Hi ,

Best Practice Report: Target Marketing

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BPIR Message

I was lucky enough to be speaking at the Global Business Excellence Conference in Singapore, 17-20 October 2011. This was a fantastic event attended by more business excellence award winners than probably any other event worldwide. The event was co-organised by the Singapore Productivity Association, Asian Productivity Quality Organisation and SPRING Singapore. Two award dinners were held - one for the winners of the Global Performance Excellence Award - 18 award winners in total with 6 at the world-class level, and one for the winners of the Singapore Quality Award - with a truly remarkable 8 award winners at the world-class level (6 SQA winners and 2 more with Special Commendations as previous winners)! 

 
Dr Robin Mann, Co-Founder BPIR.com Limited, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

• Project management - A Necessity for Business Excellence - The importance of project management in achieving business excellence  .... read more
• Graphing Marathon Measures 2 - Run Chart Run - Real life application of Run chart  .... read more
• Value creation selling helps your customers succeed - Value creation practices and how customers benefit from your help  .... read more
• 9 Tips to Mental Toughness - Tips for you to gain more mental toughness in everything you do  .... read more
• Relationships: is social media a help or a hindrance? - How to make social media a great help for your business  .... read more
• 40 Lessons to Learn from Southwest - Learn 40 best practices from the most profitable US airline company  .... read more
• Benchmarking is the most popular improvement tool in 2011 - Top 10 most popular improvement tools  .... read more
• Facilitation … A Much Needed Skill - How to effectively conduct a successful workshop or meeting  .... read more

Spotlight on Events

• Benchmarking for Performance and Best Practice - The conference of Benchmarking for Performance and Best Practice, Kuwait 4-5 December focuses on the applications and challenges of benchmarking at the country and organisational levels. The conference is being organised by Gulf Lead Consultants, a BPIR.com partner and member of the Global Benchmarking Network (GBN).
  


• Benchmarking for Excellence training workshops have become hugely popular. These workshops provide “Certified Benchmarking Training – Level 1” on TRADE Best Practice Benchmarking – ensuring that benchmarking projects are conducted in a professional manner leading to new innovations and breakthrough improvements.  Workshops are planned in Chile, India, Kuwait, New Zealand, Singapore, Qatar, UK and the UAE in the next few months. In-House workshops are also available.


• 2011 Australian Business Excellence Conference and Awards,17 November.  This year’s conference will examine the key drivers for Organisational Excellence, with leading experts and practitioners from Australia and around the world to discuss and demonstrate how forward thinking leadership and management can implement the Business Excellence Framework. At the conference, we will also be unveiling the 2011 winners of the Australian Business Excellence Awards. In addition to this, we will also be running pre- and post-conference workshops to cover a boarder spectrum of knowledge into the Business Excellence Framework.


• World Business Capability Congress Centre of Organisational Excellence Research (COER) and New Zealand Organisation for Quality (NZOQ) jointly are organising the World Business Capability Congress incorporating the 27th NZOQ Conference and the annual conference of the Global Benchmarking Network (GBN) the 6th International Benchmarking Conference. The congress will be held from 5 to 7 December 2012 in Waipuna Hotel in Auckland, New Zealand
  
  Invitations for speakers/papers will be issued in the next couple of months. Submitted papers will be eligible for top international journals.  Make sure you include this conference in  your diary and travel plans for 2012!

Spotlight on Self-Assessment
Have you used any of our self-assessment tools lately? We have over 50 to assess all aspects of your organisation from how your organisation develops its strategy to how it serves its customers. Here are three typical examples:

• Marketing – Assess your marketing process and help you to guide a group discussion about your organisation's marketing process ....read more
• Outsourcing Preparedness – This self-assessment tool will assist in the preparation of an outsourcing initiative. Consideration is given to the organisation’s preparedness for the transition, the method of evaluating prospective providers, and how to minimise employee stress during the transition period ....read more
• Trainer Competency – Assess the competencies and key actions of capable trainers ....read more

Featured publications
Did you know BPIR provides full access to over 600 excellent business publications providing, in total, over 1,000,000 articles and reports? Here are a few of the titles from the "Labour and Industrial Relations" category (one of 23 categories): 

