The Business Excellence (BE) initiative helps organizations to strengthen their management systems and processes for high performance. It is based on an internationally comparable and holistic model for managing an enterprise for excellence. The Singapore Quality Class and Singapore Quality Award are key milestones of overall performance on the business excellence model. The framework also has niche standards that focus on management capabilities for people, innovation and service which are important for business excellence.
Initiative By Government Towards Business Excellence
The Singapore Quality Award (SQA) was launched in 1994 and is given to organizations that demonstrate the highest standards of business excellence. It is based on the best practice embodied in the Baldrige Model, the EFQM Excellence Model and the Australian Business Excellence Framework. The award programme was set up to make Companies strengthen their management systems and enhance their capability and competitiveness.
The SQA is controlled by Standards, Productivity and Innovation Board (SPRING Singapore).SPRING is a member of the Guardians of Premier Excellence Model (GEMS) organizations.
SQA Criteria For Business Excellence
There are four key criteria’s to evaluate business excellence. Each criterion is measured by excellence indicators. These indicators in turn are a set of statements that reflect the systems that efficient organizations would have in place. The four criteria’s are leadership, planning, information and people
Leadership
It is imperative that the senior management have a clear understanding of the vision and mission that drives an organization towards excellence. It is also important that the vision, mission and goals of the organization are regularly reinforced throughout the organization. Again Organizational culture reflects the 'feel' of the organization’ and the management of an excellent organization have to ensure adequate opportunities are provided to the employees to come up with new ideas, experiment, innovate and take risk. Well managed Companies in Singapore encourage their employees to contribute to the community by the way of community service, donations to charity, environmental conservation activities and educational visits.
Planning
Strategy development and deployment looks for evidence that planning is a systematic and closed-loop process using inputs from a variety of personnel at all levels throughout the organizations. The planning process should take into account both internal data (e.g. operational performance, quality indicators etc) and external data (like customer feedback, market intelligence, industry trends etc).The planning process should create a balanced business plan, with well defined short term and long term goals.
Information
Under this criterion there are two categories against which organizations are evaluated: Management of Information and Comparison and Benchmarking.
Management of information seeks organizations to ensure that they use accurate data and provide correct information. Information can be sourced from a broad spectrum of areas like finance, sales and marketing, production, product and service quality. Efficient organizations would be required to have integrated data on various aspects of performance to monitor the overall performance.
Comparison and Benchmarking evaluates the process that Organizations use to acquire new knowledge to create value for stakeholders and checks that systems exist to capture and disseminate knowledge. The organization must have a system to collect and analyze comparative data and information and in turn use the information to set goals.
People
Employees are the back bone of any organization and a good organization not only addresses employee satisfaction but also provides sufficient opportunities to its employees to grow. Human resource planning wherein the HR department is proactively involved in the strategic planning process and in developing plans to support the organizations short and long term goals.
Efficient organizations encourage employee participation, promote teamwork and tap on the innovative potential of the employees. The organization needs to identify training and development needs for all levels of employees.
Organizations are also evaluated on the basis of employee grievance systems that would from time to time obtain feedback from employees and in turn measure employee satisfaction.
