You’ve heard it from the shop floor to the front office: Reduce costs. Boost productivity. Increase the ROI. These are demands that infuse just about every decision, strategy, and process throughout an organization.

It’s a fact that the advent of Lean Manufacturing has altered the manufacturing arena; reducing waste throughout the operation is a critical metric that impacts the bottom line for many businesses. In addition, cutting non–value added time or steps, decreasing cycle times and increasing throughput play an important part in achieving measurable success. 

But what about the other critical parts of the organization, such as the administrative and customer–facing functions? Although implemented differently, many similar and complex processes are used for inventory management, accounting, sales and marketing, order processing, project management, etc. Bottlenecks in the office only serve to undercut the efficiencies you gained on the factory floor.

So why not apply those successful Lean strategies to everyday office processes? Both administrative and customer–facing teams need to have the same proven efficiencies of the entire organization in order to recognize the desired productivity, increased savings, and improved customer service expected by management and all stakeholders.

Today, most businesses operate with a disconnected approach between administrative and customer–facing functions, including:

• Disparate technologies that separately address HR, sales, and financials
• Decentralized customer information, service histories and documentation
• Isolated and/or redundant tasks or projects

With no means of tracking or correctly placing accountability, offices are entrenched beneath a mountain of paper, disparate information sources, unattainable or unnecessary policies, workflow bottlenecks, and unachieved deadlines.

By applying Lean strategies to optimize all functions, every element of the business (employees, documents, workflow processes, projects, etc) can be integrated and centralized, resulting in higher productivity, true elimination of waste, and a way to establish accountability at all levels of the corporation.

Exact Software recognizes the critical need to apply continuous improvement strategies to the office just as in the manufacturing plant. By having tools that measure business activities and integrate the key functions, documents, processes, and data that are critical to your business, you can build a leaner office for your business. Learn more about how Exact customers have made their businesses lean.

Using Lean Manufacturing Techniques to Leverage ERP Investments

Extending Lean Initiatives Across the Organization