Category Archives: Best Practices

The Truth About Six Sigma (Part I): Bake it into your Operation!

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

Where was I? Oh, now I remember! All the talk about Six Sigma… it’s the latest thing, it’s just a bunch of old techniques, it can perform miracles, it can do a lot of damage if you’re not careful. There’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Best Practices, Decision Making, Learning and Development | Tagged Improve, Measure, Metrics, Projects, Quality, Quantify, Six Sigma, transform | Leave a comment

A Word To The Wise: Talk Isn’t Cheap!

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

When you plan to outsource your services, you must balance many competing needs. You need the best services at the best prices, and vendors need the best profits for their investors. You can leverage the lower cost of an offshore or offsite … Continue reading →

Posted in Best Practices, Common Sense Contracting, Decision Making, Delivering Services, Unique Ideas | Tagged change, Improve, outsource, Quality, Quantify, Staffing | Leave a comment

Outsourcing Agreements: Price Is Just An Outcome

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

If this is your first outsourcing agreement, you’re under a lot of pressure to get it right the first time. Whether you work in the Procurement department or you manage the Business unit, you need to convert the complex parameters … Continue reading →

Posted in Best Practices, Common Sense Contracting, Decision Making, Delivering Services, Unique Ideas | Tagged Build vs. Buy, change, Improve, Measure, outsource, Performance, Price, Quality, Quantify | Leave a comment

Good News, We Have A Customer Complaint!

Posted on May 3, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

We’ve all had it hammered into us… improve services, eliminate complaints, make the customer happy. We all want to provide a service that makes our clients happy, and never receives a client complaint. If customer satisfaction has been your big … Continue reading →

Posted in Best Practices, Decision Making, Delivering Services, Improvement, Continuous or Not, Unique Ideas | Tagged complaints, corporations, Improve, Measure, Metrics, Problem Resolution, Reporting, Satisfaction, Story Telling, Track | Leave a comment

Is Quality Control A Waste of Time?

Posted on April 28, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

If we roll back the clock just a bit, the support services provided by most large corporations lacked any formal quality control. You had people who were dedicated to performing a function, but there wasn’t formal training or process controls. … Continue reading →

Posted in Best Practices, Decision Making, Improvement, Continuous or Not, Learning and Development, Unique Ideas | Tagged change, Errors, Improve, Lean Sigma, Measure, Metrics, QC, Quality, Quantify, Reporting, Six Sigma, transform | 1 Comment

Outsourcing Analysis Part III: Building Your Toolkit

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

For the last two blogs we have been building a tool to help you evaluate your current sourcing decisions, in other words where your staff resides and how they are employed (employees, temps, outsourced, etc.) to perform your business functions. … Continue reading →

Posted in Best Practices, Common Sense Contracting, Decision Making, Delivering Services, Improvement, Continuous or Not, Uncategorized, Unique Ideas | Tagged Build vs. Buy, change, Hiring, Improve, Measure, outsource, Staffing, transform | Leave a comment

Outsourcing Analysis Part II: That’s My Core?

Posted on April 25, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

In our last Blog we talked about how we source for a function, which is to say the process of deciding (and executing) the “how and where” a function is performed. In the last few years the movement has been … Continue reading →

Posted in Best Practices, Common Sense Contracting, Decision Making, Delivering Services, Improvement, Continuous or Not, Uncategorized, Unique Ideas | Tagged Build vs. Buy, change, corporations, Hiring, Improve, Measure, outsource, Sourcing | 1 Comment

Outsourcing Analysis Part I: How Far Out Do You Outsource?

Posted on April 25, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

Everyone talks about Outsourcing, but much of the time the talk seems to treat all Outsourcing as the same, with teh assumption that all projects end up with everyone working in a call center in India. Outsourcing predates India and predates “offshoring”. In fact, on of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Best Practices, Common Sense Contracting, Decision Making, Delivering Services, Uncategorized, Unique Ideas | Tagged Build vs. Buy, change, outsource, Quantify, Reporting, Track, transform | Leave a comment

Grime and Punishment: Why Best Practices Matter (Part II)

Posted on April 21, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

Yesterday we looked at CLI’s (Central Line Infections), a type of infection that results from the use of a Central line, the needle and flexible tube used to insert an intravenous drip bag. CLI’s are extremely dangerous and expensive, infecting … Continue reading →

Posted in Best Practices, Decision Making, Delivering Services, Improvement, Continuous or Not, Learning and Development, Uncategorized | Tagged Best Practices, change, Healthcare, Hospitals, Improve, Measure, Metrics, Quantify, Reporting, Track | 2 Comments

Tail Of The Dancing Rat: Exposing Services to User Scrutiny

Posted on April 18, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

Metrics are all around us, all the time. In fact, some of them are pervasive we forget that they’re metrics. 20 or 30 years ago, if you were in the mood for something to eat you might go to your … Continue reading →

Posted in Best Practices, Decision Making, Delivering Services, Improvement, Continuous or Not, Unique Ideas | Tagged change, Improve, Measure, outsource, Reporting | Leave a comment