CLICK HERE FOR A FREE BUSINESS HEALTH CHECK SERVICE

The OMC Business Health Check service

Insights into the value of the perception audits

Introduction

Uncertainty throughout the global economy as well as South Africa’s turbulent transformative socio-political trading environment has created a climate of uncertainty in business that is forcing companies to constantly reassess what their strategic and tactical plans should be and how they need to measure and constantly improve operational performance in order to survive.

 

To help address these critically important issues OMC has developed it’s unique “Business Health Check” service.

 

Overview

The Business Health Check comprises a suite of three vital, totally independent and objective perceptual audit-based assessments that help ensure that the organisation concerned builds and maintains unrivalled leadership in its chosen markets. The health check service is based on the following audits:

  • Strategy Review – A perception audit conducted among nominated senior management team participants to establish an objective and firm understanding of how well they honestly believe the organisation is positioned to deal with the demands imposed by today’s dynamic and challenging economic environment. As a uniquely-structured situational analysis of the current business strategy and key objectives, this review helps guarantee that all participants are “on the same page” and therefore share the need to commit fully to the Vision and Key objectives set by the CEO. 


  • Capability Review – A perception audit conducted among nominated participants to establish a firm understanding of what the actual situation is with regards to the organisation’s current operational capabilities related to the implementation of and adherence to policies, procedures and standard operating procedures (SOPs) that help support profit-generating efficiencies. The audit includes issues such as people management and other key governance and risk management factors. This capability measure adds important details to the strategy review.


  • Customer Satisfaction Monitor – A perception audit conducted among nominated customers. This audit takes the guesswork and often falsified claims out of the potentially dangerous and profit-crippling gap between how a company believes it is performing and the customer perceptions of the company’s actual operational capabilities and performance. 

Methodology

The audit methodology used across all three review surveys is based on international standards developed by OMC in association with leading market research professionals and used to establish objective benchmarks that enable measurement and monitoring of operational performance on a periodic or regular basis (i.e.: quarterly/annually etc) or against specific strategic or tactical objectives, management standards or against business norms in an industry sector.

 

All questionnaires are specific to the survey subject matter concerned and call for subjective opinions and perceptions to be expressed by nominated individuals within the organisation, or in the customer base, in response to a series of statements or questions posed in each separate questionnaire.

 

Surveys are conducted among respondents using an online form that is quickly and easily completed by each individual and then submitted back to OMC for independent evaluation.

 

Based on responses received, OMC will prepare a detailed report of the findings as well as a summarised presentation of the major trends and issues to emerge from the exercise.

 

The surveys are conducted according to the highest possible standards of confidentiality. No individual responses or reports will be disclosed to any third party.

 

This undertaking of confidentiality is honoured in order to ensure that individuals participating in the exercise, who wish to express frank and honest opinions that may be highly critical of colleagues or personal contacts within the company, can do so without fear of causing conflict in the workplace or invite victimisation because of strongly-held critical views about any particular subject.

Performance benchmarks

Based on the methodology briefly described above, the following scoring benchmarks are applied to assessing the overall “health” of the company as measured by respondents according to subject matter within the survey undertaken:

  • Average score of 3.0 or less – corrective action or critical intervention needs to be instituted as a matter of extreme urgency.

  • Average score of 3.1 to 3.4 – corrective action or constructive intervention needs to be considered as a matter of significant importance.

  • Average score of 3.5 to 3.9 – the organisation is in reasonable health with the opportunity to improve in specific or selected areas.

  • Average score of 4.0 or more – the organisation is probably strongly positioned as a market leader in its chosen sector of operations and is ideally poised for strong, sustainable growth provided constant monitoring and evaluation is maintained and appropriate adaptive action taken in response to any given situation such as the emergence of a new competitive threat or business opportunity.

 

Further benefit can be derived by engaging OMC to support ongoing monitoring and evaluation of key performance measures based on the benchmarks set by the initial health check service that is undertaken by the client.

 

The Business Health Check is also a vital component in the provision by OMC of the Business Planning Facilitation Service that is offered in association with BMLS.

Conclusion

Against a background of political efforts to accelerate greatly increased levels of transformation associated with B-BEE, business leaders in South Africa need to foster enhanced levels of performance tracking to stay on top of their game and ahead of the competition.

 

The OMC Business Health Check uncovers operational blind spots based on three vital, independent and objective assessments that help ensure organisations build and maintain unrivalled leadership in chosen markets.