Simpler Business Institute

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Back in the 1870s, the Cadbury Chocolate company adapted new technology that allowed it to simplify its products and marketing and to blitz its competition over 20 years.
In the 1960s, Japanese industry adopted simpler approaches to manufacturing and gave it a major competitive advantage over 30 years before the rest of the world caught up.
In the 1980s, GE and Motorola both introduced business simplification programs to transform their business performance and profits. Con Agra did the same from 2005.
In the mid 1980s, Australian steel tube manufacturer Palmer Tube Mills grew revenue from $3m to $300m by developing products that focused on simple elements of customer value and by using technology to make it easier for its people to produce high quality product.
In 1991 an Australian food processing systems business turned around 2 years of losses by calculating its most “attractive” products, simplifying its product range and introducing problem solving techniques that motivated its people to simplify management.
In 1996, an international minerals technology developer increased profits by 200% in one year, enabling it to build brand new premises on the back of a simpler strategic and sales focus, fewer products and the simplification of its main product development process.
In 1998, the pharmacy supply chain to a major hospital collaborated with its suppliers to reduce total process steps from approx 300 to 100 prior to implementing new IT systems. The result was considerably more stock turns, lower costs and increased staff morale.
In 2000, a major Australian internet service provider that was suffering blowouts in technical support costs was able to cut these costs by 10% in a matter of weeks to give it the breathing space to identify new technology to seriously improve ongoing performance – it did this by creating a simpler focus on customer value and removing the 80% of its cost reduction projects that were only going to deliver 20% of the benefits.
In 2004, a power distribution value chain in Australia simplified its approach to delivering customer value and cut its lead time to construct electricity substations by almost 50% as well as finding a surprising bonus in lowering the cost of major capital items for these.
In 2006, a husband and wife team, Andrew and Daryl Grant, used business simplification techniques to start and grow an internet business that made them millionaires in two years.
In 2007, a multi-billion-dollar government owned corporation used 80/20 techniques to simplify the introduction of its business continuity management systems – it achieved in 6 months what had not been done in the previous 18 months.
In the late 2000s a small Montessori school used simpler business techniques to identify the few priorities to focus on to deliver increased value to its customers (parents and students) and to develop confident sustainability – it updates this every couple of years.
Between 2004 and 2011 two firms of chartered accountants in Australia adopted simplification techniques to help clients grow revenue and profits. This approach to their clients has also driven higher growth, profitability and staff retention in their own firms.

These are just a handful of the over 200 private, public and not-for-profit businesses and value chains that we and our colleagues have helped to simplify and improve. And there are many more examples like this from others around the world.

It doesn't matter the type of business or market you're in, the track record shows that 'un-complicating' your business:

multiplies your profits and performance,
revitalizes the morale of your employees,
makes work more satisfying, and
increases the sustainability of your business.

If you talk to owners and managers around the world who have successfully driven business turnarounds, add to this the experience gained by executives who have brought companies through the past recessions, and read the detailed research on simplicity by international consultants such as McKinseys, you’ll see that businesses with simpler focus, structures, processes and priorities outperform and outlast the others.

So how have these businesses achieved their success? What are their secrets?

In 2006 we reviewed approximately 100 cases to search for common elements of success. What we found were 5 lessons that have become the 5 Principles of Simpler Business – see these in our Free White Paper on Revealing your Hidden Profits by Simplifying your Business.

What these principles provide is a structure for removing unnecessary clutter and complexity to give business a performance boost you never thought possible. This is the Mission of the Simpler Business Institute – to help businesses achieve more by doing less!

We use the innovative techniques of Ontonix Complexity Management, the world's first company dedicated to measuring complexity in all types of organizations. Click on the Rate-a-Business logo above to input data from your business to measure its complexity and to understand whether it’s going to be robust or fragile if hit with surprises such as economic downturns, major quality problems or the fall-out from natural disasters in the supply chain.

We share ideas with John Mariotti, author of The Complexity Crisis (Platinum Press, 2008) and experienced CEO of some well-known US brands. John has lived through rising complexity and knows what it does to businesses.

We collaborate with the University of Queensland Business School, ranked in the world’s top 50 Financial Times Executive Educators 2011, to teach simplification to the corporate sector and to undertake research with Dr David Parker into the effects of simplicity on business.

So what does this do for you? Simple - our business education and coaching are unique in the world. No other organization has our 20+ years of diagnosis and simplification experience to restore profits, performance and staff morale. Our change processes are simple and effective so you get the support of your people. Ask them if they'd like to get better outcomes by making their work and the business simpler - I rarely get anything but a resouding YES to this question!

Your Steps Now!

See the evidence for this by taking just five minutes to read the case studies and testimonials on this website and the LinkedIn recommendations at http://au.linkedin.com/in/iandover. They come from start-ups through to major corporations and all show the enormous advantages that simplification brings.

To understand the power of a simpler business, download the 3-page executive summary of our free white paper on Revealing Your Hidden Profits by Simplifying Your Business. If this gives you a taste for more, download the full report to learn more about the Five Principles and to see the things that other businesses simplify. By doing this you’ll also receive our Free Newsletter for regular ideas on keeping things simple in business!

When you're ready to see some of the tools and processes others have used to simplify and prosper, download the e-book Simpler Business . Just click on this title to read what people have said about the book and to purchase a short read that will change the way you think about business. It doesn't need to be difficult.

Finally, it’s important to mention that making your business simpler will give it an unfair advantage over your competitors - they'll still be struggling trying to manage the complications while you've gone beyond this. But if you’d like the hand-holding and guidance to learn the techniques yourself and to remove the complexity before the rest of the world catches up, talk to us about joining our Simpler Business Coaching Program where we take you step by step through the complexity measurement and business simplification tools.

In summary, you’ve got 3 options for managing complication and complexity. These are:

Do nothing and accept the higher costs and lower profits and staff morale,
Introduce ever-more sophisticated systems to help manage the rising complexity, or
Reduce or remove as much of the needless complexity as possible.

Option #3 allows any business to simplify before applying technology and delivers the greatest performance and profit improvements. We know that the vast majority of owners and managers would prefer to achieve more with less, so act now before your competitors discover these techniques - it's just a small step for you, but a giant leap for your business.

Simply does it!

The Simpler Business Team

PS: If you want to try one of our tools, one that was introduced back in 1995 and still going strongly today, take your current To Do list of actions or strategies and determine which of these you should and shouldn't be doing right now. Just click on www.simplerbusiness.com/prioritease to get to the trial version of the tool. This single technique has made or saved up to millions of dollars at a time for the companies and business units that have introduced it.

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