Marina Martin

Articles & Books From Marina Martin

Article / Updated 02-09-2023
This portion of your business efficiency project's execution plan involves identifying individual milestones and assigning them to the right team members. Here is a sample plan from a real-life scenario. List all required work and deliverables Compiling a master list of steps in a project requires thinking critically and in detail about the project.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
An effective strategy for implementing change in your business means making the choices and adopting the tools and processes that generate the best results at the least cost for your business or organization. Cost here refers not to just dollars and cents, but also impacts on all other resources, including time and employee happiness.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Born at Toyota, Lean is a lighter, leaner business strategy to achieve wanted results. A Lean process for business efficiency is ruthless about getting rid of not just errors, but also steps, processes, and people that don’t ultimately add value to your end product or service. Less structured and mathematical than Six Sigma, but with a similar focus on customer needs and reducing defects, Lean is all about getting as close as possible to a waste-free process that results in maximum customer value.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Take a look at the negative impact inefficiencies in all forms are having on your business right now. This way you will be prepared to get into sussing out the potential new inefficiencies that you may accidentally unleash in pursuit of greater efficiency. Inefficiency costs money Inefficiencies cost many organizations as much as 20 to 30 percent of their revenue each year.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Increasing your business efficiency can seem daunting, but in five relatively straight-forward steps you can get a handle on how to identify and eliminate costly inefficiencies. Measure where your business is today across spectrums such as finances, customer sentiment, product/service quality, and employee dawdling.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Change is good, but it can also wreak havoc on an organization if not managed with thought and careful planning. Here are seven steps to managing change in any organization, efficiently. Assuage fears upfront. Top fears include being replaced, not being able to keep up with new skills, not having enough time/resources to adapt, and loss of quality.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
A great starting place for identifying inefficiencies in your business is to take baseline measurements across your organization, which you can then use like a road map to your inefficiencies. Working backward from each measurement, ask (or research) what contributes to that figure. Customer satisfaction scores, IT expenses, employee benefits, hours spent in meetings — every figure is worth investigating and reassessing.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
The first step in addressing business efficiency is to get an idea of the issues you want to address, and then you have to state what sort of improvement you’re seeking. Not only does a goal provide context for determining an action plan — the steps to save $1,000 are often far different from the steps to save $100,000 — but it’s also the only way you can know when you finish a project and whether that project was a success.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
When you plan a business efficiency project, you need to know what you’d like to measure and how you’d like to go about measuring it — but where does all that data go, exactly? Depending on your business, you may need a single data repository, or, more likely, a few. Choosing the right place to post your data can have long-term ramifications on how easily you can access and manipulate your data in the future.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Technological resources can help any business or organization become more effective. There are some overarching resources that most any business can use to increase productivity and decrease waste, including: A content management system (CMS): Gone are the days when you need to pay a Web developer an hour’s wage to swap out a sentence on your company website or bold some text.