Small internal teams supported by one or two consultants achieve significant, financial improvements to business operations.

Benefits

The operational benefits of rapidchange are immediate and tangible. By removing bureaucracy and inefficient processes we create substantial and sustainable cost savings and provide more time for the workforce to devote to selling and delivering more work. We reduce production lead times and improve the quality and compliance of work.

The wider benefits accrue in the longer term:

• We impact the bottom line for management and working conditions for the workforce

• We develop motivated workers who feel respected and valued by their managers

• We remove inter-departmental barriers

• A culture of complaining and mistrust becomes one of ownership and loyalty, and staff develop an in-depth understanding of the business far beyond their own daily job

How rapidchange works

Every organisation has processes that are not as efficient as they could be and ways of working that, with small but significant changes, could produce substantially more than they do now. We bring together the authority of senior management and the expertise of front-line workers to create low-risk, short, sharp, rapidly delivered, change projects that do not fundamentally alter the way you do business, but simply take what you already have and make it more efficient.

The time, effort and complexity of change implementation increases exponentially with the size of the change initiative, but the benefit does not. rapidchange works because a series of small changes can produce big benefits with much less time, effort and trauma than traditional large-scale change programmes.

Design & Implementation

Design

We help the workforce identify the inefficiencies in their business and come up with creative, simple ways to improve them. Based on our principles of successful change, every change proposed must both be financially viable and measurable, and must also be compelling and attractive to the people who are being changed. To be open to change, people must believe that the status quo is ultimately detrimental to them and that a proposed change will improve their working lives.

Implementation

Senior management provide the authority and support, while the workforce provide their time and business expertise. We bring our knowledge of how to make change succeed and how to create, lead and motivate change project teams, to help the workforce to implement their changes.

Change must be robustly planned, structured and managed. Keeping each change small ensures that the levels of complexity and unpredictability are minimal but their impact is evident.

We coach, train, lead or support your staff in whatever way is needed to get the work done, and to ensure that the new way of working is adopted as quickly and successfully as possible.

To provide sustainability, and continued senior management support, financial benefits are tracked and reported.

Projects in 2004 / 2005

1)

A recent project with a US based oil major, time-boxed to take four months from project launch to completion, identified and implemented changes that will realise $400k per year cost saving and $2.6m per year extra revenue. This was achieved through:

• More efficient and accurate invoicing

• Streamlining a series of regular HR activities

• A series of improvements to the management of retail outlets

2)

A two month project in a UK regional utility is targeting savings of over £500,000 in the operational cost of running its utility network. Simple changes to the management of planned and reactive work, inter-departmental working practices, and stores and energy management will achieve these results.

3)