Continuous Improvement at FLINT Corp

Saad Husain P.Eng. PMP

The construction and fabrication industry in Canada has been looking at creative ways to increase productivity and drive down costs. One of the key focus areas in the last decade has been digital transformation. Like any emerging business area, digital transformation means different things to different industries. The core principles are however the same, which are to utilize technology to enable transformative changes in the business that make the business more productive and more profitable. And with every new journey comes its unique challenges. I am sharing some insights, which you will hopefully find beneficial, from the successes and challenges on my journeys of digitalization, from road mapping, ERP implementations, change management, and continuous improvement.

Start with a clear vision of success

Get early alignment from executive leadership, with a clear scope, budget, and timeline. Have a clear view of the outcomes the senior leadership is expecting from the effort, and related KPIs. These KPIs are critical to final success criteria. This is critical to maintaining strategic alignment on day-to-day decisions, with the end in mind. It is easier to change manage your project, as well as take Go/NoGo decisions at Go Live.

One team – your business team and partners

Build a strong cross functional team of internal leaders, internal SMEs and external consultants to augment the team.  Engage implementation partners early in the RFP journey. The implementation partners are the experts, who do this day in day out. Selecting strong implementation partners, who are aligned to your goals will increase your chances of success significantly.

“Standardized processes are exponentially easier to integrate with enterprise systems and train people.”

Select a small number of cross functional leaders for review of RFP submissions. Opening the gate too wide will cause challenges, delays in selection process, and may lead to more customized best-of-breed solutions, which are highly complex to integrate during implementation.

Go out of the box – use best practices

Limit modifications and customizations – everything impacts everything in enterprise world. There is no small change. Sticking with out of the box as much as possible ensures things work, and small changes don’t require extensive testing across the systems. In many cases the processes and system configuration are already configured to industry-best practices. This is a great opportunity to embed these industry best practices into your business.