BEST PRACTICES AND GLOBAL STANDARDS

I'm surprised to see how many entrepreneurs still spend a lot of money and time trying to reinvent the wheel, because they have not realized that there are many best-practices available in the market, which could be adopted in their companies, saving money and disappointments.

Even today, some business owners, directors and managers believe that innovation must necessarily start from an idea of ​​their own, from scratch, creating their own solutions. That's not true! Imagine if the cars makers or computers manufacturers would be thinking in that way... What we would have today? Maybe the same cars and computers built ten years ago.

Pay attention! If the wheel has been invented, why waste time trying to reinvent it again? This is only an analogy, but think twice about this when starting a new project or enhancements. We actually find best-practice processes for almost everything. See some examples below.

1. Desiring a more organized business and better processes, maybe looking for Quality Assurance? Well, 5S and ISO 9001: 2008. They will help you! 
• 5S' book: 5S for Service Organizations and Offices: A Lean Look at Improvements); 
• ISO 9001:2008's book:  (ISO 9001:2008 for Small Businesses, Fourth Edition: With free customisable Quality Management System files!.
2. Are your projects going beyond the due dates, or worse, your company does not set dates for completion? The PMBoK is the best alternative for project management. Agility would be still better? If so, in spite of the Scrum had been designed for software development, it has been working very well for other industries, even for individuals, because it is simple and effective.
• PMBoK's book: A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge: (Pmbok Guide);
• Scrum's books: The Enterprise and Scrum and Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products (2nd Edition).
3. People are discouraged? A big problem! To build products and delivery high quality services, you must do a retention of experienced employees, instead of compete for talents or recruit the best, because this is usually expensive. Retain a workforce with the knowledge and skills and willingness to acquire new competencies, team-based, flexible work arrangements, addressing diversity issues, conducting formal mentoring programs, align business and human resources strategies, empower employees to make decisions and award their accomplishments. A good formal framework to drive you on this direction is People Capability Maturity Model (P-CMM). Of course, there are also a couple of good companies doing well with Human Resources, so you can choose one of them for a benchmarking.
• P-CMM's book: The People CMM: A Framework for Human Capital Management (2nd Edition).
4. Does your company have a Customer Service Center (CSC), which is responsible for fulfilling customer requests or resolve problems that are reported by them, whether they are internal or external customers? The quality of services has been below the expected? In this case, ITIL will help you! ITIL is a framework created for Information Technology people,  however it is perfectly applicable to any type of CSC, for example: a customer care department, central of reservations and vehicle maintenance workshop. ISO/IEC 20000 is also a similar approach.
• ITIL's books: Defining IT Success through the Service Catalog (Pink Elephant Guides) and The Visible Ops Handbook: Implementing ITIL in 4 Practical and Auditable Steps;
• ISO/IEC 20000:  - Implementing Service Quality based on ISO/IEC 20000.
5. The strategies are well developed, but are having trouble sharing them with all employees and is difficult to deploy them effectively? If this is the case with your company, then you should know the Balanced Scorecard (BSC).
• BSC's book: The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action.

While all the subjects covered in this blog can be applied to many  companies, the examples are generally directed to the car rental industry. So let's talk a little bit of how to find out existing standards and best-practices of this market.

Many standards and best-practices have been established by global companies such as Enterprise Rent a Car, Hertz, Dollar, Thrifty, Avis, Europcar, National, Alamo, Sixt, etc. So if your company is a franchisee of one of them, you can get such information. However, if your company is an independent brand, or are looking for understand the standards and best-practices, then I recommend:

1. Hire an experienced organizational consulting, specializing in the car rental industry (Thermeon Corporation - http://www.thermeon.com - founded in 1967, specializing exclusively in the car rental industry since 1983).
2. Purchase a software, which has embedded the best-practices and standards of the global car rental industry, even for a local business (Thermeon Corporation - http://www.thermeon.com - CARS+ is the premier software for many global brands).
3. Study about the SIPP codes, which are the industry standard for describing vehicles, usually with 4 characters long, they are used to summarize the key features of a vehicle, for example ECMR:
1. First letter (size of vehicle)
1. M = Mini
2. N = Mini Elite
3. E = Economy
4. H  Economy Elite
5. C = Compact
6. D = Compact Elite
2. Second letter (number of doors)
1. B = 2/3 doors
2. C = 2/4 doors
3. D = 4/6 doors
4. W = Wagon/Estate
5. V = Passanger Van
6. L = Limousine
3. Third letter (transmission and drive)
1. M = Manual drive
2. N = Manual, 4WD
3. C= Manual, AWD
4. A = Autodrive
5. B = Auto, 4WD
6. D = Auto, AWD
4. Fourth letter (fuel, A/C = Air Conditioner)
1. N = Unspecified fuel, no A/C
2. R = Unspecified fuel, A/C
3. D = Diesel, A/C
4. Q = Diesel, no A/C
5. H = Hybrid, A/C
6. I = Hybrid, no A/C
4. Browse through the website of ACRISS on:
1. Sample Car Codes: http://www.acriss.org/car-codes/sample-codes/
2. Pseudo Car Codes: http://www.acriss.org/car-codes/pseudo-car-codes/
3. Expanded Car Code Matrix: http://www.acriss.org/car-codes/new-car-code-matrix/
4. Abbreviations: http://www.acriss.org/reference/abbreviations/
5. Special Equipment: http://www.acriss.org/reference/special-equipment/
5. Know the Enterprise Rent a Car history.
• Book: Exceeding Customer Expectations: What Enterprise, America's #1 car rental company, can teach you about creating lifetime customers (a very good history and benchmark, not only for the car rental industry)

From now on, not reinvent the wheel, but try to find out if there is any best-practice or some company to become your initial reference, maybe a benchmark, then improve and innovate.