Performance Improvement: Quality Management: Case Study

Quality approach for a charitable organisation

Issue

This charitable organisation faced the following issues:

• How to improve the confidence of financial backers?
• How to effectively manage the donations and the increasing budgets in compliance with regulations?
• How to better understand the expectations of the financial backers and the beneficiaries in order to satisfy them?

It was decided to implement a quality approach in order to answer these questions.

Approach

The first phase aimed at evaluating the current organisation in accordance with quality standards and defining together the best quality approach. A decision to implement a quality management system was made.

The second phase consisted of designing a tailor-made quality management system and implementing it. Main steps were:

• Map core processes, support and management processes
• Describe and improve these processes
• Define how to control and to monitor the processes (key performance indicators, control through documentation, qualification…)
• Implement the basic processes of a quality management system (e.g. documentation process, continuous improvement process…)

Along this project, change management was a key focus: information, communication, training of all stakeholders, including top management. Their commitment was a key success factor for the project.

Outcome

Today, the first benefits for the organisation are the following:

• Roles and responsibilities have been reviewed and described in the organisation system. This system is available on the intranet
• Core processes are under control and monitored through key performance indicators that have been defined
• A continuous improvement process has been designed and implemented. All staff has access to this process
• The quality manager is now trained, experienced and fully loaded to maintain and improve quality levels