Strategy Execution:
Clear Processes Enable Effective Knowledge Transfer
How we bring clarity and transparency to businesses
About the client
ForumEPFL is one of the largest on-campus recruitment platforms in Switzerland, committed to providing high-quality services to students and companies and facilitating the recruitment process of fresh graduates. During the 27 years of its operation the organisation has attracted over thousand international companies as clients and served over 10’000 job seekers.
The Challenge
Whilst the success of the enterprise has always largely relied on the current leadership and engagement of the team, ForumEPFL recognized that it was actually lacking transparency in its operations. It also faced the challenge of effective knowledge transfer since the team attrition is over 50% every year. Targeting to become the most attractive platform in Switzerland and beyond, they did not actually have a proper instrument to leverage the best practices developed over the last years. In addition, external audit requirements raised the need for higher control of internal processes.
The Solution
ForumEPFL looked to New Pace for establishing more clarity in its operations to overcome the above challenges. In addition, it was important for ForumEPFL that its team members receive coaching on the cross-departmental collaboration along the way.
Together with the ForumEPFL president, New Pace first aligned the process map with the Forum’s strategy to identify the processes of highest strategic impact. Afterwards the specifications for these processes were established, which included the clarification of process inputs, outputs, linked tools and the risks. We then ran two workshops and involved all process performers into the modelling of the high-priority process. All processes were documented in ARIS® from IDS Scheer. Triggered by the weakness elicitation session, the team members came up with more than 30 ideas for process improvements and quick-wins, which were incorporated into the to-be process model.
The Results
ForumEPFL got a sustainable basis for efficient operations, transmittable from year to year and less dependent on current leadership. The results were delivered via a handover workshop and a “knowledge transfer package” incorporating the documented processes and the best practices developed during the successful Forum2009.
All team members perceived the workshops as highly stimulating and were motivated to continue instilling the process-thinking in their work. The team went out of the final workshop with a structured implementation plan both for quick wins and for more elaborated improvements.
Quotes:
“... This project provides us with a great number of ideas for improvement. The [incoming] leadership team now has a solid basis to build on”.
“...Your approach is really helpful and I strongly recommend to the [new] leadership team using it”.
“I was impressed by the overview [the process map] you have generated from my inputs from our initial meeting”.