The Value of Internal Communications, Part 2
When you need help streamlining effective internal communications, talk to ProGuide Management Resources about services for process improvement consulting. The consultants at ProGuide offer fresh perspectives to help businesses form solutions that lead to sustainable results. In a collaborative environment, you can meet business challenges with confidence you’ll reach reliable and effective resolutions. In continuing the blog on “The Value of Internal Communications,” please review the following benefits.
Empowerment
Empowered employees are productive workers who are generally effective. When internal communications are haphazardly dealt with the information may not reach the people who actually do the work. You can make this chain much more effective with targeted internal communications. Middle management workers become better leaders and communicators for their staffs when they feel empowered.
Brand
Always be true to your brand especially through internal communications with your frontline employees. Ensure that your brand is associated with clear goals, trained and knowledgeable staffs, and happy faces, to improve a customer’s encounter with your business. It’s been said that “great brands are built from the inside out.” So, start with your employees and their satisfaction and confidence will be reflected directly onto your customers.
Workplace
The best work environments have low turnover rates. Good internal communication provides the kind of feedback that helps employees know and understand their employers. The best advertisements for your business are satisfied employees and happy customers.
The Value of Internal Communications, Part 1
There are a number of reasons why internal communications can improve your corporate culture. As some of your newer employees belong to the Gen X and Millennial generations, it may be that you need to shift your strategy toward their goals. That’s why internal communications play a greater role than ever before in aligning the workforce behind common goals. Internal communications are valuable to your company—no matter what size—for all of the following reasons:
Purpose
Internal communications that function well can motivate employees to work toward common goals. Asking “why” in our working lives is the search for a sense of reason and purpose. Employees want to understand their goals and know the plans for reaching them. A sense of knowing and understanding adds to the confidence and contributions toward those plans. Also, showing how others achieve their goals is a highly effective and motivational way to share information about achievements. Reaching goals together increases the feeling of teamwork and progress.
Message
Employees should learn company news from an internal source. It’s important to make internal points of view available—not just during times of crisis, but also in day-to-day operations. The internal communications system needs to flow through fast, interactive, and reliable channels to reach all employees. Once this system is working properly, your company is sure to remain in control of its messages.
Contact ProGuide Management Resources for process improvement consulting from a global management consulting firm.
Effective Process Improvement Initiatives, Part 2
To continue from our first blog on “Effective Process Improvement Initiatives,” the procedures below may help to get positive responses across the company when you are introducing a process improvement initiative. Many companies don’t grow because they spend all of their energy fixing broken processes. While it’s important to address bottlenecks and other problems, a more productive approach is to evaluate procedures that are not broken.
Make It Easy for Employees to Respond
Make sure you encourage employees to share ideas and suggestions. It helps to set up a designated email address to which employees can send their suggestions and comments. You can also establish a private group for sharing feedback on social media. Let employees know that their leadership is open to hearing both positive and negative feedback
Enhance Training Programs
Focus on process improvement during the employee hiring process and then continue to enhance in detail during the training process. Take note of the following items to help you focus on training programs:
- Teach employees how to spot inefficiencies and opportunities for improvement.
- Educate employees about documentation of roles and assigned tasks.
- Highlight the need for consistency.
- Use blended learning with a multi-media approach that involves a combination of live and online learning activities.
Contact ProGuide Management Resources to find out about our reputable and well-known services for process improvement consulting.
The Value of Internal Communications, Part 1
The key to a company’s ability to maintain an edge over the competition may be its successful process improvement initiatives. Many company executives are so fixated on rapid growth and profits that they overlook the importance of evaluating the processes they are implementing. The failure to focus on process improvement can lead to operational bottlenecks, poor service, and a low rate of customer satisfaction.
Taking on a process improvement initiative with process improvement consulting from ProGuide Management Resources can produce a number of tangible and intangible benefits for companies. The tangible benefits are quantifiable as they include reduced operating costs, higher revenues, and improved compliance with industry standards. Intangible benefits are more about an organization’s image, for example, an improved brand image, higher levels of customer satisfaction, and time savings.
