Best Practices - 4 Essential Factors

Best Practices are part process, part content. Simply knowing the content, that is, the method or process is usually insufficient because of difficulties in getting people to change inside companies. This leads to the necessity of understanding and enabling the Best Practice path.

Definitions: the best way to perform a given process; the best way thus far that has been develop to do something; the way that results in the highest, demonstrated, measurable performance.

Best Practices Books Available for Purchase in our E-Store:
- Best Practices Enterprise: Guide to Achieving World-Class Performance
- Project Management Best Practices: Achieving Global Excellence
- Supply Chain Management Best Practices

PROACTION is geared to assist your company in moving ahead powerfully and quickly towards greater, more sustained high performance and competitiveness in the each of the Four Essential Factor areas with low cost publications, free white articles and professional services:


Effective Leadership & Culture

Publications – Leadership & Culture

Services – we provide individual and team assessments and coaching to enable our current managers to become true leaders to create a solid foundation to enable initiatives such as Lean management and selection and implementation of more advanced systems to be very successful.


Continous Improvement Processes

Publications - Lean 6/Sigma

Services – a PROACTION Lean management trainer and coach will work hands-on, side-by-side with your work teams to enable them to become proficient in lean methods, and to gain confidence along with measurable results in achieving objectively measurable improved productivity and quality in products and services. We can also facilitate Kaizen events – highly focused, over-the-weekend type project to achieve major improvements in a specific area in just a few days. Two benefits – measurable results quickly plus very quick learning for your team.


Effective Enterprise Systems and Processes

Publications – select the area you are most interested in:

- Enterprise Systems
- Supply Chain
- Marketing & Sales
- Business Process Management
- Production & Inventory

Services – PROACTION can facilitate and support your team in a variety of ways to jump start improvements in these areas, such as:

• Enterprise software management – we utilize the leading-edge SoftSelect methodology to coach your team in becoming articulate and expert in understanding their company’s overall strategy, truly key, mission-critical requirements, and in bringing software into alignment with these. Click to learn more about our SoftSelect methodology.

• Focused expertise projects – to achieve very rapid improvements in a specific area, such as supply chain management or marketing and sales processes, our facilitation-oriented consultants can develop a fast-moving project leveraging your in-house team. We combine class-room style education and training, coupled with project team focused on getting specific improvements in place quickly. Example: Inventory Accuracy in 60 Days.

Education & Training

More on Education and Training.

Publications – utilize our courses as an integral, repeatable part of your ongoing, in-house education and training program at very low cost. Those in PowerPoint format can be edited to customize them for your specific situation.


The Performance Continuum

Where is your company on the continuum of performance?

· At one end are those who can be said to be ‘striving” – just working to keep up with the pack, to just stay in business. At these companies, opportunities to improve performance are seemingly everywhere.

· At the other end are true, world-class companies that continually improve themselves, creating new and innovative products and services, and literally creating new Best Practices. They usually manage the innovation process with a portfolio approach of mixed low and high risk projects.

· In the middle are those who are, at least for the time being, successful, in business, some degree of market dominance, and who at least partially, utilize proven Best Practices, most typically developed at some point in time by others, i.e., an innovator.

Best Practice Example - As an illustration, 35 years ago, documenting products utilizing a computer-based Bill of Materials capability was an innovative, new Best Practice, developed originally by companies like Black & Decker, IBM, and others. Now, the BoM, as it is called, is a standard practice at most product oriented companies, with only a few laggards still utilizing other, inferior methods.

Most companies are mixed performers, excelling in some areas, while lagging far behind in others. Example: many otherwise leading companies still do not have a defined, structured, integrated marketing and sales process capable of being systematically improved over time, depending instead on a few “star” performers.

PROACTION’s unique combination of content (specific information about processes and methods), and process can bring improvements in your company’s performance that are both quick and sustained over time.

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PROACTION - Background

PROACTION has provided high quality business consulting, business support services, business management, and education since its founding in 1986 by George J. Miller. The company has focused on an education-based consulting model to assist its clients achieve business performance improvements, via ERP selection and implementation, operations and supply chain focused, process re-engineering, system design, and a variety of other works, all with the purpose of improving business performance. A very wide range of industries, business models, business types, business practices, and scales have been and continue to be involved. For more detail visit our Capabilities page, or check the previous blog entry.

