Streamline Business Process - Increase Profits

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What exactly do you do?

In a nutshell, I help you increase the productivity of your business and lower your costs by:

• Reengineering and streamlining your business processes
• Re-shaping and focusing employee attitudes
• Ensuring you and your employees make the "right decision at the right time"

You get these results:

• Motivated employees who enthusiastically "buy into" and support the changes
• Improved operational effectiveness and return on investment (ROI)
• Reduced overhead and waste
• Less strain and pressure on you, and
• Your company positioned for sustained growth and prosperity.

How I get all this done depends on your specific needs. After identifying and prioritizing your needs, you and I jointly select from a palette of services:

• Business management consulting and advisory services
• Business modeling and forecasting
• Business process fine tuning and streamlining
• Executive coaching
• Training programs

We then fit them into your budget and your schedule.

I am doing quite well, thank you. Why do I need your services?

What you really are saying is:
"I am doing as well as I know how, so I am not really sure if I need any help."

The problem is that you don't know what you don't know. And what you don't know may be costing you more than you can imagine.

Are you really getting as much as you can from the resources you have available?

Remember, your total return from your business is what you pay yourself annually PLUS what you get from the sale when you retire. Your total return is maximized when you optimize these factors.

Among other things, this involves:

• Creating business aids that help make correct decisions,
• Structuring your policies and procedures, and
• Re-training your employees

so that you are not essential to day-to-day operations but still retain control.

This brings you some major benefits:

• You spend less of your time tied to your company
• You spend more time in business development, further improving revenues
• You spend more time developing and nurturing key employees to be even more effective & productive
• Your company is worth more on the market if and when you decide to sell

Do you have the inclination, time and the experience to do all this by yourself?

What makes you different?

What differentiates me from the others is that I am with you from start to finish. Instead of leaving you with reports and analyses (complete with recommendations that you cannot implement without help,) in binders that collect dust on your shelves, I:

• Enter into a collaborative relationship with you where you and I are jointly responsible for achieving desired results
• Transfer knowledge to you as fast as possible making sure you can put it to use immediately in your daily work
• Roll up my sleeves and show you by example how to get things done effectively instead of merely telling you what you need to do
• Stay with you until you are sure you can continue progress without our further help

In helping you achieve the results you want, I make sure you are independent and can continue achieving them after our engagement has ended.

What areas of Business do you specialize in?

I specialize in being a Generalist. With in-depth experience in a wide range of businesses and business functions, I often have more expertise in some areas than specialists in that area do. This breadth of experience helps me create solutions for my clients optimized to their needs.

I have worked with companies ranging from single location single owner firms with less than $1 Million in annual revenues to multi-billion dollar multi-national firms. My experience includes working with electric distribution utilities, electroplaters, building trades contractors, specialist construction firms, and others. My high-tech experience includes firms like IBM, Honeywell, Digital Equipment Corporation, Stratus Computer, Concurrent Computer, Alliant, Applicon, ...

You are a Generalist. Why hire you when I need a specialist?

Being a generalist with extremely wide areas of expertise does not mean I have little depth. Many years under my belt of working with many different people and cultures and getting results in spite of difficult circumstances, have given me considerable depth as well, often greater depth than some specialists with less experience. This far-ranging experience helps me see the "big picture" when specialists cannot see things beyond their areas of specialization. As a result, they often use band-aids when major surgery is needed, or use major surgery when a band-aid would do.

  I look beyond your immediate problem to determine what other areas of your business affect it and how it affects other areas. This allows me to create a solution that resolves not only your immediate problem but many others as well with little to no extra cost. The result can be quite dramatic in its effect on your bottom line.

How do you go about getting results?

It depends on your needs and how you prefer addressing them. You could "kick the tires" and engage me to do a "Business Assessment" only, or you could engage me to get you the results you want.

Either way, after discussing your objectives, I generally start off by assessing your business processes including:

• Reviewing pertinent areas of your business processes,
• Rating how well each area performs,
• Pinpointing problem areas,
• Noting deficiencies and gaps, and
• Creating a prioritized action plan.

The action plan includes specific recommendations to address uncovered issues.

