Leaderboard

During the course of a DMAIC project, we establish current process performance, or baseline, at the Define stage. This tells us where the process is at the start of the project or what the current baseline metric is. With the baseline established, we establish a project goal. The goal is typically one that is stated by the customer or by internal stakeholders. The DMAIC project aims to meet the defined project goal. At the Improve phase, we identify potential solutions that will help us achieve our project goal. Process Benchmarking helps us get more out of our project by meeting industry standards or best process performance. Simply put, benchmarking is our final goal and is determined by understanding best practices at the market or even within the organisation. Let's take an example of a cycle time reduction project in an insurance process: Insurer ABC takes on an average 60 days to resolve a claim. This has been deemed high since it leads to customer complaints, customer churn, loss of revenue, etc. A GB project was taken to reduce the overall claim process cycle time from 60 days to 45 days since it was observed that customers usually start following up post 45 days of claim submission. The project started and solutions were identified at the Improve phase that would help achieve the goal of 45 days. However, when a study was conducted, it was observed that the average time taken by top Insurers in the same geography was around 30 days. These Insurers had the highest customer retention and minimal complaints. Therefore, while the project goal of 45 days could have been met, in order to achieve best-in-class solutions at an industry level, the Project Lead added more solutions that would help him meet the goal of 30 days.