Members read the latest issues - non members see available titles

Read one of our best practice case studies:

Award winning bank delivers customer service excellence

Remember

Hi ,

Management Brief: Employee Onboarding

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BPIR Message

In the last month I have had a very demanding schedule conducting workshops and presenting at conferences in 6 countries... Travel can be exciting but I found it exhausting as I seemed to pick up viruses from each county I visited ☹ - not the best way to become acquainted with the local culture!. However, as well as the detrimental health effects of international travel, it did give me an opportunity to do a spot check on the health of the countries I visited.

It is evident that Singapore’s economy is buoyant, India is growing fast (but a few days after I left they suffered from a terrorist attack in Mumbai), Bahrain was experiencing terrific uncertainty as a result of recent protests, United Arab Emirates was now focussing on growth whilst maintaining its position as a stable and secure country in a rapidly changing Middle East, Hungary was striving to come out of the European economic crisis, and the UK was focussing on its austerity program – money was tight!

Whilst all these countries are experiencing change there was a common thread – there appears to be a renewed focus on productivity – the recognition that resources need to be used with care with the need to produce - more from less - to be competitive. As such many conferences, like the forthcoming Business Excellence Global Conference in Singapore are focussing on “Productivity” as a conference theme.

A key way to increase productivity is to learn from the experience of other organisations – therefore learn how other organisations have increased productivity whilst meeting the needs and obligations of customers, workers, and shareholders. We believe there is no better resource to help you to do this than the bpir.com... please enjoy our resource and improve your productivity!   

Dr Robin Mann, Co-Founder BPIR.com Limited, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

• 8 Tips To Keep Your Audience Engaged - How to draw the audiences’ attention and get them actively involved .... read more
• Collaborate to Grow the Pie - How collaboration and innovation can split, shrink or grow profit pie  .... read more
• Tips for Customer Service - 8 tips to deliver strong customer service .... read more
• Green Buildings: is it solving one problem and creating another? - Read about the results of a recent study that could change how we look at green buildings. .... read more
• The Importance of Ergonomics - If you think an office job is a healthier job then you must read this post   .... read more

Spotlight on Events

• 2011 IEEE International Conference on Quality and Reliability - The International Conference on Quality and Reliability, 14-17 September, serves as the platform to link academia, industry and the Government in promoting and stimulating a good awareness of, and dedication to, quality and reliability improvement procedures and good practice. To be held in Bangkok - Thailand. 


• QUALCON 2011. The theme for this year’s conference in Adelaide, Australia, 16-20th October is “Winning in the global economy through collaboration, innovation and excellence". Focusing on practical and hands-on experience, topics at Qualcon 2011 will include a combination of presentations and a Team in Excellence competition. The Teams in Excellence Award  will  recognise the people, teams and organisations who implement Continual Improvement strategies like Kaizen, Quality Circles, Lean, Corrective and Preventive Actions, Product and Process Risk Reduction, Theory of Constraints, BPR, Process Mapping, TPM and Six Sigma™.
  
  
• Learn from the world’s best at the 3rd Business Excellence Global Conference - In Asia, through the creation of a Centre for Excellence for Business Excellence (administered by SPRING Singapore on behalf of the Asian Productivity Organisation) there is now an increased emphasis on business excellence – this has been marked by an annual Global Conference on Business Excellence – the Centre’s flagship event. This year the conference aims to be even bigger and better (is this possible)!. SPRING have joined forces with the Singapore Productivity Association and the Asia Pacific Quality Organisation. During the conference the award winners of the Global Performance Excellence Award (GPEA) will receive their award from Asia Pacific Quality Organisation (APQO) to honour their outstanding performance and leadership in business excellence.


• Benchmarking for Excellence training workshops have become hugely popular. These workshops provide “Certified Benchmarking Training – Level 1” on TRADE Best Practice Benchmarking – ensuring that benchmarking projects are conducted in a professional manner leading to new innovations and breakthrough improvements.  Workshops are planned in India, Kuwait, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, Qatar, UK and the UAE in the next few months. In-House workshops are also available.

