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Weekly UpdatesTHEY EXECUTED SIX Sigma initiatives and other quality improvement projects. They devised new avenues to reach customers and constituents, boosted revenues, cut costs and increased efficiencies. They made new connections via web sites and text messages. They found better ways to serve troubled kids and heal ailing Hoosiers.
The four winners and 16 other finalists in the BKD Indiana Excellence Awards competition did all of these things, and more, in their pursuit of excellence. Organizations are honored for their commitment to business excellence through the improvement of a product, service or business practice, and the positive impact it has on the organization and the state of Indiana.
The program, marking its 13th year of recognizing Indiana's most forward-thinking companies and organizations, is presented by Indiana Business magazine, title sponsor BKD LLP, and National City Bank. The BKD Indiana Excellence Awards are bestowed in four categories, and one of the four category honorees is then chosen as the overall winner.
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MANUFACTURING AND DISTRIBUTION
"Business excellence is a way of life at Heraeus Electro-Nite. Our core values are the basis of everyone's behavior in daily business, leading to continuous improvement and employee satisfaction," says Jim Myers, plant manager at Heraeus Electro-Nite in Peru, which designs and manufactures metallurgical sensors.
Continuous improvement is baked into the company's way of doing business, paving the way for its selection as the manufacturing and distribution winner at the BKD Indiana Excellence Awards. It's been an important part of the company's culture to follow ISO standards--Heraeus Electro-Nite has been recertified to ISO quality standards and has added ISO 14001 environmental certification.
Its ongoing pursuit of excellence takes many forms, from employee training to continuous goal setting and benchmarking to support of local and state causes and organizations. And that's good for everyone--since opening in Peru in 1990, the company has increased sales and employment, added more than 20 new product lines, reduced costs, boosted on-time deliveries, cut scrap and reduced defects.
"With excellence comes the ability to stay profitable," Myers says. "To be able to continually improve and increase sales every year, you have to continually reduce your own costs as well as help customers reduce their costs." Besides winning the BKD honor, the company was a 2008 finalist for the Indiana Chamber of Commerce's Small Business of the Year honors.
Other manufacturing and distribution finalists included:
* CIM Audio Visual in Columbus, which since 1983 has focused on the A/V needs of Indiana schools and colleges, as well as businesses and churches. In a relatively short period of time, the company has doubled its annual sales volume as well as personnel and now serves customers in 13 states.
* Indianapolis-based Heat Exchanger Design, which was growing quickly but decided it was rime to pause and assess how well prepared it was for the changing needs of its clients by writing a new strategic growth plan. Among the objectives were evaluating staffing needs, cross-training employees, offering onsite education, boosting employee satisfaction, controlling costs and supporting locally educated engineering students through internships.
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* Kem Krest in Elkhart, which in less than eight years grew from a $10 million firm into a $100 million company with the help of a productivity-enhancing Goal Development Plan and new marketing efforts that are improving visibility and both internal and external communications. Kem Krest is a provider of warehousing and distribution services, pick-and-pack fulfillment, kitting, assembly and other value-added services.
* Third-party logistics provider SGI of Indianapolis, which helped a client achieve a more cost-effective way to produce package literature inserts--eliminating the waste of overproduced material, reducing overall program costs, and reducing picking errors. SGI designed a new on-demand printing and fulfillment program that is saving the client at least a quarter million dollars annually.
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SERVICE
Staff Source is a Hammond-based staffing agency that provides client companies with quality workers and immediate staffing assistance. It maintains a large database of qualified workers, and can match client company needs with the skills of specific employees in the database.
But the company saw that there were missed opportunities in the direct-hire segment of the industry. "Most notably was the frustration that carne with knowing we had a great job candidate in their field of expertise, bur didn't have an open job order for him or her," says partner Mirko Marich.
The company's Available-CandidateList.com Web site is a new way to help some of the qualified workers in its database find gainful employment. Every week the company interviews more than 100 job candidates, and the cream of the crop in terms of work ethic, skill and presentation are presented in the monthly updates of the Available Candidate List that is distributed to more than 4,000 existing and prospective client companies. Since launching the concept about a year ago, the company has seen a dramatic increase direct hire sales.
"While a simple concept, it's proven to be a valuable tool, for both Staff Source on the business development aspect of our business and for companies to use in their recruiting efforts," Marich says. "Conventional sales efforts have limitations in that timing is everything. This approach minimizes the rime a company like ours spends by reducing time placed on sales calls and allowing a greater emphasis on customer care, recruiting and providing a highest level of service to our client base. The main advantage is the client or perspective client has the opportunity to see the best of the best and can immediately decide if that candidate is the type of person they are seeking for their current needs in a very quick and timely fashion."
Other service finalists included:
* Carmel-based ChaCha Search Inc., which allows users to ask any question via text message and receive a snappy answer in a minute or two. The latest venture from serial entrepreneur Scott Jones, ChaCha is enjoying explosive growth, with hall a million users and more than 10 million queries since the mobile text service launched a year ago, and satisfaction ratings of 83 percent (compared with 54 percent for Yahoo and Google SMS).
* Internet marketing gum Hanapin Marketing of Bloomington, which specializes in Web site development, pay-per-click advertising and search engine optimization; since launching in 2004, it has grown to eight employees, with 75 clients on its roster. Its addition of Web services meant more jobs and a revenue increase of nearly 26 percent in not quite a year and a half, and Web work is now up to a fifth of the company's revenues.
* Carmel-based Seven Corners Inc., which specializes in travel health insurance and since its launch in 1993 has enjoyed significant growth, becoming one of the leading players in its industry. Its 2008 revenues are projected to be twice what they were in 2004, and in 2007 it processed more than a hundred million dollars in claims submitted by its more than 15,000 policyholders.
* Indianapolis-based T2 Systems Inc., which focuses on the $20 billion parking industry, with enterprise software solutions for parking departments and authorities. It created a subsidiary, Citation Collection Services, to help it provide a more unified approach to customer needs, and in doing so has helped customers improve their citation collection rates, sometimes by 100 percent or more.
NOT-FOR-PROFIT AND GOVERNMENT
Those in Indianapolis know just how big The National FFA Organization's events can be, having hosted more than 50,000 visitors for the national FFA convention each year since 2006. The gathering was not just the largest to come to Indy, but also for the first rime used online registration--a development that earned the organization the BKD Indiana Excellence Award in the not-for-profit and government category as well as the overall award as the top entry.
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Before adopting online registration, orders were faxed in, a complicated and costly endeavor. "Each year, we would have dose to 4,000 schools sending representatives," says the organization's chief operating officer, Doug Loudenslager. Handling all that paperwork required the attention of at least two full-time employees during convention season, he says.
The project had a half-million-dollar budget, but only $131,500 was spent. Annual cost savings are more than $283,000, and registrants appreciate the accuracy and convenience. Equally important, the new system is great for the FFA's image, Loudenslager says. "It presents the National FFA Organization as an even more professional organization. That positive image is a plus as we work with business and individual sponsors."
Other finalists in the not-for-profit and government category included:
* Indianapolis-based social services provider Choices Inc., which piloted a project aimed at reaching troubled youth earlier, when their needs are less intensive, in hopes of keeping them from progressing on to more intensive and costly services. The project reduced delinquency and freed resources to serve more people.
* College Mentors for Kids Inc., an Indianapolis-based, statewide not-for-profit that exposes youth who are at-risk of lifelong economic disadvantage to the opportunities of higher education. In 2007 and 2008, the group increased service numbers by 18 percent and dropped the cost per mentor match by 29 percent.
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