Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN, July 10, 2007 Twin Cities.-based consultancy High-Yield Methods, best known for its industry-leading approaches to implementing customer relationship management (CRM), has added a new Business Process Management practice independent of its CRM work. The new practice is built around HYM’s proprietary Visual Workflow process methodology, originally designed for use in the CRM context. Visual Workflow provides a business process alternative to Six Sigma and Lean—one that’s designed specifically for use outside the manufacturing/production sector.
According to HYM founder and Principal, Dick Lee, “Customers are driving our expansion. Once they experience Visual Workflow in CRM, most ask us to go beyond CRM and apply Visual Workflow elsewhere—although typically outside of manufacturing. Plus, as market recognition of VW increases, a growing number of companies are asking us to address persistent process problems that manufacturing-based approaches, particularly Six Sigma and Lean, haven’t remedied.”
Lee adds, “When the revenue from what you’ve considered a ‘side’ business approaches billings from what you consider your primary focus, customers are sending you a powerful message. Not that we’re going to take our eye off CRM in the slightest, but we have to expand our vision to fully support a second practice area. Fortunately, the new is a subset of the old, so attention paid to process management further enhances our CRM capabilities, as well.”
Lee describes the principle differences between Visual Workflow and manufacturing-based process approaches as “related to fundamental design—with VW developed to work in more variable and less repetitive work environments that require employee judgment and decision-making—while manufacturing approaches have been designed to function in much less variable and much more repetitive environments staffed by production workers.” He adds, “Until now, 95% of process improvement attention has been focused on manufacturing, which thanks to automation now covers less than half the typical manufacturing company’s workforce. And that leaves a ton of wasted effort and manpower virtually untouched, without even considering the whole service sector, which is growing in the U.S. while manufacturing is declining.”
Lee also notes that Visual Workflow has proven effective with a much wider size spectrum of companies than either Six Sigma or Lean, with companies successfully applying VW running the gamut from Fortune 100 global high-tech to small service firms in HYM’s Twin Cities’ home market. He describes Six Sigma and Lean as “not scaling down to suit many mid-sized enterprises, and virtually unaffordable for small business.”
Lee describes HYM’s Business Process Management practice as “full spectrum”—including assessments of current practices; process redesign centered on increasing value delivered to customers as well as operating efficiencies; migration and change management planning; and hands-on process implementation support.
Those interested in learning more about High-Yield Methods’ Business Process Management practice, including a free Visual Workflow white paper, should visit www.h-ym.com.
About High-Yield Methods:
High-Yield Methods is a St. Paul, Minnesota-based, boutique consultancy. We serve clients across North America—and occasionally beyond. Our practice centers around helping clients achieve external alignment with customers and internal alignment around customers and employees. Under this umbrella, we focus primarily in two areas: implementing CRM/CEM; and process improvement in variable work environments, which encompasses functions from HR to Finance to SCM. For more information visit www.h-ym.com
