Public invitation to apply

Pursuant to and on the basis of the RS Business Excellence Prize Act, the Prize Committee shall publish, each year in February, a public invitation to apply for the RS Business Excellence Prize. The invitation specifies the conditions to be met by an applicant and the criteria by which the applications will be assessed and the winners proclaimed. It also contains information as to where and when those interested may get the invitation documents including: Application Form, Application and Assessment Criteria, Questionnaire for the Assessment of Business Excellence, and Assessor Instructions, as well as all other instructions, as appropriate. The invitation also indicates the closing date by which MIRS will accept applications.

All those interested are advised to read the public invitation published in the RS Official Gazette.

The RS Business Excellence Prize Procedure

In accordance with the public invitation, the applications which were received before the closing date are checked for compliance with the invitation terms and conditions. The applicants not having submitted their applications on time or those having submitted incorrectly prepared or marked applications, will be notified in writing. For the applications prepared in accordance with the invitation terms and conditions, the Jury will propose the members of assessor teams and submit their proposal to the Committee for approval.

Assessors

The assessors - three to five in an assessor team - are be chosen from among the managerial staff and experts who have proven, through the results of their work, excellence in business operations and quality management in their respective organisations, institutes or institutions. One of the team is nominated lead assessor and asked to lead and manage the assessment of the application. All assessors have been trained - the main objective of this training being to ensure consistency, so far as possible, in the scoring of applicants for the Prize.

 
- no conflict of interest between the assessor and the applicant company
- a blend of skills and experiences
- consideration of the activity of individual applicant.

The applicant company's management will be notified of the composition of the assessor team appointed to assess their company.

The assessment process

Copies of application document with instructions are sent to each member of the assessor team to assess independently. Each of the Criteria are assessed from the points of view of strengths and areas for improvement, and a score is assigned.

The next stage is for the assessor team to arrive at a consensus view that fairly reflects the opinions of the whole team. This is achieved at a consensus meeting where the findings of the whole team are presented and debated.

The Jurors

The Jurors belong to the assessment team together with the lead assessors and assessors, and they play an important role in the process. One of the important tasks of the Jurors is to establish the requirements they would wish to see achieved by applicants in order to receive the Prize. They then select the applicants to receive a site visit so as to ensure all the applicants with a chance of meeting the requirements are considered in more detail before reaching final decision. The Jury was appointed by the Prize Committee, and it includes six members and a chairman.

Site visit

The purpose of site visits is to verify the application, to see at first hand the procedure of self-assessment used, to clarify areas where the application may have been unclear, and to sense the atmosphere prevailing within the applicant's places of work. As a rule, the team involved in the site visit is the same as that for the initial assessment, usually augmented by one of the Jurors.

The site visit team may amend the original 'consensus' score and, following the visit, forward a final view on the applicant to the Jurors. On the basis of the site visit reports received, the Jurors make their proposal for the applicants to receive the Prize.

The Republic of Slovenia Business Excellence Board

The Director of the RS Metrology Institute (MIRS) shall send the proposal formulated by the Jury to the Board. This was appointed by the RS Government and consists of a chairman and four members. At its meeting, the Board makes a final decision as to the winners of the Prize.

Feedback report

One of the advantages of an application for the RS Business Excellence Prize is without doubt the feedback on their applications sent to all applicants in the form of a feedback report. This is an important contribution of PRSPO, since the management of the applicant company is given an assessment of the strengths and opportunities to continue improving the quality of their performance.

The preparation of the feedback report is the responsibility of the lead assessor, and shall reflect the findings on which the complete assessor team has reached consensus.

The feedback report is primarily intended for improvement.

What comes next?

An applicant should be aware that nothing is going to change, after the conclusion of self-assessment, or after the receipt of a feedback report within the Prize process, unless the appropriate actions based on the findings are taken by the organisation, which should lead towards remedying the weaknesses, and unless the key areas for improvement are determined.

According to the experience, the desired improvements have the greatest chance of being implemented when they are integrated - together with priorities - into business plans and run as a parallel process. Business plans should be regularly reviewed and action should be taken when a discrepancy appears, and this also applies to the implementation of improvements. For the majority of organisations, relating of self-assessment results with business planning and integrating the Model Criteria into the preparation of a business plan is rather new. The chance for this novelty to be accepted will increase with the business plan designers' understanding of the Model.