MENU Win via Cross-Functional Management
Let’s face it: Every major transformation initiative (digitalization, AI, etc.) and every core value chain (e.g. order-to-cash) requires cross-functional collaboration.
Unfortunately, traditional management practices and structures undermine synergy between departments in most organizations. Breaking through functional silos is the best way to assure your investment in new strategies and/or new technologies yields long-term competitive advantage.
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Frustrated by Your Organizations Silos and Fiefdoms?
Achieving and sustaining operational excellence is an incredibly difficult journey. There are so many barriers to success but none more difficult than the walls of your organization. Orion has helped hundreds of clients transform the way they work. We can help you bust through these silos and achieve breakthrough results. Look to Orion to help you:
- Identify, document and align your enterprise process model
- Establish cross-functional process governance, including the introduction of Process Owners and Process Managers
- Define metrics that focus on customer outcomes rather than local productivity
- Realign resources to maximize efficiency and customer impact
- Establish a customer-focused, collaborative work culture
- Achieve breakthrough performance across your entire organization
The Wisdom of Orion:
Perspectives from Orion’s Founder and Partners
The Job of Management
Holistic Approach
Cross-Functional Costs
Change Management
What Is a Process-Oriented Organization and How Can Cross-Functional Management Benefit You?
A process-oriented organization is structured and managed to optimize cross-functional value creation for the customer (or citizen, member or patient) and other stakeholders. Though we frequently refer to creating cross-functional alignment as “silo-busting,” being process-oriented does not mean eliminating departmental management or turning the organization on its side.
The key is to find ways to reduce friction so that core, cross-functional value chains (e.g. order-to-cash, demand creation, material-to-product) deliver the most benefit for the least amount of cost.
The Business Benefits of Cross-Functional Management
Cross-functional management is the key to unleashing your organization’s potential. It is not just about operational performance. It’s true that better alignment between departments will:
- Reduce cycle/service times
- Increase productivity
- Reduce costs
- Improve quality
- Maximize customer satisfaction
But, optimizing cross-functional performance also creates strategic advantages. Operational excellence that is built into your management model is not easy to replicate. In addition, rethinking core processes often creates new capabilities or opportunities to serve new markets. The process-oriented organization is not just about optimizing business results today; it’s about growing your business tomorrow.
Transform the Way You Do Business
If you’re looking to implement positive change but don’t know where to start, contact our team for a free consultation today.
Services: How Orion’s BPM Consultants Can Help
We don’t have a silver bullet. Orion’s experts will work with your leaders to craft the right combination of governance, metrics and strategic focus actions to meet the unique needs of your organization. Our flow of services may include:
Step 1: Enterprise Process Blueprint
Your organization is comprised of hundreds, if not thousands, of processes. Many are interdependent when it comes to delivering value for your stakeholders. An enterprise process blueprint identifies an organization’s core process flows and demonstrates how the different types of processes (value-creating, support, asset-creating, management) fit together. It is the first step in establishing organization-wide business process governance. Orion will work with your executives and operational leaders to develop a model that is unique to your enterprise.
Click here for more information on Orion’s approach to enterprise process design.
Step 2: Organization Design and Core Process Governance
There is no one-size-fits-all structure for process-focused organizations. Every organization has unique functional strengths and process requirements that are essential to customer satisfaction. Finding the right balance of authority, accountability, structure and performance metrics is as much art as science. Orion has helped public-and private-sector organizations develop process-based organization designs since the late 1990s.
Step 3: Business Process Redesign
Whether you call it reengineering, transformation or creative destruction, optimizing enterprise-wide performance requires the rethinking and redesign of the value-creating processes that cross your organizational silos. Automation efforts that introduce change on a function-by-function basis sub-optimize efficiency and value creation. Orion has long been recognized as a leader in process documentation, streamlining and innovation.
More than just technical experts, our consultants utilize a facilitative approach that not only delivers innovative process designs but also yields internal business process expertise. Indeed, the in-house experts we train enable BPM self-sufficiency and often become the future leaders of your organization. Partnering with Orion can positively impact your organization for decades.
Click here for more information on Orion’s approach to process improvement and transformation.
