Unlike their Western colleagues, Croatian managers like improvisation more than well-established procedures.
Croatian companies significantly lag behind when it comes to ways to improve operational capabilities, while also showing trends that were present in advanced Western companies at the end of the last century. This was announced during the presentation of results of a research carried out by the Qualitas consulting company, reports liderpress.hr on May 21, 2016.
The research on operational excellence of Croatian businesses included achievements, trends, plans, methodologies and solutions in the area of improvement and optimization of business processes on the Croatian market, and the results have been compared to world trends. The target group of the research were companies with over 100 employees and over 100 million kuna in earnings in 2014. The questions that were part of the research were answered by directors of 71 companies.
“The results show that Croatian companies are still relying on ISO norms, primarily ISO 9001 which means the minimal level of quality management. Successful foreign companies use advanced methodologies such as Lean, Six Sigma or Lean Six Sigma. Also, directors of successful Western companies are more critical regarding their own programmes for the improvement of the processes”, said Damir Keller, the director of Qualitas.
Almost 76 percent of Croatian managers see their programmes for more efficient business operations as successful, and only 1.4 percent see them as unsuccessful, while in developed countries this ratio is 47 to 14 percent, the latter being unsuccessful operations.
Moreover, while the advanced global companies achieve their goals via a disciplined and comprehensive process and proven methods, Croatian ones are more inclined to reach their goals through improvisations and shortcuts. But, on the other hand, Keller was encouraged by the fact that almost 50 percent of the polled businesses are planning to introduce advanced methods and tools such as Lean and Six Sigma.