Spotlight on Self-Assessment
Have you used any of our self-assessment tools lately? We have over 50 to assess all aspects of your organisation from how your organisation develops its strategy to how it serves its customers. Here are three typical examples:

• Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) – assess your current Enterprise Risk Management framework in order to consider where improvements might be made ....read more (go to category 1)
• Strategic Planning – Assess the strengths and weaknesses of an organisation's strategic planning process ....read more (go to category 3)
• Organising for Innovation (Public Sector) – determine your innovation readiness ....read more (go to category 6)

Featured publications
Did you know BPIR provides full access to over 600 excellent business publications providing, in total, over 1,000,000 articles and reports? Here are a few of the titles from the "Accounting" category (one of 23 categories): 

Members read the latest issues - non members see available titles

Read one of our best practice case studies:

Employee absence review initiative wins award

Remember

Hi,

Management Brief: Customer Satisfaction Management

Read other management briefs

BPIR Message

In the last month we have improved the design and layout of our website – we hope you like it? We have also been devoting more resources to our Research Request service  – so if you are a member and would like us to find specific information for you please utilise this service – it is free! We have also begun a major project that will enable the collection of benchmarks that relate to key business results areas – we envisage this new service will be on-line by March 2012. We are working with business excellence foundations to ensure the service will meet the needs of businesses from all around the world – more news on this service will appear in later newsletters. Finally, if you have any articles for our articles database in our member’s area or any news items for our Latest News please send to us for review. Looking forward to your contributions – Dr Robin Mann, Co-Founder BPIR.com Limited, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

• Social Media Assists Small Businesses - How are you utilising social media? .... read more
• Memories of Quality Past - In memory of two quality gurus .... read more
• The King’s Speech: The first executive coach? - The value a coach can bring .... read more
• The Collapse of Complex Business Models - When the value of complexity turns negative .... read more
• 13 Fundamental Truths - Read about 13 fundamental truths that apply to all organisations  .... read more

Spotlight on Events

• This 7 in 1 workshop package promises to be a great learning experience - The 7 in 1 package contains a Benchmarking for Excellence workshop beside 6 other workshops in BSC, EFQM, DISC Methodology, 6Sigma, IiP and Sales KPIs. To be held in Manama, Bahrain. 
• One of the leading academic conferences on quality management will be held in Malaysia, 26-28^th July. At the 15^th International Conference on ISO & TQM the latest findings from international research will be presented and discussed. There is the still the chance to submit a paper but you will need to be quick! Otherwise attend the conference to gain insights into how to improve organisational performance. The theme for this year’s conference is “Sustainable Development through Innovation”
  
• Learn from the world’s best at the 3rd Business Excellence Global Conference - In Asia, through the creation of a Centre for Excellence for Business Excellence (administered by SPRING Singapore on behalf of the Asian Productivity Organisation) there is now an increased emphasis on business excellence – this has been marked by an annual Global Conference on Business Excellence – the Centre’s flagship event. This year the conference aims to be even bigger and better (is this is possible)! SPRING have joined forces with the Singapore Productivity Association and the Asia Pacific Quality Organisation. The focus this year is on “Productivity – Enabling Business Excellence”. This is truly a global conference where award winners from around the world share their experiences. This will be complemented by many examples of best practices from Singapore organisations (giving an insight into Singapore’s economic success).
  

Spotlight on Self-Assessment
Have you used any of our self-assessment tools lately? We have over 50 to assess all aspects of your organisation from how your organisation develops its strategy to how it serves its customers. Here are three typical examples:

• Customer Orientation – Asses customer orientation across five dimensions to determine how customer-friendly your organisation is ....read more (go to category 4)
• Customer Complaint Resolution Process – How effective your customer complaints resolution processes ....read more (go to category 4)
• Business Continuity Self-Assessment – How well prepared your organization is for an emergency.....read more (go to category 6)

Featured publications
Did you know BPIR provides full access to over 600 excellent business publications providing, in total, over 1,000,000 articles and reports? Here are a few of the titles from the "Marketing And Purchasing" category (one of 23 categories): 

