Actual Results at Satisfied Businesses

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Streamlining Business Process Enables Achieving Multiple Objectives

Immediate Benefits:

1. Made revenue analysis reports available in three days from closing the books instead of fourteen - the original objective
2. Cut HQ labour from 30 hours a week to one hour a month
3. Cut divisional labour by eight person-days per quarter
4. Provided highly accurate results
   
   Long-term benefits:
   
5. Current and highly accurate information enabled precise channeling of marketing efforts and resources
6. New sources of information enabled creating targeted programs to encourage existing customers to upgrade to newer equipment.
7. Resolved a number of frictions between various functions and groups within the company.

Benefits 2 through 7 were not included in the original objective. By making better use of existing resources instead of using additional resources, we achieved the additional benefits without compromising the original objective.

Building Trades Contractor Doubles Gross Revenues In Eleven Months"

Redesigning internal structure, process, and controls - and by motivating key people enabled the company to increase bookings from $12,000,000 to $26,000,000 within 11 months.

Preliminary discussions with the Principals about their goals, objectives and perceptions of what they faced, showed that they realized they had a cash crunch. They were quite busy dealing with immediate day-to-day problems and understood they needed help in defining and implementing plans to help them realize their long-term goals. Our prime objective in this area was to free them from mundane tasks and enable them to focus on growing and the business.

Meeting with various senior staff members to discuss their perspectives and daily activities uncovered a number of latent and unsuspected problems. Many of these problems crossed functional boundaries and exacerbated their effects. It became quickly apparent that we needed to launch a number of synergistic operations simultaneously.

Small Electroplater improves Revenues by $77,000

Improved revenues by $77,000 and turns ongoing losses into sustainable profit within 8 months.

While the President of this electroplater (annual revenues around $800,000) knew he had problems, their sheer volume overwhelmed him leaving him unable to address them consistently and follow through.

Roy Sequeira helped him:

• Create a problem list:
• Defining each problem area
• Quantifying its impact on the business
• Prioritize the problem list
• Create an action plan that addressed each problem on the list
• Execute to plan

Reducing capital expenses on project by well over 90% at an ex-Soviet Electric Utility

A redesign of business process frees up nearly $750,000, and  enables a better use of labor helping achieve ultimate company-wide objectives.

... showed that with centralized cycle billing, the existing computer equipment, augmented by an additional $48,000 worth of new equipment could handle the billing load quite comfortably

These two steps would free up nearly three quarters of a million dollars that for the much-needed and much-desired infrastructure upgrades.

... these proposals together with his detailed analysis of additional benefits at a meeting ... showed how these additional benefits would greatly improve their plans for privatization.

Business modeling increased profits by $4,700,000

Increase top line by $4,900,000 for an outlay of only $200,000, with an additional benefit of enhanced mutual cross-functional cooperation.

This is a good example of how corporate functions in trying to improve their individual effectiveness and profitability often sub-optimize the corporate bottom line. It also shows how a good business model serving as a decision support tool can greatly improve results.

Reengineering Business Process Increases Revenues by $4,100,000

Increase international service revenues by $4,100,000. With virtually no increase in costs, all of this increase flowed down to the bottom line.

... International service revenues swiftly climbed to the $16.1 M level. When customers realized how much they had benefited in the past, adverse reaction to the corrected charges was minimal and muted. There was no resulting contract attrition.

Since there was virtually no added overhead, all the $4.1 M in increased revenues flowed straight to the bottom line.

Fundamental Analysis Averts Expensive Disaster

Avert a potential expense of hundreds of millions of dollars and a customer relations disaster.

This is an excellent example of how starting from fundamentals, knowledge how various functions operate under pressure, and the ability to integrate knowledge from different disciplines, made a significant difference to overall corporate profitability by preventing what could have easily turned into a disaster.

Business Modeling in Strategic Decision Support

Uncover serious Marketing and Service implications that would drastically lower Service margins and adversely affect market perception of the entire product line.

The contrarian approach taken by the analysis, taking nothing for granted and challenging some of the company’s fondest assumptions, was essential to finding the problem with this “opportunity.” There was a lot of initial resistance to the findings, especially when some generally accepted operational assumptions were proved wrong, but the dispassionate focus on facts carried the day.

Reorganizing Service Improves Effectiveness and Positions Company for Favorable Sale

A broad range of initiatives quickly brought situation under control, improved company effectiveness and reduced costs, to position the company favorably for sale.

Management originally focused this assignment on correcting the technical problems exacerbated by a recent release of a bug-ridden product. Roy was able to show them that a thorough systemic overhaul of the entire service structure was the only way to restore customer confidence in the company and its ability to service what it sold.

Forecasting Accuracy Of Better Than 99% turns Around Declining Service Revenues

Stems declining revenues and improves sales of service contracts.

... Since local management now had a clear idea of which contracts were up for renewal, they focused their attention on assisting their counterparts in the customer’s administration in getting renewals approved quickly. This resulted in an immediate upturn in contract renewals thus stopping a steady decline in the contract base. They were also able to sell additional services, which resulted in an increase in service revenues for the first time in years.

The very first forecast was $18.3 Million for the quarter; actual performance was $18.279 Million. The company had never been this close even in their estimates.

Managing and Sustaining Major Sales Opportunities

Increase sales and revenues by managing commitments made to prospects and delivering product and features to their expectations.

...Now the company had the information needed to globally optimize resource allocations and schedules against revenue expectations.  Quarterly revenues were now factored into scheduling decisions as Engineering management now had full knowledge how they affected sales for the current and upcoming quarters.

Roy had the process complete and running within 6 weeks with immediate results. By eliminating a major cause of lost sales, the company quickly saw an increase in revenues.

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