Our Services at Robinson, Stafford & Rude, Inc.

Value Management

Value Management (VM) is the term commonly used to describe the application of the Value Methodology to business processes and systems. As applied by RSRI, Value Management is an alternative to traditional methods to identify improvements to existing business processes and to implement the changes needed to effect the improvements.

Effecting changes in an organization is difficult. Many of us have experienced the traditional approach, wherein an expensive management consultant is hired by senior management to improve operations. Often they don’t talk to the right people, and then provide a report which gathers dust on a senior manager or executive’s desk. If management does try to implement the proposed changes, they often meet with resistance from the rank and file and achieve limited success, at best.

The RSRI Value Management approach to process improvement is a different strategy. It starts with the knowledge that the solutions to most of the problems in any business process already reside within the organization’s own staff. You just don’t have a good way to extract them, provide management support and to implement them. Our approach uses a combination of traditional data-gathering techniques, combined with use of organization staff in a well-managed, powerful solution generation and refinement workshop process to identify improvements that are owned by the organization rank and file as well as management; and then adds a change-management step to ensure that the needed changes are successfully implemented. The very people that formulate the improvements are the people who champion and manage their implementation.

The process begins by mapping the existing business process and organizational structure and identifying which are the critical factors of concern: performance; timeliness and/or cost. The mapping identifies the steps in the process, their dependency relationships, the time and/or cost of the steps, and the unit or person responsible, for use in the analysis. This is done through review of existing documents that define the process and structure, and through interviews with organization staff. Often, we find that the actual process followed and the theoretical process that is supposed to be followed are not the same.

Once the existing situation has been clearly defined, then a workshop is convened to review the existing process using the Value Methodology and to formulate recommendations for improvement. The VM team is composed predominantly of organization staff members, supplemented with 1-4 individuals from outside the organization who have expertise in the process at hand. They may be management consultants, representatives from another similar organization of a mix of the two, depending on the individual situation.

The proper selection of the organization members of the VM team is critical to success. It must consider the organizational hierarchy represented on the VM team, the relevance of the experience and expertise of the individuals to the key issues of concern, their personal stature within the organization, the organizational culture, and the personalities of the individuals. Also, because the team members will have responsibilities for assisting in implementation of the changes, their level of time availability for implementation must be considered.

This workshop team is managed by the RSRI team leader to focus on the critical factors of concern identified earlier in the process and to identify improvements in the process and operating environment and staffing to improve the process in those areas of concern. As a part of this effort, the VM team will also identify a preliminary change management strategy plan for implementing each individual recommendation.

Following the VM workshop, management, in consultation with representatives from the VM team will decide which of the VM team recommendations to implement. Based on these decisions, appropriate members of the VM team will be reconvened with management in a shorter second workshop to formulate an integrated change management plan for the combined changes. This will include a strategy for effecting the changes, a schedule for implementing the changes, and an identification of the people responsible for implementing the changes. Key members of the original VM team will serve as change manage “Champions”; who, with senior management support, are responsible for implementing the changes within the framework of the change management plan.

Our experience has included business processes for:

Procurement
Contract Monitoring
Revenue enhancement
Records management & archiving
Public assistance programs
Capital project management
Office space management & allocation

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