Maintaining Market Leadership
Automotive Holdings Group
At a
crucial time for the automotive industry the Optimal Enterprise™ process
gave the Automotive Holdings Group the ability to get and stay
in front of the market. By combining management ‘science’ and
quality principles with ‘street smarts’ and more
traditional approaches, relationships with staff, suppliers,
customers and communities were taken to new levels of trust
and mutual respect.
Since
then the Group has significantly increased sales revenue, market
share and profitability and has established and leveraged the
AHG brand as a single, integrated entity. The Group’s
place as one of Australia’s most successful private companies,
continuously building on its fifty-plus year reputation for
integrity, quality and value has been assured.
The process
is tough and demanding and it gets results! I haven’t
seen anything as powerful in all my years in business.
R J (Bob) Branchi, Managing Director, Automotive Holdings Group -www.ahg.com.au
Success From A Standing Start
Mack Hall and Associates
Optimal
Enterprise™ helped Mack Hall and Associates get ‘started
with a bang’ in 1994 and to build on that good start
through quality people, good systems and processes and a clear
set of goals and objectives for the Company and for everyone
associated with the Company.
That
the process
worked for us as well as it did is supported by our decision
to use it again as we shape the Company’s
next
ten years.
Getting
more than 900 people in almost 100 locations across Australia
working to the same picture with the same degree of energy
and enthusiasm is just one of the outcomes our Optimal Enterprise™ Better,
Best
and Beyond process achieved for Betts, a proud Australian
shoe and accessories retailer with 100 years of history.
Optimal
Enterprise™ helped us achieve that degree of revitalisation
with outstanding results. Improved clarity about each person’s
place in the Company and around roles and responsibilities
as well as Company purpose and direction together with new
skills, better communication, more effective systems and processes
and a significant improvement in relationships, drove a major
revival of the whole Company.
Years
on many of the strategies developed by the Company’s
people through the Optimal Enterprise™ journey are bearing
fruit with new brands being launched, stores being refurbished
and significantly improved financial and other performance.
We’re looking forward to our next 100 years.
A significant
refocus and realignment of the Water Corporation with its key
market segments were key outcomes of the Corporation’s
Breakthrough ’98 strategy facilitated through Optimal
Enterprise™
The process
examined various design options for customer service, producing
a new business model featuring:
•
A more
proactive approach to people, assets and profitable business
growth
•
New accountabilities
backed
up by internal performance contracts and service agreements
•
Single point, single person accountability for every significant asset, customer,
product, service and program and for every key relationship with customers, suppliers,
joint
venture partners and communities
•
Flexibility to achieve resource and efficiency gains
•
Profit and Loss/Balance Sheet approach in each business region
•
Regional support services provided by other Divisions where more cost effective
•
System-wide integration and leverage of assets, opportunities and relationships.
Optimal
Enterprise™ was used by the University’s School
of Law project team to outstanding effect, drawing as it did
on people and ideas from across the University community, including
members of Council and staff, current, past and potential future
students, the wider WA community and national and international
networks.
Of particular
value were the inputs received from more than sixty of the
University’s major stakeholders. To have the benefit
of their perceptions, observations, criticisms and suggestions
across a wide range of issues added value for the University
well beyond the Law School initiative.
With
the case for a new School made, the University again applied
the Optimal Enterprise™ process to develop an innovative
implementation and benefits realisation blueprint and supporting
strategies for the creation of the new School.
Millicent Poole,
Vice-Chancellor, Edith Cowan University
- www.ecu.edu.au
Project Enhancement in Mongolia
Clough Group
Testimonials
from other clients complement and support the outcomes the
Optimal Enterprise™ process achieved for Clough on the
Company’s Boroo Gold Project in Mongolia. Importantly
for Clough there were lessons learned from the wrap up of the
work undertaken on Boroo, which led to an even better understanding
of our business and its needs.
West
Australian Ballet is a State Icon Company and the oldest Ballet
Company in Australia. The involvement of the Optimal Enterprise™ process
was well established with the Company for many years in the
development of our Strategic Planning and guiding the staff
and Board into the future, exploring our greater relevancy
and financial security.
At a
very crucial time in the history of West Australian Ballet,
the process played a major role in handling the transition
in Board Structure and Artistic Renewal. The professional skills
and sensitivities to achieve a positive outcome developed through
the process were paramount.
West
Australian Ballet still enjoys and benefits from the outcomes
achieved and we are most grateful for the journey and actions
we took guided by the Optimal Enterprise™ process..
Louise Howden-Smith, Executive Director, West Australian Ballet
- www.waballet.com.au
'Out of the Box'
Innovation for the Legal Profession,
Young People at Risk and National Celebration
‘I have had an involvement with Optimal Enterprise™ in
my roles as Executive Director of the Law Society of Western
Australia, as a member of the Board planning Australia’s
Centenary of Federation celebrations in 2000 and as the Chairman
of Youth Focus, a youth in crisis service focused on preventing
youth suicide.
In each
of these quite distinct roles I turned to the process to seek
innovative “out of the box” solutions and vitality
within these organisations and so ensure their relevance to
their respective target groups.
I was
never let down by the Optimal Enterprise™ experience,
which provided highly customised support, and, despite the
diverse nature of these organisations, the incredible knack
of getting right to and resolving core issues.
When
first appointed to my current position, I also turned to Optimal
Enterprise™ for the type of commitment and inspiration
that is hard to find these days, let alone have available as
a local Australian resource for businesses and other organisations
and for people in all walks and at all stages of life.
Peter Fitzpatrick AM, Chief Executive Officer,
Motor Trade Association of Western Australia
- www.mtawa.com.au
Promoting Education and Business Growth
Southside Mitsubishi
The Optimal
Enterprise™ process was applied at a time when Southside
Mitsubishi had reached a genuine business low; staff morale
was poor and business practices represented a 1970’s
style of motor dealer operation. Education and change was required
to significantly improve thinking, processes and business culture.
It was
a long journey, bringing essentially uneducated (in business
practices terms) staff into a new and more modern way of thinking
about business success.
As a
result of our whole system work, consumer confidence increased
through a vastly improved operating style with a focus on more
open dealings in relationships at every level.
With
our clients
enjoying a higher degree of confidence profits returned and
staff members’ enthusiasm for their jobs
became
obvious. Consistent results became easier to predict.
Essentially
our use of Optimal Enterprise™ was about education and ‘change’;
about designing a better future and working through translation,
implementation and renewal to get to that better future and
beyond.
