Looking only at existing programs and services serves to maintain the status quo, and the process generally discourages experimentation.Designing and Managing Programs by Kettner, Moroney & Martin (2008).
Sometimes an organisation needs more than incremental improvement. Incumbent strategies and existing services may no longer provide the outcomes you’re looking for and it is unclear how to define and embed a new approach.
Genuine business transformations have impact. They are complex and inherently carry risk.
ACIG approaches transformations with respect for the unique requirements and opportunities of your organisation. We work with leadership teams to optimise the conditions for successful and sustainable outcomes. We acknowledge the complexities and the internal and external pressures.
Attributes of successful business transformations include:
- strategy,
- leadership,
- demand, service design and supply,
- culture and workforce reform,
- finance, and
- business systems and information management.
At ACIG we believe effective transformations target key areas in parallel.
Organisations that require transformation are often compelled to revisit their core set of services and the way the business goes about delivering those. An important element of most transformations is the critical evaluation and redesign of services. ACIG’s Service Design methodology is typified by:
- Direct and equitable involvement of stakeholders in the design and creation of a new service;
- Intensive engagement with service users to develop an understanding of their needs, views, aspirations, circumstances and experiences;
- An iterative process of experiment, trial, adjustment and refinement;
- In-depth critical analysis of possible service models;
- Optimisation of the form of a service based not only on function, but also socio-cultural, environmental, aesthetic and ergonomic aspects of the design;
- An emphasis on innovation, design „elegance‟ (e.g. simplicity, attractiveness of the service to potential users), accessibility, usability and effectiveness;
- Empowerment of communities to own and operate a service to a considerable extent to promote sustainability; and
- A focus on social and people-oriented service provision.
Find out more about our Information Services.
Some of our recent innovation management and service design assignments are listed below.
The Department of Sustainability and Environment (Vic) recently engaged ACIG to evaluate the current state of knowledge management practices, systems and culture at DSE, and to articulate a ‘theory of action’ that describes a pragmatic way forward for achieving DSE’s knowledge management aims.
In a project that won the 2011 LGPro Award for Innovative Management, ACIG is working with the State Library of Victoria to develop and pilot a best practices framework against which public libraries will evaluate themselves, to determine their level of compliance with the best practices and identify areas for improvement. We helped SLV develop a comprehensive best practice framework based on Australian and international quality and business excellence frameworks, international library best practices and the SLV’s research project Libraries Building Communities. We are now implementing evaluations against the framework, called Being the Best We Can, in nine Victorian public libraries. The participating libraries are a mixture of metropolitan and country, single-municipality and regional corporation services.
ACIG worked with the Victorian Department of Justice to assess the extent to which the regulators within the Justice portfolio comply with the regulator practices contained within the Better Business Regulation (BBR) Best Practice Framework. The BBR framework breaks new ground in improving regulatory practice.
Department of Primary Industries Victoria subsequently engaged ACIG to undertake Better Business Regulation reviews with their own regulators, similar to the DoJ reviews. Once again, the reviews covered end to end processes of regulatory development, operation, review and coordination.