Operational excellence best practices

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What is operational excellence?

  • Business strategy that produces measurable results based on workflow-based models and key performance indicators.

  • Good operational excellence helps provide lower risk and costs and higher revenue.

  • Uses analytics and insights on a wide range of metrics to gain higher quality control on projects.


Pursue an asymmetric risk profile

Asymmetric risk profile

Opportunity costs and scaling

  • People involved in strategy should not be doing operations all the time

  • Delegate aggressively and focus on where your time is comparatively more valuable

  • Use systems to automate processes and expand any human-based workflows

Delegating can save you from incurring significant cost


Successful businesses have a strong brand

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Set yourself up for success


Branding and design basics

Messaging

  • Brand ambiance

  • Understand psychology of customers

  • Simple and concise

Graphics and media

  • Minimalist and variations

  • Short duration

  • Sophisticated regardless of idea

Typography

  • Serif versus Sans Serif

  • Matches brand tone

  • Easy to read

Color palette

  • Low quantity of colors

  • Inspires “vibes” that customer wants

  • Heavily associated with brand 

Use branding consistency across advertising, websites and media


What is your current state?

  • Do you know how many projects you are working on?

  • Do you have a measurable way of tracking progress?

  • Do you review your key performance indicators and look for trends and improvement opportunities?

Put systems in place to minimize the risk of business process failure 


Organization and tracking systems

Data-driven

  • Automated

  • Reportable

  • Exportable

Program analysis

  • Forecasting

  • Development decisions

  • Growth tracking

Measurability

  • Queriability

  • Customizable metrics and KPIs

  • Organization of projects

Quality control

  • Operational excellence

  • Consistency in service

  • Workflow-based systems

Gain dramatically higher quality on all of your projects


Product development and pivoting

Agile
  • Create a minimum viable product of your product as quickly as possible and iterate to continuously improve.

  • It is possible that you may pivot during the iterative product development process.

  • Develop a pricing model that ideally has multiple streams of revenue and high margins.


Hierarchy of operational excellence

Opex hierarchy

Cybersecurity, public wifi and VPNs

  • Never enter passwords, access sensitive websites or enter payment data over a public network (e.g. airport, cafe, etc.) or semi-public network (co-working spaces, universities, etc.) as these are vulnerable to information monitoring by malicious cybersecurity actors.

  • Use a virtual public network (“VPN”) such as nordvpn.com to secure data when working on public networks.

See our article on cybersecurity best practices for more on this.


Psychological considerations

  • It is normal to feel pessimistic.  Developing and running any business can be stressful and entail many ups and downs.

  • Rejection is generally very high for a business and staying optimistic despite constant criticism and rejection is crucial.

  • Mistakes and setbacks are common and part of the development process.

  • Practice self-care to minimize detrimental psychological effects from setbacks, rejection, failure, mistakes and other adversity in business.

Burnout is real and can affect your business and health


What can you delegate right now?

  • Send us any project you can think of 24/7

  • We quote the project or start immediately if simple enough and <1 hour

  • We complete your project

Never miss another deadline, solve all your problems


Ways businesses have used Easie to improve operational excellence 

Content creation

  • Graphics and illustration

  • PowerPoints and slide decks

  • Materials design

Development

  • Web and application development

  • Program development

  • Feasibility analysis

Facilitation projects

  • Scheduling, calls and travel

  • Procurement and research

  • Miscellaneous support tasks

Support

  • Technical writing and transcription

  • Research and analysis

  • Logistics and resource management

Easie can help you be operationally excellent.

Schedule your free 15-minute consultation

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Key factors for business success

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