When the action plan is done, you can either:

• Engage me to help and guide you in implementing the action plan, or
• Execute the action plan yourself

If you'd like me to to help and guide you in implementing the plan, I will structure a mix of on-site time and phone support to suit your timeframes and budget. If needed, I will also create and help you implement easy-to-use-and-understand business models to help you and your employees make the "right" decision every time.

Can you quantify some of your successes?

Here are some of the ways in which I’ve helped companies and the net improvement in their performance:

• In less than a year, improved net profits from (-$58,000) to $19,000 on revenues of $879,000
• Improved projected Service profitability on a new product by $4,700,000.
• Lowered accounts receivables over 90 days from $1,900,000 to $300,000 within four months
• Tracked employee project activity and correct client billing, results unquantifiable
• Optimized employee assignment to contracts to maximize contract profitability, results unquantifiable
• Increased sales bookings from $12,000,000 to $26,000,000 in 11 months
• Cut annual insurance costs by $71,000 by redefining job descriptions and re-categorizing staff
• Lowered parts usage by 10% and defective spares by 42% in less than 6 months
• Automated quarterly report generation to have reports ready in 3 days instead of 14 while reducing labor needs from 30 hours per week to 1 hour per month

My problems are unique. How can you help me?

Just as a good doctor uses his experience to apply his knowledge of two models of human being to helping each unique patient, I apply my experience and in-depth knowledge of business to helping you resolve your unique problems and keeping your business healthy.

While each business is unique in its details and how it creates value for its clients and customers, every single business has a tremendous amount in common with other businesses. The Owner/Manager because of the intense pressure involved in daily operations, has very little, if any, time to study other businesses.

I apply my experience in diverse settings to create a unique plan tailored to your needs that gets you the results you want with resources you have available to you.

Should you need more specialized help, I refer you to a member of my team who specializes in the area where you need help.

What kinds of problems can you help us solve?

Clients typically engage me because they face questions like:

• How can we increase the effectiveness & efficiency of our business processes?
• How can we sustain our profitable record?
• How can we break this losing streak?
• How can we be so busy and still not make money?
• We are profitable,so why are we always short of cash?
• Why is it difficult to meet payroll and pay suppliers?
• Should we be bidding on this project?
• Why do we keep “fixing” the same things over & over again?
• How can we ensure the company stays on track?
• How can we bring new products to market effectively and efficiently?
• How can we improve service performance over the entire life cycle?

I have helped clients find optimal and profitable answers to these questions and many others like them.

What is my company worth?

Even if you do not plan on implementing an exit strategy soon, knowing what your company is worth helps you take advantage of unexpected opportunities or situations. Additionally, the process of determining company worth often uncovers areas that keep you from reaching your full potential.

A quick means of determining this is to get a business appraisal from a business appraiser or business broker. A web search will turn up many such services. Generally such appraisals assume the business will be sold to a "similar buyer."

However, careful analysis might reveal that positioning the company in a different strategic light might make your company very attractive to a new buyer segment. Aggressively marketing the company to this new buyer segment might make the company worth much more.

Our proprietary analytic process looks at your business processes and structure to help locate areas that keep your company from reaching its full potential. You can then determine and prioritize your next steps. We can help you create and implement the tactics needed to achieve your goals.

The difference could be hundreds of thousands of additional dollars in your pocket.

Am I as profitable as I could be?

Most people associate efficiency with profitability. While inefficient functions definitely reduce profits, excessively efficient functions can actually cost you money and reduce overall profits.

A good example is a purchasing function that aggressively purchases in bulk to buy at the lowest price. If not synchronized with consuming functions like manufacturing and sales that move materials out the door, large volume purchases often result in overloaded storage areas filled with raw materials that deteriorate and "shrink," resulting in lower overall profits for the company.

The trick is optimizing and balancing the efficiency of individual functions so that the overall efficiency is maximized. This makes the company as a whole most effective and maximizes the bottom line.

We create custom-designed processes and management tools that help you monitor and optimize productivity to increase profits.

How can I manage to avoid running out of cash?

Cash is King. While this aspect of management is vitally important to small and medium businesses, even large businesses flirt with disaster when they neglect managing their cash.