Paul Deis, CEO, acquired PROACTION in 2005, bringing to the company his more than 25 years experience in management consulting and as a senior executive, involving detailed work with over 50 companies, including about 7 years of previous work with PROACTION. For more detail on Paul’s extensive background, visit our Team page.

PROACTION Mission Origins – Paul’s vision of a Best Practice focused firm stemmed from his many years of work in a wide range of business performance improvement efforts, both in consulting and in leadership roles, coupled with a life long habit of reading, study, and professional growth. It became clear that this was what was really needed to provide dramatic and sustained performance for any organization, well beyond a single project’s horizon. A new paradigm, a new vision with much more power was needed, and the PROACTION method provides this.
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PROACTION - Capabilities

PROACTION has, between its team members, major, in-depth experience with a very wide range of business improvement activities – aka Best Practices, as well as becoming involved in expertise-focused work where detailed knowledge of an entire field, such as supply chain management, or enterprise software systems, is brought to bear.

Between our team members, there has been detailed, hands-on work with approximately 200 companies, in roles ranging from short, intensive projects, to senior executive leadership with major responsibilities, such as:

· Arn Lahde, for example, was VP at Parsons, a global construction company, and led the design and construction of 2 Disney theme parts – Euro Disney, and Disney Japan.

· Paul Deis lead a very early, very successful Lean implementation while VP at Raypak, Inc., as well as others.

On any PROACTION project, you are assured of having only top-notch, senior level, seasoned professionals assigned to your project. Besides our core Team members, whom you can read more about on the Team page, we also have a large and capable network of experts in a variety of fields that we are able to bring into a project requiring unique skills and expertise.

As a result, we can assign who is best for a project, not just who we have on the payroll, which is almost always the case with consulting firms having an in-house staff of consultants. Paul Deis, our CEO, faced this situation while a Manager at Deloitte & Touche. The first task is to keep consultants on the payroll busy, billable, of operational and financial necessity. We do not have that conflict – so we focus entirely on what is needed for success on the project we perform for you.

Industries – we have completed hundreds of projects and assignments in a very wide range of business sectors, operational styles, often with very different success drivers. Examples:

- Manufacturing – consumer products, electronics, complex capital equipment, government and aerospace & defense contractors (FAR regulated) at every level (prime contractors, tier 2 and 3 suppliers), high volume disposable products, medical device and product manufacturing (FDA regulated), marine products, agricultural products, biotech, appliances, food products and many others. Business styles includes what is termed make to stock, make to order, configure to order, and variants of these and others.

- Supply Chain intensive – global product distribution, US government military support and supply; global construction and supply for “mega projects,” full outsourced manufacturing with global work in process between multiple countries, including border crossings, 3PLs, customs, sea/air/land logistics, duty-drawback and other aspects.

- Organization Planning and Recruitment – we have performed highly specialized projects involving specifying key leadership and management positions, and then finding the best individuals to fill these positions. Recent example was a large project for Kellogg Brown & Root, to grow the overall supply chain organization from 300 to nearly 2,000 people in about 18 months, where more than 20 director and above level senior professionals were recruited, as well as over 60 senior subcontract management professionals. While we are not, and never have been, a full-time recruiting firm, this skill is an outgrowth of out ability to find and staff projects with unusual, critical skill requirements in a short time period.

- Construction – these have included both very large “mega” projects and companies, as well as commercial facility construction, such as Parsons and Disney.”

- Engineering intensive – many companies, while delivering a product, have as their major offering highly skilled, specialized engineering. We call these companies, “engineer to order” because the product is almost an afterthought, compared to the amount, and cost, of engineering work brought to bear on the customer’s objectives.

- Health care – health insurance, including enrollment and claims processing, as well as medical clinic operations and billing services.

- Enterprise Software – we have both hands-on, and advisory experience in this area, both in considerable depth, including:

• Leadership - Our CEO, Paul Deis, ran an ERP software company for 5 years, supporting customers with unique business models.

• Leading edge contribution - PROACTION’s founder, George Miller, was a key leader at Western Data System, and forged the fundamental specification for what became Contract / Project oriented ERP systems that meet US government (FAR) requirements.

• Major ERP providers – marketing strategy, product design advisory projects. These companies included IBM, what is now Glovia, Cincom, Western Data Systems (now Manugistics) and others.