Members read the latest issues - non members see available titles

Read one of our best practice case studies:

FMEA facilitates design stage of major facility construction

• Engineering design was enhanced through failure mode avoidance, which allowed the design to include countermeasures for identified failure modes.
• FMEA was effective in identifying specific information behind potential failure modes, probable causes, and countermeasure options. Visualisation techniques that supported FMEA included systems architectures, function trees, fault tree analysis diagrams, boundary diagrams, and system state flow diagrams.
• Safety control structure diagramming ensured control processes were identified and that social and technical dimensions were also considered.
• Multidisciplinary teaming, benchmarking, and enterprise management enabled effective use of the decision-support tools and also communication between key stakeholders. read more

One Stop Shop disseminates information

Public private partnership wins a municipality a Best Practice in Sustainability Award

Customer Experience Management lifts company’s customer satisfaction rankings

Remember

Hi ,
Welcome to our second newsletter of 2011 – sharing with you  best practices, improvement tools, and events. Non-members of the BPIR can read the newsletter but will be unable to access some of the links.  

Management Brief: Leadership Development
Effective leadership development programmes enhance the quality of organisational leadership, which leads to engaged employees, low turnover, satisfied customers, and high performance. High quality leaders possess the ability to ensure ongoing profits, facilitate growth, anticipate competitive threats, and are able to discover new business models for generating further revenue streams. Leaders can weather the storms that arise by developing a strong sense of character and a good support network read more..

Read other management briefs

Demonstration of the BPIR.com in a town near you

BPIR.com Limited has partners around the world (Australasia, Asia, Middle East, Europe, North America, South America) that support the website. In all likelihood we have a partner near you who can show you the website via a company visit or over the telephone/skype call. We will show you benchmarks and best practices related to your specific needs. Please get in touch with Ahmed, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , to set up a demonstration.

• The Riddle of Sigma and Six Sigma! - six sigma simplified .... read more
• Benchmarking for Performance Excellence - what is benchmarking and what is its value .... read more
• Enhance your career and hold on to your job - 7 best practices are presented for holding on to a job and enhancing a career .... read more
• China First in ISO 9001 & ISO14001 Certifications for 2009 - Read about the findings of the ISO global survey of certifications .... read more

Spotlight on Events

• 2011 Best Practices Study Tour - SAI Global Ltd in conjunction with Benchmarking Partnerships is organising a Best Practices Study Tour in May to visit and learn from the 2010 Business Excellence & Systems Award Winners in Australia. During the 4 days tour the participants will visit 9 award winners organisations. The Best Practices Study Tour is an excellent opportunity to learn from the award winners.
• The EOQ clock starts ticking – Submit your papers now! –The EOQ and its National Representative organization from Hungary, HNC-EOQ, are inviting you to participate in the 55th EOQ Congress organized in Budapest, Hungary, June 21-23, 2011.
• 7 in 1 Workshops package in Measuring Business Performance! The challenge for organisations today is how to match and align performance measures with business strategy, structures and corporate culture, the type and number of measures to use, the balance between the merits and costs of introducing these measures, and how to deploy the measures so that the results are used and acted upon. Therefore if you would like to attend the Benchmarking for Excellence workshop beside 6 other workshops in BSC, 6Sigma, IiP, KPIs this is the right event.

Research into business excellence

Fancy doing a PhD?  Are you interested in conducting research that will help organisations improve their performance? 

Currently we have some interesting projects underway including:

• What are the triggers of business excellence? Therefore, what triggers an organisation to follow a business excellence path?
• Is there a road-map to achieve world-class performance? This PhD is researching the tools and techniques organisations have used to progress from starting the journey to business excellence to becoming world-class.
• How does organisational and national culture impact on the success of business improvement initiatives? Is it easier to implement some tools and techniques, such as six sigma, in certain cultures?  

We also undertake commissioned research projects. One of our projects is to develop an information pack that will help SMEs to understand business excellence core values and concepts. 

For more information on our research activities, contact Dr Robin Mann, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or refer to our sister organisation’s website, www.coer.org.nz/research-opportunities.

