Jim, Good morning!
Regarding your questions — some of this is Six Sigma, and some of it relates to the broader issus of Business Process Management:
Your Question: “1.improve on what?” — Reponse: The answer to this will be the same for any business, whether in professional services or not. What you should focus on are things that are critical to the firm: its key goals. What are the key goals for the firm? Look at your performance against those goals. Are any under-achieving (that is, not meeting goal, or ones that are currently meeting goal but have unfavorable trends)?
Then, “tree” out those goals (develop tree diagrams) to describe the key drivers of these goals — this should point you in the right direction to focus on the few, critical items that you need to improve.
Your Question: “2. what are benefits” — Reponse: this somewhat depends on the key items that you will be focusing on (from question 1 above). Generally, the benefits would include improved client (customer) satisfaction, improved functioning of your key processes, and (ultimately) decreased costs and/or improved market share.
Your Question: – “3. what are the processes, time, resources and cost involved?”– Reponse: This one will depend a bit on how much knowledge your organization already has about Six Sigma, Lean, or other similar improvement systems — what is your assessment of that?
Best regards,
QualityColorado
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