The Business Excellence Model

The Business Excellence Model

Keywords Benchmarking,Business, Model, Problem solving

The "Business Excellence Model" promoted vigorously by the European Quality Association, and by the BQF in the UK, is attracting much attention in business quarters nowadays.

The Model is a benchmarking/problem solving technique built around nine criteria for business success:

• 1.

  leadership;

• 2.

  policy and strategy;

• 3.

  people management;

• 4.

  resources;

• 5.

  processes;

• 6.

  customer satisfaction;

• 7.

  people satisfaction;

• 8.

  impact on society; and

• 9.

  business results.

These are in turn divided into 32 sub-criteria.

Each criterion is given a"weighting" which indicates the overall importance of the criterion (in the opinion of the inventors of the Model) in contributing to business success, e.g. leadership is reckoned to deserve 10 per cent.

To use the Model,companies are asked to go through a self-assessment process in which specific questions have to be answered for each sub-criterion.

In this way, strengths,weaknesses and areas for improvement can be identified and a numerical score given for the current level of overall effectiveness ­ known as a "balanced scorecard".

Companies are encouraged to try to increase their score by taking appropriate action, thereby raising their level of effectiveness.

It is interesting to compare the Business Excellence Model with a quite different approach to benchmarking/problem solving known as work structuring.

Work structuring is based on a holistic, people centred set of principles which, with its associated methodology, has an impressive track record of successes in helping companies improve their total effectiveness.

So how does the Business Excellence Model relate to work structuring? This is how we assessed it against our own homemade version of a "balanced scorecard":

• 1.

  Like work structuring, the Model is one of the few available tools that attempts to adopt a systems-level, holistic perspective of a business.

  Score: 10 per cent out of a total percentage contribution of 10 per cent.

• 2.

  Like work structuring, it seeks to cover a comprehensive range of criteria.

  Score: 16 per cent out of a total contribution of 16 per cent.

• 3.

  A limitation of the Model is that it only addresses the "evaluate" dimension of the work structuring formula of "plan-do-evaluate".

  Score: 8 per cent out of a maximum of 24 per cent.

• 4.

  A more serious limitation of the Model lies in the analytical and reductionist nature of the methodology used to identify problem areas.

  In work structuring terms this is a "component level" methodology whereas systems-level problems need a"systems-level" methodology to identify them as such.

  Score: 5 per cent out of a maximum 25 per cent.

• 5.

  Finally, the Business Excellence Model leaves it almost entirely up to the company to find its own tools and techniques to remedy the problems it has identified. Work structuring, on the other hand, offers a powerful tool kit to aid the client.

  Score: 8 per cent out of 25 per cent.

Total Model score: 47 per cent out of a maximum of 100 per cent.

Diana SchumacherPresident of the Schumacher Society