Spotlight on Self-Assessment
Have you used any of our self-assessment tools lately? We have over 50 to assess all aspects of your organisation from how your organisation develops its strategy to how it serves its customers. Here are three typical examples:
 

• Management and Leadership Skills – Discover where you have a room for improvement and build on those management skills that you are already good at ....read more (go to category 1)
• Human Capital Development – where your organisation stands in its commitment to investing in the development of its people ....read more (go to category 7)
• Ethical Decision Making – What is your position in regard to making an important ethical decision ....read more (go to category 1)

Featured publications
Did you know BPIR provides full access to over 600 excellent business publications providing, in total, over 1,000,000 articles and reports? Here are a few of the titles from the "Business and Economics" category (one of 23 categories): 

Members read the latest issues - non members see available titles

Best Practice Case Studies
Read one of our best practice case studies:

Employee Orientation - getting it right in the first day
A large US Midwestern office equipment supplier saw a new employee’s first day as critical. To ensure new employees were tuned up the company’s Personnel Manager:

• Invited new employees to a day one breakfast, dealt with any last minute problems, took them to the workplace after breakfast, showed them around the building and then took them to their desk which had the new employers name on a name plate.
• Gave new employees a crib sheet with names and bios of fellow workers and personally conducts introductions.
• Hosted a welcome aboard lunch.
• After lunch spent time going over specific job duties and covering a checklist of orientation topics such as: Information about salary rate range, performance appraisal, etc; the missions and charter of the firm; a review of company business purpose, beliefs, employment practices, etc. and answering questions.

The result: New employees end the day upbeat and ready, willing and able to get to work. read more

Community support projects help improve organisation’s team spirit 
Community Support was seen as a positive endeavour at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). AICPA found that challenging its staff to better serve their community, they rose to the cause and got engaged in ways that did not cost money. The organisation selected a number of corporate citizenship programmes to support, including: `Project Homeless Connect,` where over 50 employees escorted the homeless through the bureaucracy of city services; `Spirit in the Community,` where over 300 employees volunteered in animal and homeless shelters; and `Finance Academy,` where dozens of employees focused on curriculum development, class training and student mentorship at a local high school. Champions were appointed to engage the communities, and leadership from the CEO down was engaged and committed, with engagement and commitment included as part of leadership accountabilities. A focus on volunteerism created further opportunities for employees to get out into the community. As a result team spirit improved and the organisation received very positive feedback from the community. read more

Vision statement creation process lifts employee motivation and engagement
After a restructuring had created much uncertainty and ambiguity a global financial institution recognised it needed to update its vision in a process that would re-engage employees and restore belief in the company. To get it right, the senior leadership team (SLT) obtained opinions from all levels about the direction the organisation needed to go, the future they hoped for, and the type of place they wanted the company to be. The SLT then created a compelling vision and shared it through road shows and workshops, describing how the goals and performance measures related to, aligned with and supported the new vision. Employees were able to ask questions, gain clarity about the direction, relate it to their job, and see what was expected of them. The process enabled employees to make sense of the new vision, how others interpreted it, and what it meant to them individually. Employees made a clear commitment to the vision and the high engagement process ultimately increased productivity and profitability  read more

Strategic Plan development and implementation in a healthcare setting
To generate support for a cultural competency programme Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network, a US health provider, implemented a strategic plan through a project structure and sub-project teams responsible for specific objectives. Key stakeholders were identified and sub-projects teams: developed a cultural material repository, enhanced employee recruitment/retention, established a baseline assessment, standardized data collection, provided language-appropriate services, and developed an education programme. Change management and project management methodologies were all used in the implementation. The implementation team and sub-project teams produced intended outcomes. read more

Remember
To regularly check out the bpir.com for benchmarks, best practices and business excellence.  We know you will find valuable knowledge and we always welcome your feedback, so if you have time, please email any comments about our services to feedback@BPIR.com .

If you are currently not a member of the BPIR, or wish to upgrade your membership then please review our membership offerings at JOIN NOW.. you won't be disappointed.