ve been delivering independently since 2005. We know the right tools, the right techniques to find and improve and how to deliver these to your teams.

It’s a simple business truth, if your business processes are improved and can deliver quicker, then it stands to reason they must also be cheaper, this will make them easier to control and manage. From then on you’ll find you have more time.

More time to deal with more sales, to grow your business.
More time to deal with training and developing staff, resolving and preventing issues.
More time to focus on customers, your prospects and your business.

Our Process Improvement Consultants have run departments and businesses. We know that any process improvement work like this has to be delivered alongside your current work out; delivering for your customers.

We know that day to day issues will still happen whilst you’re improving processes. You’ll still have fires to put out as we go along, we’ve been there. We’ve been there on the Friday afternoon when things go wrong.

But the fires will get smaller and fewer and eventually disappear.

What should you expect from Process Improvement Consulting?

Okay every client we work with is different; every client has different aims but here are just a few of the results our clients have achieved.

Manufacturing Organisation – saw Overtime disappear and capacity grow by 33% in just 3 months.
Global Leader in Printing Machinery – production times down from 47 days to 20, inside 4 months.
UK Finance Firm – the time to process regulated client paperwork from start to finish (full checks, compliance, monies in accounts) reduced by over 60%
Laboratory Organisation – dealt with 29% more orders and delivered more 24 hour turnaround requests.
Machine Shop Job Turnaround – went to 50% of orders ready in under 10 days from just 10%.
Legal Firm – improving client communication led to an increase in number of cases that could be handled by up to 35%
Electro-Mech Assembly Company – output of it’s world leading machines increased from 8 a month to 12.

In all of these the organisations achieved these results with the SAME numbers of staff and resources. In fact a couple of them found they could release staff to work in other areas.

Imagine being able to deliver 20-35% more work with the same numbers of staff and resources.

Look again though, many of these mention that the organisations could do more, they went on to sell more, generate greater revenue.

If you can deliver more, faster and be sure of it, you can turn this into a sales winning proposition.

That’s what your Process Improvement Consultant and Programmes should be aiming for.

We do offer specific business process improvement consulting services, related to specific sectors or departments in organisations.

After all every department uses their own unique processes. They all access the many support processes you have related to recruitment, booking holidays, performance reviews, expense management, Health & Safety.

The services we offer are not just on improving the processes. We are very mindful that we need to offer process management consulting as well.

After all if you improve and change the process, then you should reflect, improve and change the management of processes.

You can find out more about our services;

Our clients come from many sectors and departments, for his reason we’ve worked on many different types of process since 2005 and before if you include our employed time. The processes could you be thinking of improving, might include;

Order to Cash
Recruitment Processes, Employee On Boarding
Quote to Sales, Bid to Tender
“Manufacturing” Processes ( Every organisation delivers an “output”, turns inputs into something else by adding value)
End Of Month Finance Reporting
Client On Boarding
Purchasing and Procurement Processes
Invoice & Billing Processes
Planning & Scheduling Processes
Warehousing and Distribution Processes

Working with clients we’ve mapped, improved and optimised many process types across organisations and their functions. Even extending this work to include their suppliers and customers in the improvements.

In this world of working from home, we can work with your on your process improvement activities remotely.

Working with your staff we help you identify which (key) processes could be improved to deliver better results. Aiming to improve the processes that can have the biggest impact first is always where we try and start.

Aiming to improve the processes which will resolve the issues you have in terms of delivering

work on time,
to the required standard,
to controlled costs,
what you customers need

We do this by first we understand the current state of play, of the key processes;

How long do they actually take from start to finish?
How many times is work “re-done” in them?
How many times are people waiting in the process?
How many departments, functions, individuals are delivering the process?

As an example think about buying a house; you instruct a solicitor and the process takes at least 3 months (12 weeks). In that time the legal work you pay for takes around 4 hours.

How many times do you ring up the solicitor to check on progress? or how often do they get you to re-check or confirm paperwork you’ve sent? or how long are they waiting for others to respond to them? We look for similar issues in your organisation.

Once we’ve established how well the current processes are working we work with you and your staff to use a number of techniques to improve them.

We aim to give you insights into improvement as we go along.

Are Process Maps Important in Process Improvement?

