SERVICES

The Symbius Business Process Blueprint

Process Mapping for Production Homebuilders

Symbius helps you quickly and accurately document and improve your Purchasing, Operations and Supply Chain business processes with its proprietary BP BluePrint methodology and tools. We are the only management consulting firm devoted 100% to the production homebuilding industry, from strategy and organization to operations, purchasing and supply chain.

The benefits you realize from Business Process Blueprint are:

  • Agreement on how you work today (the starting point!)
  • Identification of best practices for all divisions/operations
  • A list of high impact recommendations for improvement (low hanging fruit)
  • Measurement of the possible time, cost and quality impact of revised business processes using our proprietary "What If" tools and techniques
  • Standardization of best ways to work across your entire organization
  • Greater worker productivity due to better training, education, and an improved learning curve for new workers

What our customers are saying:

"Symbius has been instrumental to our purchasing and supply chain strategy and programs. The incredible progress we've made in the past year(s) could not have been accomplished without their guidance, support and expertise." -Scott Hearty, Vice President of National Purchasing Operations, Standard Pacific Homes (Big Builder # 11)

"Symbius has been an invaluable advisor in helping us determine where we are and where we need to go." - Mary Fitzgerald, VP of Purchasing, John Laing Homes (Big Builder # 34)

Overview

Wouldn't it be valuable to finally tackle the common operational issues that cost your organization valuable time and money? Our unique methods help you get to the bottom of vexing problems, and drive real improvements, such as:

  • Reduction of Variance Purchase Orders (field extras) by 20% or more
  • Reduction of time in the new community bid cycle, by 30% or more
  • Enhanced margins from better options management, by 10% or more

Our methods focus on three key aspects of business process improvement:

  • Assess Processes: Understand today's processes, identify strengths and weaknesses, and analyze the likely sources or causes of any performance gaps, such as organization, skills, or other systematic reasons.
  • Evaluate Opportunities: Identify/select best practices and benchmarks, compare results to best practice results, and identify benefits, risks, resources required to deploy.
  • Prioritize Improvements: Symbius uses well-honed methods and GroupSystems® collaboration software to collect improvement ideas from executives, managers and staff in an anonymous and insightful manner, and rank and prioritize those ideas for rapid deployment.


Our well-equipped toolbox of templates and frameworks includes:

  • Project plans and schedules
  • Automated process mapping tools
  • Roles and Responsibilities templates
  • Best practices database
  • Opportunity evaluation templates
  • Interview guides
  • Standard work instruction templates
  • Communications plan templates
  • Depending on your needs, individual tools can be chosen to achieve your organization's specific goals





Demonstrated Results

Everyone wins when leveraging the Symbius business process blueprint, and quickly identifying and understanding issues that impact business functions. The Symbius BP BluePrint allows your team to improve productivity through proven methodologies and state of the art technology.

Symbius' BP BluePrint has been used by multi-divisional builders to streamline and align purchasing processes across disparate divisions, and by a traditional builder to rapidly reorganize its purchasing and operations as it entered the urban infill market. In each case, the approach addressed the strategic needs of management and were supported and implemented on the front lines. Improvements in efficiency and productivity of up to 15% have been reported in each case.

With the Symbius Business Process Blueprint you can accomplish any one of the following:

  • A common documented vision of current processes to maximize efficiency and highlight opportunities for improvement
  • A common documented vision of future/to-be processes
  • Improved alignment of business processes with stakeholder expectations for increased awareness and accessibility
  • Measure the consequences of process changes through "what if" scenarios
  • Process Measurement - determine if a process is operating effectively
  • Ability to identify the "right" processes to be outsourced
  • A holistic and integrated approach to strategic change