BPIR Best Practice Newsletter - No. 5  2007

Welcome! In this issue: The latest Management Brief; "IT Outsourcing", case studies on cashflow cycle improvement, developing effective action plans, and employing business excellence practices, and our current research topics. You can also find out below about the latest best practice events.

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1. Forthcoming Events

An upcoming conferences that BPIR is supporting and presenting:

International Benchmarking Conference, 5th and 6th December 2007, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. www.bestpracticeconference.com. This event is being organised by the Dubai Quality Group (http://www.dqg.org) and the Global Benchmarking Network (http://www.globalbenchmarking.org). There will be presentations from some of the world's best business speakers and scholars in the field of benchmarking and organizations that have excelled at applying best practices will share their success stories.
** For more events go to BPIR's event calendar.

2. Management Brief - IT Outsourcing

Extracts from the summary in our Best Practice BPIR Management Brief - "IT Outsourcing" Read the full report now

"New technologies and the availability of worldwide broadband networks have enabled organisations to compete on a playing field that is both level and global. Intellectual capital can now be delivered almost anywhere in the world, at any time. Virtual organisations have become a reality and have enabled the creation of powerful strategic advantages. With IT outsourcing opportunities—and in particular international outsourcing—has come the need to provide robust security for critical information. The continual monitoring of an organisation’s information security is a prime responsibility of its owners. This cannot be passed over to a third-party organisation.

As IT outsourcing environments become more complex and crucial to national daily life, governments have introduced new regulations to cover electronic records and signatures, as well as safeguards for ensuring the confidentiality and integrity of customer information. When selecting an outsourcing partner, there are a number of key factors to consider, including the provider’s capabilities and quality of service, pricing, security policies, financial strength and business stability, reputation, branding and references, regulatory and compliance history, and geographic location. There are a large number of possible variations associated with the levels and locality of IT outsourcing arrangements. However, whatever form is chosen, outsourcing has dramatically changed the nature of IT work and its impacts upon IT workers.

A Service Level Agreement (SLA) forms a central element associated with the ongoing management of outsourcing engagements. A well-designed SLA correctly defines expectations for both the client and supplier. Similarly, a SLA provides guidelines for accurately measuring anticipated performance objectives. In addition, the ongoing review of the SLA from year to year and the thinking behind it, are important factors. A review of the SLA should involve both:

• Strategic analysis: Questioning whether IT outsourcing arrangements remain valid, and
• Tactical analysis: Envisaging an ideal IT outsourcing arrangement for the organisation, and how this might develop over a given renewal term......." read more..

To read past issues of the BPIR Management Brief please visit the home page.

Are your supplier partnerships high-performing? Take our High Performing Partnerships self-assessment (see category 6 of our assessments collection)

3. Case Study extracts

Here are a few extracts from content we've added recently, based on topics you requested (if you try to read these and find you've forgotten your password find it here )

Benchmarking the Cashflow Cycle
A large international semiconductor device manufacturer benchmarked its C2C performance (the cash-to-cash metric for managing the cash flow cycle: accounts payable to inventory to accounts receivable).
Because lower C2C (The cash-to-cash metric for managing the cash flow cycle: accounts payable to inventory to accounts receivable) results are indicative of more efficient cash flow management the cash to cash conversion cycle for "Organisation X" was analysed using historic financial records and then compared with industry benchmarks. These studies revealed that the industry leader's inventory was lower than Organisation X by 11.2 days, accounts receivable was 9.9 days less, and accounts payable was 155.3 days longer, giving an overall C2C advantage of 176.4 days. Hence it could be determined that Organisation X was probably holding inventory too long, collection of receivables could be improved, and accounts payables to suppliers could be lengthened considerably. By exploring various actions that could adjust its C2C relative to the better performers in the industry the organisation had the potential to save very large amounts of cash.........read this case study

