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Six Sigma Qualtec Press Releases
BPM FOR SIX SIGMA
July 3, 2003
e-Business News
Qualtec launches training program for process improvements on an enterprise-wide basis; unified approach to customer satisfaction
by Jim Ericson, Line56
Six Sigma Qualtec, a consultancy offering Six Sigma training to corporations, has expanded its education offerings to embrace business process management (BPM), an enterprise-wide and holistic approach to reaching desired business results. "You're allowing a much greater visibility inside organizations for everyone to see their impact on desired business results and critical success factors," says Lynn Monkelien, Six Sigma Qualtec program manager. This gives everyone a strategic focus on their impact on outcomes with optimizing customer experience and in achieving a business's higher aims, she says. "You're giving them direction."
Six Sigma Qualtec approaches BPM as cross-functional flows that start with a customer need and end with satisfaction of that need. The thinking is pragmatic, and looks at end-to-end transactions like order-to-cash. This involves identifying and defining key business processes and establishing effective metrics for evaluating success. The engagement begins at the CXO level, looking at business alignment through the executive dashboard and then helping executives understand what impacts metrics, what key processes are driving them and where a company currently stands. "It's definitely driven top-down which is generally not what we find when we deploy Six Sigma," Monkelian says, "Six Sigma tends to be deployed in the trenches with the engineers, it happens over in a corner. BPM allows that strategic focus." In practice, Monkelian is seeing Six Sigma projects assigned to close the gaps between the desired state and current performance, projects that may not all be deployed at the upper levels of the process. "They may be at the secondary or tertiary levels," she says. "We get measured on strategic metrics at the top levels on executive dashboards but we know where we're going and what we're doing to achieve that." Performance metrics look at customer satisfaction but also internal performance and business results like earnings per share. Some customers use peer competitor benchmarking with standards targets and goals, though this is not a service provided by Qualtec.
An endorsement came from packaging supplier Graphic Packaging Corporation, which supplies folding cartons to the food and beverage industry. Chris Maurer, Six Sigma director at Graphic Packaging said in a statement that process management with help from Qualtec resulted in a stronger project pool in both size and impact to his business. This delivered better results for customers, shareholders and employees. Qualtec's clientele has mostly come from the financial services sector but the company also works with utilities and manufacturing organizations.
Contact: Kurt Marttila
800-247-9871
kmarttila@ssqi.com
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