Most business leaders want to know how they can improve financial performance, or the "bottom line". Many will see quality initiatives as at worst a cost overhead, or at best something that is neutral where financial performance or profits are concerned. This however need not be the case.

The outcome of a study into the use of Excellence concepts has recently been published which provides evidence that businesses that make proper use of the concepts that underpin the Excellence Model will financially outperform those that do not.

The study was carried out by Kevin B Hendricks of the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario, and Vinod R Singhal of the DuPree College of Management at the Georgia Institute of Technology. They looked at companies that had won quality awards, such as the US Baldridge Award or the UK Excellence Award, and compared these with an industry benchmark.

They found that users of the excellence concepts outperformed the benchmark group on almost every measure.

There has always been much anecdotal evidence related to the performance of businesses using the Excellence Model, but now this study has finally confirmed what the users of the model clearly already knew.

The "White Paper" summarising these results can be obtained through the BQF.

Summary :-

• A recent study has concluded that the use of Excellence model concepts does positively impact financial performance
• Study summary is available via the British Quality Foundation (BQF)