• Detailed system design – besides detailed design support for unique and customized functionality areas, we have also performed in one case, a complete design for a full ERP system, with over 1,000 windows. The specifications were used to drive a concurrent design, development and implementation project that was ultimately quite successful.

• Selections – members of the PROACTION Team have completed numerous Enterprise software selection projects, involving determining key requirements, a long list of candidates, narrowing to a short list, final selection and contract negotiation, as well as implementation preparation. A Best Practice in this area is our use of the SoftSelect methodology, which is superior to all other available methods.

Types of Projects – the span and range of projects performed by the PROACTION team makes brief summarization difficult. We have functioned at every level of organizations, including interim senior management, performed due diligence across entire organizations, performed major IT-related projects, including selections of major Enterprise software systems, as well as large-scale implementation projects, have provided focused expertise on compliance with FAR, FDA, ISO-9001, and dozens of others. Business management consultants, business speakers, project management, business management, business process improvement, business support services.
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Best Practices - What You Need To Know

Companies and organizations can be grouped into three basic categories:

· Innovators – those who are literally at the leading edge of process development; often have failures associated with risk taking, but the "wins" are big enough to offset these.

· Best Practice seekers – those who work to achieve high performance with minimum risk; by adopting practices and methods already demonstrated to work well, typically in another company and/or industry.

· Strivers – below average performing companies that are working to "keep up with the pack."

Where is your company? Unless you are an innovator, operating at the leading edge in a number of areas, your company is vulnerable to someone else who is or becomes one.

A given company may be to some degree, in all three categories. To create an example, a company could be highly innovative in its go-to-market strategy and execution. At the same time, in its R&D and product development area, it could be utilizing known, proven best practices. In its manufacturing area, for a variety of reasons, this area could be characterized as a "striver" with significant areas that are well below known best practices.

Competition is increasingly global as most company leaders are all to aware. Consequently, those with foresight seek to achieve quantum improvements in their company’s performance.

The most powerful way is to seek out Best Practices and adopt them as quickly as possible. Those who follow this path often have been able to achieve substantial performance improvements.

Definitions: the best way to perform a given process; the best way thus far that has been developed to do something; the way that results in the highest demonstrated, measurable performance.

We urge you to bookmark the PROACTION web site and return regularly, or better still, subscribe to our RSS feed. Valuable information available either at no cost in the Free White Paper section or our web site, or at very moderate cost in the PROACTION Best Practices e-Store is continually being expanded and updated. The next update could contain an item that proved very valuable for you and your team. Quick links:

· Free White Papers

· PROACTION Best Practice e-Store

PROACTION provides comprehensive assistance to bring proven Best Practices into use in a wide variety of areas. The Path to Best Practices is part process, part content. Simply knowing what a best practice is for a given area is just a starting point, of course. It must be implemented correctly to gain the expected operational and financial results.

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PROACTION - Mission & Overview

Ever wonder how it is that some companies consistently outperform their competitors year after year, decade after decade – regardless of almost anything that happens?

These are Best Practice companies – their “Secret” is that they think, be, do, and act differently.

PROACTION’s mission is to provide support that enables our clients to move steadily and powerfully toward true Best Practices – sustained high performance over time. Best Practice companies are strong, highly capable in 4 Essential Factors:

1. Effective Enterprise Systems & Processes
2. Continuous Improvement Processes
3. Education and Training
4. Effective Leadership & Culture

We provide specific assistance to enhance your capabilities in all four Essential Factors.

Our objective is to be a “portal” – a single-source point where you can learn about Best Practices, find suitable materials for your efforts and projects, and engage senior level expertise in specific areas to support and enable your team to grow, become more successful, and power your Best Practice / high performance growth.

PROACTION provides a full range of services and resources in support of Best Practices, including:

Free Best Practice White Papers and articles – learn about leading edge, yet proven methods in a variety of areas.

Featured Best Practices – Sales Management – almost everyone will benefit from improved sales performance – learn how here.

Free Newsletters – subscribe to our free Best Practice newsletter – twice a month; solid information, insight, wisdom – minimum Inbox clutter. Also, review the Newsletter Archive.

Best Practice Publications & Courses – browse our e-store for high value, low cost books, booklets, presentations and other materials – use to educate, train your team.

Best Practice Services – Our professional services and projects are geared around the coaching and facilitation model. The core Best Practice is that of process ownership by those who actually DO the work. All of our services support ownership by your team members.