The first and foremost requirement in a successful process improvement initiative is the participation of all employees, from managers and front-line workers to supervisors and executive teams. Any company training programs and tools should be consistent and accurate across all departments. The following suggestions are meant to help an organization conduct a productive process improvement initiative.
Improve Company Culture
It’s more important to build a process improvement culture than a process improvement program. If company employees value process improvement, they are more likely to exhibit the appropriate behaviors. When employees experience the connection between their efforts to improve processes and the company’s mission, they are more apt to be supportive of all of the company’s organizational goals.
Request Employee Feedback
The front-line employees are the obvious embodiment of your company’s processes. These are the individuals who answer the phone or help clients in person in spaces like shops, banks, and hospitals. They have firsthand information regarding procedural strengths and weaknesses. Suggestions and feedback from front-line employees play a vital role in improving your processes.
The Different Types of Mergers & Acquisitions, Part 2
Mergers and acquisitions occur every day in the business world, especially in the world of small and medium-sized businesses. Most businesses aim to grow or divest at the expense of another or with their mutual support. To further our blog on “The Different Types of Mergers & Acquisitions,” see all of the following kinds of mergers and acquisitions:
Product Extension Mergers
A product extension merger occurs between two businesses that deal in related products and operate in the same market. This kind of merger enables the merging companies to group their products and gain access to a larger set of consumers.
Vertical Mergers
A vertical merger is between two companies that produce different goods or services for one specific finished product. The two firms operating at different levels in an industry’s supply chain merge their operations. The goal is that the firms will be more efficient operating as one.
Acquisitions
When one company takes control of another, it is considered an acquisition. The company that takes over purchases the assets or a majority of shares from the company being overtaken. The specific kinds of acquisitions include the following:
- Value creating – When one company acquires another, improves its performance, and then sells it again for a profit.
- Consolidating – Consolidating occurs when one company acquires another to remove its competition.
- Accelerating – Accelerating is when a larger company acquires a smaller one and uses its resources to accelerate market access for the smaller company’s products.
- Resource Acquiring – When a company acquires another to increase its resources, skills, intellectual property, technologies, or market positioning.
- Speculating – A larger company acquires a smaller company with a new product, to cash in on its future growth potential.
Contact ProGuide for information on mergers and acquisitions in Fort Lauderdale. We are here to help you reach your goals safely and securely.
The Different Types of Mergers & Acquisitions, Part 1
Mergers and acquisitions are spurred by economic factors. The performance of the economy, which includes the growth in GDP, interest rates, and monetary policies play a significant role in the process of mergers or acquisitions between companies and organizations. The following types of business combinations are known as mergers: conglomerate merger, horizontal merger, market extension merger, vertical merger, and product extension merger. The term that describes the merger depends on its economic function, the purpose of the business transaction, and the relationship between the merging companies.
Conglomerate Merger
The two types of conglomerate are “pure” mergers and “mixed” mergers. Mergers between firms that are involved in unrelated businesses are known as pure conglomerate mergers. Mixed conglomerate mergers involve firms that are looking for product or market extensions.
Horizontal Merger
A horizontal merger is a business consolidation between firms that operate in the same space, often as competitors offering the same good or service. Horizontal mergers are common in industries with fewer firms, as competition tends to be higher and potential gains in market share are greater for merging firms in such an industry.
Market Extension Mergers
A market extension merger takes place between two companies that offer the same products in separate markets. The market extension merger ensures that the merging companies get access to a bigger market with a larger customer base.
For more information, contact ProGuide, a company that has worked with clients on dozens of mergers and acquisitions in Fort Lauderdale and throughout the country, with transactions ranging from $20 million to nearly $3 billion.
What Are the Benefits of Lean Six Sigma?
