The purchasing organisation V) Strategy development e)Processes

The fifth element of our strategy system is not really an “enabler” but a transforming element. With policy and strategy, leadership, people management, resources and partnerships the necessary business-related competencies and lead measures are sufficiently defined. This chapter is about how to organize the efficient transformation towards excellent performance of the business. The defined strategy inside our business environment needs to be packed into a set of processes to ensure the fast and stringent orientation of all business aspects towards a future excellence.

The starting point usually is a policy deployment process ending up in a set of various implementations through the strategy period. The deployment activities usually provide a good base for the prioritization of process re-engineering efforts.

Although the EFQM system basically does not suggest how to implement standard processing I suggest to pursue a very lean approach. Analyze your defined processes in production, logistics, administration ... and so on by always defining stakeholders and customers of each and any known process. Through a comprehensive value stream analysis, you will be able to revamp the procedures to much better performance in terms of time and efforts. When there is automation potential available for your value stream you need to have it implemented unless it is not really fitting and has to adapted at unreasonably high cost.

It is advisable to maintain an efficient document-change system and transparent documentation to keep all stakeholders on track at all time. A further requirement is the implementation of a quality assurance through dedicated process owners and regular internal audits.

Always give your teams the time to celebrate their successes and oblige them to feed their lessons learned back into the system. This always keeps the system actual and aligned with all the developments in the world.

If the process environment for your purchasing organization is settled and your people are living the processes, you will see that there will be no more question marks about organization or reporting. All necessary tasks are already set by process definition.

According to EFQM in the process chapter should have a special focus on border conditions as these are not explicitly named inside the other chapters.

All processes need to be aligned in terms of:

-         Compliance

-         Sustainability and Environment

-         Law and policies

-         Antitrust regulations

To ensure that the business won’t run into severe risks.

The setting of an efficient process environment has the potential to influence the performance of a company significantly. In comparison to other strategy measures I think that this proceeding can have a major influence on general positive company culture. Nothing has to be re-invented. All the efforts are clearly focused on today's or future customer base and there are effective control mechanisms to keep the knowledge about the customer needs and passions always actual. Which is the core-competency needed for your future business success.

Bernhard Rau, Schaffhausen 20.4.17