Absolutely the building of Business Process Maps means that you draw out from staff their different interpretations of the process and the different words & phrases they use; often to describe the same thing.

As a first step this will make communication about the processes easier.

Once you’ve got an agreed way – the correct steps in the correct order then you can at least ensure everyone knows what needs to be done, when; that’s progress

The next step is to look at how you can improve the steps;

remove the duplicated steps,
fix the steps that are broken, poor quality
identify which steps are bottlenecks
the steps that no longer add value.

In our experience the best way to improve is to turn your Business Process Map into a Value Stream Map.You can find out more about our Process Mapping Service.

What Does A Business Process Improvement Consultant Do?

Business Process improvement is the activity of identifying, analysing and improving existing business processes.

The aim of your Process Improvement Consultant should be to enable you to begin delivering work quicker, improving the experience for customers, both internal & external.

Once you begin delivering work quicker there should be other benefits that follow; such as delivering with greater quality, at lower costs, and meeting best practice standards.

What Skills Does a Process Improvement Consultant Need?

A great Business Process Improvement Consultant needs to understand how to schedule work (not just plan it).

They need knowledge of the systematic approaches to identifying, analysing, and bringing about improvement in the existing business processes. They also need to identify the management processes linked to the processes being improved, this is often ignored.

When you improve the process, surely you have to change the management of the process?

When it comes to list of skills; they will need Problem Identification Skills, Numerical Skills, Communication, Negotiation and Influencing Skills.

What Process Improvement Results Do Levantar Deliver?

Levantar focus on transforming businesses by delivering work faster. Our results mean that organisations reduce their Lead Times and can deliver to customers quicker. We have delivered lead time reductions of 50%. Leading to 50% increases in capacity. Once word gets out that you can deliver quicker, we know sales increase. Some clients have seen an increase in sales of 33%. What did your last Process Improvement deliver?

Which Department and Functions can use Process Improvement Techniques?

Business Process Improvement can be used in many departments and functions; as an example, we’ve worked with

Manufacturing & Assembly plants
Investment Companies
Construction
Law Firms
Finance & Insurance
Food & FMCG
Electrical Component Production
Metal Fabrication
Accounting Functions
Furniture Production

in fact, you will probably find every department and function uses a whole set of processes – even if they are just stored in the head of a very experienced individual – who one day, may leave.

Don’t Take Our Word For It – Read What Our Clients Say About Our Process Improvement Services

The Levantar team provide a fantastic service that not only looks at the basic lean principles of manufacturing but helped to dig much deeper to identify underlying issues across the business and how to improve them. Neil and Mark make an exceptional team who are really easy to work with and are able to challenge and develop individuals from the shop-floor to the management team. I highly recommend them.Garth Williams Software Manager ABG International Ltd

Garth Ellie Williams

06:27 17 May 18

Levantar really do know what they are doing, they spent around a year working with a company I work for and the improvement made were beyond words. Daily working life became much more bearable and I was able to improve myself in my job role due to this. They are very honest and will help wherever they can using the knowledge they have learnt through the years. I highly recommend Mark and Neil and would happily work with them again.

Daisy Lowe

08:55 12 Apr 18

Levantar were with us for 7 months during which time they introduced many changes to existing processes as well as new ones to move on with. During this time they learned our way of working before making any additions/alterations or changes, they listened to everyone who had comments, observations or ideas and took all of these on board.They left us a far more efficient group than when they arrived with new ideas an projects to carry forward to continue the improvements.Overall Mark & Neil are approachable, attentive & have much knowledge & experience to draw from in order to improve a business in so many ways.Highly recommended !

Malcolm Savage

10:16 26 Mar 18

The Levantar team are extremely professional and easy to work with.They were able to converse with all levels of our employees from the people on our shop floor through to the Management team and most importantly get 'buy in'.We are now using many procedures they put in place.I cant rate them highly enough.

Chris Ellis

07:33 03 Apr 18

Taught a combination of logical thinking with outside the box thoughts. Full interaction with all levels in all departments. Great motivation team the learn from and work with.

Martin Morgan

10:22 12 Apr 18

Levantar helped improve process and work flow, improved communication between departments and were keen to develope employee's with college course and in house training.