How To Apply Best Practices In Business Entrepreneurship And Marketing

By Douglas Miller


Best practices describe methods that have proven to produce a reliable and positive results. Managers who commit to using them in their field are essentially setting a goal to use all information available to produce the most positive results. The ideology extends into all areas of business, including NGOs, governments, educational institutions and software development.

It sometimes takes a short time for successful methods to spread through an industry, but this is certainly not the rule. Often, there is a market-wide adoption of a process, but more often it takes far longer for methods to reach the rest of a company or market. Management therefore needs to actively search for methods that have been shown to work.

Guidance on PPDA gives management more control over the enactment of a method. The process uses planning, doing, checking and adjusting phases to sustain focus and produce improvements consistently. All areas of business and project types gain advantages from trying to make improvements constantly.

Planning phases are when goals are laid out accurately and in detail. The potential results are tested as early during the process as possible, and these assessments are usually done on a small scale first. The 'do' stage is the actual implementation of service delivery, information collection or marketing campaign execution.

PDCA's 'check' stage entails the measurement and comparison of process results. They are weighed up against the initially set aims, so that deviations can be assessed and charted in terms of their results. In the 'act' stage, adjustments are made to correct deviations. Perceived failures of the process are acted upon positively so that similar methods used in the future produce more positive results.

CCMI, or Capability Maturity Model Integration, is an approach to improving one's methods. It helps to control the improvement of processes during various stages of project maturity. Levels range from the initial management of a project to the optimization of the processes used. The model can be applied to the acquisition and development of products, services and management.

CCMI's optimization phase shifts focus away from attempts to control unpredictable results, and moves towards improving a method that is already well controlled. The method came into existence during the late Eighties and early Nineties. Thereafter, a software development method was established called the capability maturity model.

ISO standards are ascertained by a committee of specialists, who draft, discuss and vote in order to develop new values in business. Panels are formulated from an international collection of experts in a particular field. The results of panel decisions are published, and reviewed over the long term to control revisions.

Documenting business processes is a crucial stage of the development of best practices. Various methodologies are used to create visual analyses of contemporary processes using diagrams and flow charts. ITIL provides the IT industry with a framework for the development of improved methods. Consulting services are often employed to control the process. ITIL focuses on improving customer satisfaction, productivity and profitability. It also aims to exploit the skills at the manager's disposal to the maximum.




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