Action Plans effective way to change workplace culture
Effective action planning processes were developed at Addenbrooke's Hospital, UK when practitioners and healthcare team members collaborated in the collection and analysis of data concerning patient experiences, workplace culture, practitioner effectiveness, and the use of evidence in practice. The following tools were developed:
1.) A key attribute framework for successful action planning i.e.
- Issues that can be addressed through action
- Collaboration/involvement of all stakeholders
- Shared ownership of the action plan by stakeholders
- Identification of Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bounded, Energising and Recorded (SMARTER), shared goals
- Individual responsibilities allotted for specific actions/co-ordination
- Implementation of the planned actions
- Ongoing evaluation of the action plan
- Documentation/audit trail of the complete action planning process.
2.) A self assessment tool for action planning. It was found that action planning when used properly was an effective tool for changing workplace culture.........read this case study

Business excellence practices recognised by awards
This snippet and associated article describe business excellence achievements by Saint-Gobain Glass UK.
The plant won the 2005 Deloitte Factory of Year, Best Process Plant, and Regional Award Yorkshire and Humber. The reasons for the plant's exemplary performance included:
- Use of cross functional teams
- High quality training
- Focus on people and bonus schemes leading to the achievement of Investors in People status
- High safety consciousness
- Emphasis on customer service e.g. KPIs related to both despatch from site and delivery on time
- Implementation of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM). Regular planned maintenance activities accounted for 34% of maintenance spend and condition monitoring was used extensively. Anyone in the plant could use the system to request maintenance work. 5S methodologies were used in the workshop, glass-packing area and on the float line.
- Emissions were less than 900mg, against the UK standard of 2,300mg.........read this case study

4. BPIR News

Career opportunities at BPIR.com Limited - We are looking for some special people.
Essential among the qualities being sought are a passion for business excellence/business improvement and excellent communication skills. We are looking to fill positions in the areas of website development (with expertise in PHP, ASP, AJAX, and Joomla), customer relationship building and sales, and content management. Candidates should be prepared to relocate to New Zealand (Palmerston North) and show a proven track record of accomplishment. Send your CV to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and explain how you could add value to BPIR.com Ltd.

PhD opportunities in best practice research and business excellence. For more information contact Dr Nigel Grigg, COER, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or visit www.coer.org.nz. The fees for domestic and international students are (NZ$3,250 - NZ$4,000) making PhD study at Massey University a very attractive option. You need to be able study full-time for 3 years to be accepted on a PhD programme with COER (in exceptional situations we accept part-time students if the research project is 100% aligned to the student's job).

Case Study Categorisation Updated - We have just completed a review of how our 1000's of best practice case studies are linked to the criteria of business excellence models on the site. Why not make time to have a look to see how much easier it now is to find relevent information by searching via our best practice database- in which members can use criteria from the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, EFQM Excellence Model, Singapore Quality Award Model, or the BPIR's own process-based model to find information.

5. Topics in the next issue

Recent polls of member requests helped us choose the following topics for research:

Don't forget to submit your issues every month!

For a reminder of how this works click here.

6. Results for the previous Research Request focus

New activities, case studies, research studies, and expert opinion articles have been added to the BPIR databases on the following topics among many others:

• Best Practice Benchmarking
• Designing Action Plans (formats/templates/)
• Business Excellence Achievements
• Stakeholder Type Analysis

Click here to read case studies, research studies, and expert opinion on these and other closely related topics - look for the icons:

7. Recap and feedback

Remember to check out the website to view the rest of our research for the past month. We hope you find it valuable and always welcome your feedback, so if you have time, please email any comments about our services to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , or simply fill in and submit our 30 second survey found under "Newsletters-subscribe".

Regards,
Steve Welch
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Managing Director
BPIR.com Ltd
Business Performance Improvement Resource (http://www.bpir.com/)
Centre for Organisational Excellence Research
Tel +64 21 371 249
Fax Work +64 6 354 3336
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