Continuous improvement is a goal that many companies include in their strategies for success. In recent years, Lean Six Sigma, a manufacturing process management methodology, has been known to increase value and reduce waste in a number of organizations. The meaning of “Lean” in Lean Six Sigma has to do with a focus on eliminating waste, variation, and non-value-added tasks. Following the commitment to leanness, Six Sigma is undertaken as a data-driven approach to solving complex business problems that include defining, measuring, analyzing, improving, and controlling every level of the organization. Some of the many benefits of Lean Six Sigma implementation include the following:
- Elimination of Errors
- Improvement of Business Processes
- Applicable Across Industries
- Compliance Ensuring
- Encouragement of Managerial and Leadership Abilities
- Obtaining Hands-On Experience In Quality Management
- Improvement of Customer Service
- Increased Efficiency
The guidelines and principles of Lean Six Sigma can be used by any business to optimize and streamline internal processes and communication. A successful Lean Six Sigma program embodies results that instill ownership from everyone involved in the process.
To check out the benefits of Lean Six Sigma in Fort Lauderdale, visit ProGuide.biz, a leading consulting firm that helps companies improve their efficiency, quality, and customer service processes.
The Misconceptions about International Mergers & Acquisitions
In general, mergers and acquisitions are considered a general global trend associated with a global corporate restructuring across industries. A vital part of any healthy economy, they are essential to many companies that need to provide returns to their owners and investors. There are a number of misconceptions about international mergers and acquisitions, which are deals or transactions that may be vital to the growth of a company that aims to penetrate new markets. Some of the largest misconceptions about international mergers and acquisitions are:
Across the Border Transactions Are Not Worth It.
Many companies find it profitable to conduct cross-border transactions whether they are on the buying or selling side. Of course, any company has to have the vision and resources to complete these deals.
Foreign Buyers Always Pay More for an Acquisition.
While there are instances in which foreign buyers may pay more for an acquisition in a different country to buy their way into a market, that is not always the case.
International Transactions Take a Long Time.
Sometimes, due to the need to translate documents and obtain necessary approvals, international transactions may take extra time. However, extra steps like these should not add an inordinate amount of time.
Find out everything you need to know about mergers and acquisitions in Fort Lauderdale from the experts at ProGuide Management Resources.
Choosing the Right Process Improvement Consultant, Part 2
To continue expanding the information in “Choosing the Right Process Improvement Consultant, Part 1,” although it’s fine to choose a consultant with industry experience different from yours, you don’t want to choose a consultant from a vastly different industry. For example, you wouldn’t choose a process improvement consultant who specialized in finance if your company sells wholesale food products. While all of your prospective consultant’s experience doesn’t have to be the same as in your industry, some knowledge of the processes in your industry is helpful.
Another decision you’ll face is whether to hire a singular consultant or choose to work with a firm. Because the process of improvement is an ongoing situation that takes place in steps, you need to feel 100 percent comfortable that your needs and expectations can be met on time, on your agreed-upon budget, and on an estimated return on your investment.
Also, you shouldn’t choose your process improvement consultant based on the lowest rate you can find. That’s because you want an expert who is capable of improving all of your operational and financial performances. If possible, it’s best to choose your consultant based on his or her value and ROI.
Check out the consultant possibilities at ProGuide.biz, a leading global management consulting company that specializes in process improvement consulting.
Choosing the Right Process Improvement Consultant, Part 1
When you decide to partner with a process improvement consultant you want to be sure about several items before you begin to work together. Before you come even close to making a decision be sure to review the consultant’s track record. He or she should have quantifiable proof of what they have done for other businesses. The important part of their previous consulting jobs is to review the before-and-after snapshots of previous contracts. A proven track record is worth much more than hollow promises and blustery language.
It may not matter whether your new consultant has worked in an industry like yours in the past. It’s best not to limit your options by only looking for consultants who have direct experience in your industry or niche. If you use industry experience as your main criterion for choosing your process improvement consultant you are imposing false limits on our choices. That’s because you have a whole company full of employees who are thoroughly knowledgeable about your business, so there’s little need to choose a consultant on that metric alone. The primary purpose of your consultant is to help your team learn how to make changes that lead to continuous improvement of the processes that are already in place.
Contact Pro Guide Management Resources when you are searching for the right process improvement consulting team. Visit ProGuide.biz for information on our consulting services.
