Food for thought.
1. The expected benefits not only include increased efficiency, increased profitability, reduced waste, greater job security, greater control over processes and consistently meeting expectations, but also credibility, marketability, providing a competitive edge, providing regular tune-ups for our organisation, corporate pride and prestige. These are standard benefits which you could evaluate against the travel agent scenario (i.e. come up with specific items, e.g. standardised best current practice questions to ask customer ensures the required information to create a travel plan and book all arrangements is captured first time at bat, thus reducing overall processing time and increasing efficiency).
2. ??? I'm guessing here that you need to assess each clause/requirement to determine what will apply and what won't, and reasons for inclusion or omission. A gap analysis or system audit checklist could be used for this purpose.
3. One of the aspects here is that all offices presumably are working to one electronic system that provides information on flights, transfers, event tickets, etc. This system provides business rules which are automatically enforced, thus eliminating the need for some documentation. I suppose the old documentation pyramid provides an overview of the documentation typically required. Then you need to provide a breakdown of what is typically found in these different levels of document.
Some of this is covered in an employee quality awareness training document I developed located at:
http://Elsmar.com/pdf_files/ - Look for Employee_Awareness1098.doc
The standard also tells you (4.1 & 4.2) what the policy, manual and system procedures should contain.
4. I suppose you have a choice of blanket, phased or staged implementation. Blanket = all branches together. Phased = implementing facets of the system across the organisation at a time (e.g. setting up doc control and corrective action everywhere first, then add contract review and process control, then add ….. (Australian Standard AS4500 actually provides approaches for this with a three module and combination options – I have a copy)). Staged = a branch or group of branches at a time. One of the problems with multiple site certifications/registrations is the culture and process differences between sites. In this situation you could expect that this variation would have a reduced impact, given the electronic business rule enforcement already mentioned. This makes staged implementation more attractive – implement the system at one site, get the bugs out of it there, rather than de-bugging all branches at the same time (if all the branches are continually having their procedures modified in an attempt to ‘get it right’, they may lose confidence in the system all together), and then piggy-back the other branches.
Additionally, under the 4.19 SERVICE banner I would sell customer feedback (surveys) as a major source of measurement and improvement (travel agencies often never see the customer again, unless they got it all correct and the customer comes back to them next time). This is a major learning opportunity for the organisation. Look at our operation from the eyes of the customer. What are their needs, as opposed to our perception of their needs. You can even measure feedback success rates by branch. This helps you improve your business, win customers, get repeat business and get customer referrals (when your satisfied customers hear a tale of travel agent woe, they’ll say “you should have gone to Airways Travel Agents, they never have problems like that”).
Another question is - would you recommend seeking certification/registration? This can only be decided by assessing the ROI. If the organisation is responsible and committed, they can glean the benefits without the added cost – but lose the marketability factor.
Any way, oil prices are down, you can afford to burn some!
Cheers.
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