Customer relations, market focus, systems, processes, quality improvement, performance management, customer satisfaction, information analysis, role model leadership: these are all terms we have used in earlier articles in our efforts to communicate the importance of becoming a customer- and market-focused organization. How do they all tie together, and how do they relate as a whole to the title of our monthly column, The Service Edge?

In and of themselves, none of these strategies and tools is going to ensure a prosperous and long-lived organization, but together they form what has been termed the Business Excellence System. And at the heart of this system is the customer and the need to build an organization that is focused on customer satisfaction, if a business is going to maintain an edge over its competitors. Hence the name of our column.

Business Excellence System is one of a number of terms used by progressive organizations to describe a new way of managing their businesses. There has been a dramatic change in the way these businesses view themselves.

If you are a traditional service organization and I ask you to describe the framework of your business, what I expect I would hear are words like sales, marketing, operations, personnel, customer service, accounting, administration, etc.

If you are a retail organization and I asked the same question, I bet I would hear about the same with perhaps purchasing and inventory management thrown in. Add production and logistics if you are a manufacturing or distribution business.

However, ask any of the hundreds of companies that have adopted a Business Excellence System as a means of achieving greater customer retention, larger market share and improved profitability, and you will hear few of those words. What you will hear, when they describe the framework for their business, are terms like leadership systems, customer and market focus, human resource excellence, process management, information analysis, and others.

We've all seen the old organization charts that show companies broken down into connected boxes describing departments with a manager or vice president of each identified (conspicuous in its absence is any sign of the customer in these charts.) They have their purpose but they do nothing to suggest how the business is focused to achieve superior business results. Their greatest evil is to encourage employees of the company to view themselves as the organization's focus and not the customer, as it should and must be. Nor does this hierarchical organization structure do anything to encourage teamwork.

Companies of all sizes are realizing that they must be organized around business processes developed to meet customer requirements, not around functional departments. Organizations must be aligned and focused on results and not just activities.

The model below is what the Florida Sterling Council, an organization we have referred to in earlier articles that was created to promote business excellence through the principals of quality management, uses to describe the framework for achieving performance excellence.

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This model illustrates the criteria for performance excellence, with Customer- and Market-Focused Action Plans represented as an umbrella that covers the organization's entire work system.

The system is comprised of two core activities that produce Key Business Results:

1. The Driver Triad represented on the left by Leadership, Customer and Market Focus, and Strategic Planning.

2.

3. The Work Core represented by Human Resource Development and Process Management

The model also shows that Information & Analysis is the foundation for the entire management system.

While all this may look and sound exotic and complex, Sterling describes it more simply by saying that for an organization to be a high-performing one over the longer term, the following must occur:

§ The organization must first and foremost be customer- and market-focused

§ Leaders must set direction and expectations for the organization to meet customer and market requirements

§ Customer- and market-focus processes produce the information that leaders use to determine what current and potential customers want.

§ Strategic Planning and goal setting provide the vehicle for determining the short- and long-term strategies for success as well as communicating and aligning the work of the organization. Leaders use this information to set direction and goals, monitor progress, make resource decisions, and take corrective action when progress does not proceed according to plan.

§ People in the organization are responsible for doing the work. To achieve performance excellence, these individuals must possess the right skills and be allowed to work in an environment that promotes initiative and self-direction. The performance objectives of all people must be aligned with those of the organization as a whole.

§ The work processes provide the structure for continuous learning and improvement to optimize performance.

§ Information and Analysis must serve as the "brain centers" of the management system and are the platform on which the entire fact-based management system operates.

Business results are also viewed in a non-traditional way. They will reflect the organization's actual performance in a number of areas, not just financially. These include customer satisfaction, financial and market performance, human resource performance, supplier performance and internal operating effectiveness.

Interested in finding how your business measures up? Next month we will introduce you to the specific characteristics that identify a high-performing organization, and how you go about acquiring them.

Our intent in introducing our readers to this new business model is to show you how some of the most successful companies in Southwest Florida, indeed in all America, are beginning to re-create the way they do business for optimum performance. We believe there is something in this of value and usefulness to businesses of all sizes and types.

BPM International is local consulting firm that specializes in business performance excellence including quality management, customer satisfaction and process engineering.