CRE8 Center For Realizing Excellence

Five Step Approach to Improve Personal Productivity. 1. Eliminate what is unnecessary.  Each month focus on one expense and identify if it can be reduced by other vendors, re-negotiation with the current vendor, or stopping the service (do you really need it?). Example expenses include insurance, entertainment, cell phone, internet, bank fees, and computer apps.  2. Do yourself a favor, when driving or walking, turn your phone to do not disturb, and wait to text until you are in a safe space, not in the middle of the street. The goal? Not to get into an accident, get hurt, or hurt others.  3. Decrease friction. In our personnel relationships, it is common to experience or cause friction. Avoid complaints by helping out with shopping, cleaning, chores, and the kid’s homework. Don’t use the excuse that you are too tired. Own the task. Have fun. The goodwill built will benefit you at a later time. 4. Dramatic leaps. Are you happy with your work and relationships...

Public Housing Authority Process Improvement Checklist. - Develop a high-level baseline of each major.     work area.  - Identify goals, issues, and opportunities.  - Determine the scope and level of redesign    required.  - Develop baseline (current state) step-by-step   process blueprints. - Identify detailed process issues and goals.  - Develop a first level redesign to examine   how procedural (non-technology) changes       will improve processes.  - Develop a second level redesign to   determine how better use of existing   (owned) technologies can provide additional    improvement.  - As required, identify how advanced    technologies can further improve the    process.  - Gain agreement to the level and scope of the   redesign.  - Develop a change action plan to guide and    measure changes. For additional ideas regardin...

Attend a free online workshop in June that will discus how to reduce operating costs and improve customer service for organizations in the Transportation Industry.  In thirty minutes, the workshop will discuss 30 ideas on how to: dramatically reduce costs through: -  a business-process-focused enterprise      technology plan, -  planning for cost-cutting technologies such     as digital workflow, robotic process     automation, and electronic content     management, and  -  developing requirements to hold vendors     accountable for results. create ongoing continuous improvement: - program and culture, - tasks to improve operations, and  - training program to teach employees how to    improve efficiency and service. To learn more and register for this free online event

What is ECM? ECM typically allows for the scan, electronic capture, recognition, auto-classification, index, storage, search, view, workflow, management, security, intergration to data systems, and retention/disposition of unstructured content (email, word-processing, spreadsheets, presentations, PDF, TIFF, voice, photos, video, sound, and other formats).  It also can include electronic forms and digital signatures.  If properly planned for ECM can provide organizational improvements from 20% to 5x in efficiency, quality, and service, and significantly reduce the risk associated with IG/records management.  Today, most organizations have 5 to 20 different ECM systems (email, email archive, collaboration, content management, shared drives, different data systems, records management, and paper).  If ECM is not planned for correctly, sprawl and increased risk to the organization will occur.  Unfortunately this is the case for most organizations....

Our studies find that email and shared drives can cost an organization: - valuable funds.  If employees spend 8% of their time sorting, viewing, duplicating, saving, deleting, and finding documents (and attachments) this can cost an organization with 1,000 employees 24 million dollars over 5 years,  and an organization with 10,000 employees 240 million dollars over 5 years. - customer service.   The time spend in above tasks wastes valuable customer service (internal and external) time. - efficiency . As email and shared drives lack integration to e-forms, e-signature, workflow, and data systems. - risk and liability .  Due to over or under retention/disposition of documents and content; and many organizations have not updated and/or are following their electronic records management program policies, procedures, and schedules.  Since 1995 , we at CRE8 Independent Consultants have assisted clients with assessment and improvement of email, share...

Why is Continuous Process Improvement Important? Many process improvement initiatives lack long term results. Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) focuses an ongoing “never-ending” effort to improve people, processes, and systems. Unlike methods like Re-engineering, CPI focuses on incremental improvements over time, where processes are constantly evaluated and improved versus a single large improvement event. CPI teaches organizations how to work  together from senior management to workers to identify how to improve the process instead of placing blame.  W. Edwards Deming , a pioneer of the field, saw CPI as part of the 'system' whereby feedback from the process and customer are constantly evaluated against organizational goal, and improvement is ongoing. Some CPI projects use a Kaizen event (improvement), which is a method made famous by the book of Masaaki Imai “Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success.” Kaizen teaches people how to perform expe...