Business Designing - Implementing and Improving Processes

Question: Discuss about the Business Designing, Implementing and Improving Processes. Answer: Introduction Benchmarking improvises the business performance by applying as well as recognizing best demonstrated practices to sales and operations (Singh, Grover and Singh 2015). On the other side, Lean Six Sigma is the new and innovative methodology for business improvement combining both of the Six Sigma as well as lean methodologies (Singh et al. 2015). In this regard, this study aims on demonstrating the way through which both Lean Six Sigma and Benchmarking can be utilized by the companies for facilitating change in their business operations for sustaining as well as enhancing their competitive advantage. Therefore, this study also demonstrates the application of the Benchmarking and Lean Six Sigma in changing the business processes. On the other hand, this study also focuses on how the companies actually utilized one or both for improving their processes. In addition, the process of applying Lean Six Sigma and Benchmarking to the popular organizations like Amazon for identifying the impro vements on the business process change is also aimed to be portrayed in this essay. Benchmarking and Lean Six Sigma According to Chen et al. (2014), Benchmarking is the process with the help of which a particular organization measures its practices, services as well as products against its strongest competitors or those organizations identified as the leaders in the industry. It is one of the best tools for the managers in order to determine whether the organization is performing specific activities as well as functions efficiently, whether its costs are in line with the rivals and whether its internal activities and the processes of business require improvement (Hilton and Sohal 2012). It focuses on the organization-to-organization comparisons of how well fundamental processes and functions are performed (Baker et al. 2012). It enables the managers of the organizations for determining what the best practice is for prioritizing, for enhancing performance related to the expectations of customer and leapfrogging the traditional change cycle. The major goal of benchma rking is for understanding and evaluating the current position of an organization or business along with the best practice and for identifying areas and means of improving performance. As opined by Van Meensel and Lauwers (2015), Lean Six sigma is the methodology that relies on the collaborative effort of put on the team for improving performance by removing waste systematically, combining lean enterprise or lean manufacturing and Sig Sigma for eliminating eight kinds of waste. These eight kinds of wastes are skills, defects, over processing, over production, waiting, motion, inventory and transportation (Fadly Habidin and Mohd Yusof 2013). The Lean Six Sigma is the combination of the two potential methods of process improvement such as Lean and Six Sigma (Hilton and Sohal 2012). The combination of these two methods provides the improvement team of a business organization a comprehensive tool set for increasing the effectiveness as well as speed of any process within the enterprise resulting in enhanced revenue, minimized costs and improvised collaboration. Application of Bench Marking and Lean Six Sigma on business process change In todays world, benchmarking process has become very essential in contemporary business for all kinds of organizations (Thakkar et al. 2016). In case of the change in business processes of the enterprises, benchmarking involves looking outward in terms of examining how others achieve their levels of performance as well as for understanding the processes they actually utilize. Thus, benchmarking, in this way helps in explaining the processes behind the outstanding performance (Rolstadas 2012). In order to maintain the business process changes; benchmarking involves mainly four major principles. Benchmarking understands in details the existing processes of the business. On the other hand, it also analyzes the business processes of the other organizations. Apart from that, it compares own business performance with that of another businesses analyzed. Besides that, it also implements the steps those are essentia l for closing the gap of performance (Furterer 2016). The Benchmarking tool should not be considered as one-off exercise. Thus, it must become the integral component of an ongoing process of improvement of the business organizations by making changes in the business operations. Lean Six Sigma is also playing a pivotal role in order to manage the business process changes in todays modern business world. It is a new methodology for improving the business processes by encountering effective changes within the operations as well as it is the combination of both the six sigma as well as the lean methodologies (Fadly Habidin and Mohd Yusof 2013). In order to achieve the business changes, lean six sigma mainly eliminates waste from the processes as well as enhance the speed of the process by aiming on what the consumers or the customer actually consider value as well as working back from that (Van Meensel and Lauwers 2015). On the other hand, by adopting the lean six sigma methodology within the businesses to make changes in the processes can help the enterprises for being capable of delivering services and goods in a cost effective manner with the minimum amount of waste. Utilization of one or both of strategies for improving the business processes Both the lean six sigma as well as benchmarking methodologies play important role to improve the business processes. Lean Six Sigma and Benchmarking methodologies are very essential for the businesses for implementing effective changes over the business activities in terms of accomplishing the goal of improvement business performance (Orme et al. 2013). It can easily be understood by considering the business scenario of Amazon. Amazon is a renowned Ecommerce business organization based in America (Amazon 2017). By adopting the benchmarking methodology, Amazon has successfully improved the business performance as well as applied the best demonstrated practices to the business activities of the organization as well as sales operations (Hilton and Sohal 2012). Managers or the employees in the management level in the organizations like Amazon, can compare the performance of their products or processes external ly with those of rivals as well as best-in-class organizations and with the other activities internally within their own enterprises that perform similar activities. On the other side, in case of the lean six sigma methodology, businesses can improve their performances by simply removing the waste from their conventional business operations as well as can be able to enhance the speed of the business process by focusing on the customer requirement in order to gain proper customer responsiveness (Hilton and Sohal 2012). Organizations like Amazon simply utilize this particular business methodology for the integration as well as the standardization of the business processes. By adopting this methodology, Amazon has been able to deliver the services as well as their goods with the minimum amount of waste as well as in a cost effective way. Application of Benchmarking as well as Lean Six Sigma to Amazon Both the Lean Six Sigma as well as Benchmarking methodologies are the major techniques for achieving continuous improvement in the business organization (Singh, Grover and Singh 2015). Being a renowned cloud computing as well as E-commerce organization, Amazon utilize the Lean Six Sigma and Benchmarking methods in order to identify and evaluate the improvements in the change in business processes (Amazon 2017). Therefore, Amazon utilizes the benchmarking methodology as the continuous improvement tool for improving their core competencies. It drives the basic business processes that permit an organization for differentiating itself from its competitors (Antony 2014). The improved business process may have an influence by lowering costs, enhancing revenue, giving the improvised service to a customer, improvising the quality of the products and also improving the regulatory compliances. Amazon follows the best practices be nchmarking methodologies as it focuses on finding the unarguable leaders in the processes or the business operations which are being benchmarked. On the other hand, Lean Six Sigma possesses several critical success factors for the organizations for obtaining business process change improvements such as leadership commitment, focused resources, common tools and language, disciplined project approach and bottom-line business measures (Fadly Habidin and Mohd Yusof 2013). Therefore, Amazon is simply focusing on the lean six sigma methodologies due to achieve these success factors for improving the business process changes within the organization (Amazon 2017). Amazon is more focusing on implementing this authentic analytical method for enabling this enterprise for improving drastically their profitability by monitoring and designing everyday business activities. Conclusion The entire analysis made in this study has successfully evaluated the functionality as well as applications of the both the benchmarking and Lean Six Sigma methodologies for the organization who are trying to acquire on the continuous business change improvements. On the other hand, this study has also established another significant fact in the context of continuous business improvements that the organizations can utilize both the Lean Six Sigma and Benchmarking strategies. This is simply because of the fact that both the strategies help the companies for improving their conventional business operations in order to bring more innovations as well as authenticity to seek the attention of their consumers in terms of gaining huge competitive advantage. References Amazon, 2017.Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs more. [online] Amazon.com. Available at: https://www.amazon.com/ [Accessed 2 Jan. 2017]. Antony, J., 2014. 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