Saturday, April 27, 2013

Operational Review Defined


Operational Review Defined

How is your business going? This is a cliché most often heard on a simple get-to-together to initiate a conversation.
Faced with growing competition, businesses are finding ways on how to step up the company’s performance especially in various cutthroat industries where innovation and good management can make or break the company. This is the reason why nowadays, businesses place greater emphasis on the evaluation of the efficiency, effectiveness, and economy of its operations.
The operational review holds the key to keeping your company on top. But what really is an operational review? And how does it fit into a company’s goal of staying ahead, or at the very least, at par with competition?
An operational review is an in-depth and objective review of an entire organization or a specific segment of that organization. It can be used to identify and address existing concerns within your company such as communication issues between departments, problems with customer relations, operating procedures, lack of profitability issues, and other factors that affect the stability of the business.
Operational reviews allow the organization members to evaluate how well they are performing, given that they perform appropriately according to the procedures set by them, allocating their resources properly, and performing such tasks within time frame set and using cost-effective measures. More importantly, it also shows your company how well it is prepared to meet future challenges.
Simply put, the goals of an operational review are to increase revenue, improve market share, and reduce cost.
The Bigger Picture
It simply goes to say that an operational review allows the management to see their company in a different light — a larger perspective. That is, it gives the management the opportunity to evaluate if the entrusted resources were used wisely to achieve the desired results of operations.
Furthermore, operational reviews provide a comprehensive assessment of authority in that it defines expectations, and grants power within the organization because feedback can be given as to whether the job is being done the right or wrong way, and on what areas the company can excel and improve on. Overall, the success of an operational review can be summarized into a phrase by the great Aristotle, to quote: “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”.
Are you able to view your own organization as a whole from an objective angle? Do the different departments complement each other so that they form a cohesive unit that boosts your business in the right direction?
With our comprehensive assessment of your organization’s current systems, operations, processes, and strategies, our operational review programs aim to help you in achieving these lofty goals: to improve business profitability and identify incompetence in both operations and organizational systems.
The Benefits of an Operational Review
The main objective of an operational review is to help organizations like yours to learn how to deal with and address issues, instead of simply reacting to the challenges brought about by growth and change.
In such review, the information provided is practical from both a financial and operational perspective. Using these data, the management can then come up with recommendations, which are not only realistic, but more importantly, can help the organization achieve its goals. The review recognizes the extent to which your internal controls actually work, and enables you to identify and understand your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
To be more specific, let’s list down the ways wherein an effective operational review can contribute to the success of the organization. The review process:
    • Can assess compliance within your own organizational objectives, policies and procedures;
    • Can evaluate specific company operations independently and objectively;
    • Can give an impartial assessment regarding the effectiveness of an organization’s control systems;
    • Can identify the appropriate standards for quantifying achievement of organizational objectives;
    • Can evaluate the reliability and value of the company’s management data and reports;
    • Can pinpoint problem areas and their underlying causes;
    • Can give rise to opportunities that may increase profit, augment revenue, and reduce costs without sacrificing the quality of the product or service.
Thus, each operational review conducted is unique, and can be holistic or specific to the activities of one department.