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NZ Baldrige Award Winning Contribution from "BMS" Business Management SystemComputer World

excerpted from submission

note 'BMS' is the client's name for its IPPreserver® implementation

"Frankly we cannot see how we would ever be as good without it."

Peter Kerridge - CEO Kerridge & Partners

Kerridge & Partners (K&P) consults in ‘leadership’ and offers executive search and coaching solutions to leading organisations in all sectors of the economy. Our executive search service is designed for organisations looking for ‘hard to find’ senior executives from either the New Zealand or international talent pool. Our coaching service is focused on one-on-one interactions with primarily CEOs wishing to improve their leadership.
During 2006, K&P was the first executive search/ leadership consultancy organisation in the world to be recognised with a Baldrige Criteria based National Business Excellence Award; reflecting a business philosophy that has put the creation of sustainable systems and people; the infrastructure of growth, ahead of short term gain. K&P were recognised for this again during 2007 with an unprecedented second award.
In both successes ‘ process strength’ was cited as a key contributor to K&P performance in this very ‘people business’ and the Business Management System solution (that we are seeking to acknowledge through this case study), was cited in both of those award winning feedback reports as a major contributor to that process strength and to K&P’s outstanding performance.
Any technology solution needed to provide for:
1: a specific kind of collaboration: continuous process improvement;
2: a specific kind of content management: just the critical process steps and the critical knowledge that allowed those critical process steps to be performed by anyone to the highest level and;
3: A specific kind of document management: instant access to any tool or document that facilitated the next step in the process.

key drivers that IPPreserver® solution was envisaged to address were:

Productivity Increase – less time wasted waiting for things to happen because now anyone can follow a standard procedure or look up “how to” for themselves and get on with the delivery.
RESULT:
Our productivity per consultant is 250% of what it was and the corresponding increased revenue per consultant has provided the funding for increased capacity and new service offering development from a continuously improving bottom line.Productivity Graph

The cycle time for inducting and training new researchers has reduced from 12 weeks to less than 4 weeks, with better on the job support to ensure higher performance, quicker.

Training Cycle Time Graph

Employee Engagement - contributing to the BMS is not seen as a “chore and a bore” but rather as a vehicle for contributing to the success of K&P. RESULT: The interface is used by everyone in the business who utilise its “my BMS” ‘favourites’ area to create individual and role- specific favourite ‘one click’ links to the processes they use most often. Partners, directors and employees alike update policy, process and procedures with improvements regularly and spontaneously. Update also occurs formally upon completion of TurboSigma® process improvement exercises. Team members have commented they, “could not now imagine working anywhere without the BMS – anything else would seem so ‘average’!”

Competitive Advantage – RESULT: a number of major assignments have been won for K&P by demonstrating its BMS to clients. It has helped K&P forge a reputation as being one of the best Executive Search & Coaching Firms in the World, celebrated in the global industry media, and in Business Excellence circles.

Capacity increase – more work being able to be carried out by the research team allowing consultants to be able to be engaged with more assignments concurrently.
RESULT:Ratios Graph

Performance and service delivery consistency – more assignments being completed in less time to a consistently higher standard irrespective of consultant or support individuals.
RESULT: Since implementation our levels of repeat business have increased from 30% to 80% with clients experiencing and coming back for the consistency of delivery that has characterised our performance. ( Notably even our most experienced personnel now use the BMS to assist their performance because experience has taught them that it helps even our top performers top perform! )

"In fact when the consultants’ PA and the Administration Manager both left the organisation in the same week; during a period when revenues were up 70% on the same time in the previous year, two ‘temps’ were brought in. Within hours of their arrival they were performing the full functions of the vacant roles causing the consultants to reflect that they hadn’t noticed that the other two staff members, previously viewed as critical personnel, had left in terms of performance and delivery. "

Shareholder Value - RESULT: IPPreserver® has allowed us to shave $120,000 per annum off our operating cost in comparison to the industry norm and our ‘best competitor’.
Our competitors still spend 3 months training their researchers before they are productive. IPPreserver® has allowed us to cut our training time down to less than four weeks and the situation for new personnel is better! Our new personnel are continuously supported by “know-how management” and a mentoring environment. This represents a saving in the past year of more than $24,000. Our productivity per consultant is 250% of what it was.

The BMS has anchored incremental and breakthrough improvements in one central repository of know how. It has achieved in one dynamic on-line interface the ‘holy grail’ of business knowledge management; ‘know how management’, securing our organisation’s intellectual property and safeguarding our share value.

Peter Kerridge - CEO Kerridge & Partners