Step 4: Continuous Improvement Culture
Culture eats strategy, methodology, and technology for breakfast. In order for your organization to deliver outstanding experiences to customers and other stakeholders, team members throughout your organization must be engaged, motivated and have a clear sense of how their job impacts business outcomes. Orion will work with your leaders and Human Resources department to rethink the entire employee lifecycle and management practices that impact attitudes and behaviors.
Step 5: Knowledge Retention/Management
Every major process requires “process wisdom”: Nuances, exceptions and subtleties that enable experienced team members to avoid mistakes and/or deliver service that is above and beyond customer expectations. This wisdom is generally learned on the job and rarely passed on from generation to generation. Orion can help you make business process wisdom a sustainable asset that assures higher levels of performance, less disruption from turnover, and a culture of knowledge-sharing.
Click here for more information on Orion’s approach to knowledge retention and management.
Choose whichever services make the most sense for your organization at this point in the journey. Think of this as a menu of possibilities, not a one-size-fits-all prescription.
What others say about us
You were a pleasure to work with. We enjoy working with consultants that are passionate about their business, care about us and our people, and help us make our company better.
The examples, the stories, the interactions…it was all relatable. It was eye-opening to see things unfold and you NOW know why things happened or continue to happen.
Orion made a tremendous difference propelling our organization forward. We are consistently top performers in industry benchmarking. This is why I tell peers, if you really want to do it right you need to work with Orion…
Working with Orion was the highlight of my career. In addition to the results we created together for the organization, we propelled people forward. People who never saw themselves beyond middle management roles are now successful directors.
Ready to Transform the Way You Do Business?
Our team’s experience in process mapping has helped hundreds of businesses achieve their goals by unlocking hidden value and driving growth. Get in touch with us today to start the conversation.
There Are Dozens of Companies That Do This.
Why Should I Choose Orion?
Orion is a true pioneer in cross-functional business process management. In the mid-1990s, we helped companies like PacBell and Ameritech rethink organizational structures, establish core process governance and deploy Process Owners and Process Managers. Here are a few of Orion’s client successes:
Michigan Office of Retirement Services (ORS)
At the turn-of-the-century, this state agency was saddled with 1970s information technology that was making effective customer (member) service nearly impossible. Rather than simply buy a new IT solution, ORS’ leadership launched a broad transformation that revamped the strategic plan, enterprise process blueprint, organizational structures, and all end-to-end business processes. Their holistic investment paid dramatic dividends. Prior to implementing new technology, ORS was able to increase capacity by 30%. Organizational improvement continued to improve steadily. ORS went from poor performer to best-in-class performer in terms of administrative cost member, members served per FTE and the cost of paying pensions (it’s core purpose). For more than 17 years, ORS’ success has been attributed to its process governance approach.
Click here to learn more about this amazing success story.
Ameritech
In the 1990s, this Baby Bell was struggling with high levels of customer dissatisfaction and inconsistent levels of efficiency. The organization had 35,000 employees and several functional silos that fragmented both service delivery and cost accounting. Orion designed a process governance structure that managed five major core process flows. Service levels, cost metrics and profitability improved dramatically.
Air Products and Chemicals
This industrial corporation was touted by Harvard Business Review and reengineering guru Michael Hammer as one of the great process-oriented management success stories of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Orion provided training and coaching to the internal resources at Air Products who developed their successful model and later spread process management methodologies to facilities worldwide.
Aventis Pasteur
Orion consulted with the senior management team regarding a proposed process-oriented organization structure and the cultural barriers to the adoption of that structure. Removing the identified barriers enabled a successful implementation.
Ohio Public Employees Retirement System (Ohio PERS)
Like the Michigan ORS, Ohio PERS needed to redesign its end-to-end business processes ahead of a major technology upgrade. Unlike ORS, Ohio PERS was starting from a position of strong performance. Their redesign delivered similar results (e.g. 40% increase in capacity) but required a less dramatic shift in organization design. Ohio PERS created the role of Process Officer and a team that evaluates all cross-functional process or technology improvement opportunities.
I was initially skeptical…how can someone come in who didn’t understand our business help us to improve our business…that was alleviated after our first session. Any skepticism in the process was taken away after our first session.
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