Unless you have made prior arrangements, without cash on hand to pay suppliers you cannot produce the goods and services you sell. And, without goods and/or services to sell you go out of business.

Before all else, your first step is determining what is a prudent amount of cash for you to keep on hand. Your next step is making sure you have the cash you need when you need it.

One of the best and lowest-cost methods of ensuring you always have cash on hand is cash forecasting & management. Careful projection and tracking of expected cash flows, in and out, usually shows you when you will run out of cash in time for preventive measures. I help you create a simple yet powerful spreadsheet forecasting tool, listing by week, exactly when you expect customers to pay you and when you expect to pay your suppliers.

(Remember, Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable merely indicate the total of what you can expect to receive and pay out. They do not tell you the timing of when the actual transaction will occur. So, while they are acceptable as top-level indicators of performance, they might not reveal problems with timing. You, as the person with ultimate responsibility for your company, should be concerned about ensuring adequate cash on hand at all times.)

Is my pricing competitive and profitable?

Do you know when to walk away from negotiations because the deal is no longer profitable?

Of course, you would like to bid as high as possible and still get the business. But, in the real world, you are pressured to lower prices. Your question to yourself is: How low can I go to stay competitive and still make a desired profit?

Our custom-designed decision support tools ensure profitable bids by showing you the profitable range that you should bid in. They also show how low you can bid under specific special circumstances, such as when you are looking to use excess capacity. By clearly marking out the boundary between a profitable and a losing bid, they ensure all your bids are both competitive and profitable.

Another important service I provide you is showing you how to shift the discussions away from price by focusing on the value you provide. If you can provide enough additional value and can demonstrate that added value, you can often command a premium that adds to you profit margin.

Can you help me quantify how my decisions affect my bottom line?

Business models and similar decision support tools keep timely, actionable information at your fingertips so that YOU make "The RIGHT Decision" every time.

My custom-designed business models allow you to test out different "what if" scenarios and various options and see what actually happens - with no risk and at no cost. This helps you select the optimum mix of actions to get the results you want. You know in advance how your actions will affect your bottom line.

How effective is my New Product Introduction process?

Effective NPI requires careful coordination among many functions such as - Marketing, Sales, Engineering/ Development, Customer Service, Manufacturing, Repairs and Logistics, Finance & Administration, ...

We help companies create effective NPI processes that enable all affected functions optimally contribute to new products. We also create business models to forecast revenue and expense streams for a proposed new product from concept through product retirement. By showing how tradeoffs affect the bottom line, they are very useful in arbitrating discussions during the design and planning cycles.

This results in new products being released on time and on budget, with no problems found by customers in the field and no subsequent hidden costs being absorbed by down-line functions like Customer Service and Logistics / Repairs.

These processes are easily extended to Life Cycle Management (LCM,) covering the entire product life cycle. With highly effective NPI and LCM you get substantial ongoing financial and operational benefits particularly towards product retirement.

How can I get employees to perform their best?

For sustained top performance, in addition to specialized job knowledge, employees need

• coaching and training in their job needs and requirements,
• to know exactly what their responsibilities are,    and
• how well they are actually performing

I offer a number of coaching/training programs that give you and your employees the skills and knowledge needed to improve performance.

Then, to tell employees exactly what is expected of them and the criteria by which they are measured, I create detailed job descriptions that show each employee exactly what they need to do in order to succeed.

These descriptions include automated performance evaluations and appraisals which connect with performance-based incentive bonus programs designed to reward only good performers while showing less-productive employees what they need to do to improve their job performance and qualify for the incentive bonus.

You quickly see bottom line improvement from the employee productivity improvement that follows.

A longer term and more subtle benefit is that you can now delegate more to your employees and know tasks will be completed on time and as you want them done. This frees you for things only you can do, like strategic planning that increases the value of your company.

What is the typical outcome for clients?

Clients achieve the results they wanted. Period!
To ensure clients can sustain these results I give them:

• Tools, like forecasting models, that keep critical information always at their fingertips
• Easy-to-use business models that help them make the "right" decision every time.
• Streamlined business processes for maximum effectiveness
• Means of ensuring each employee is effective in achieving his/her objectives.

How long is a typical engagement?

I stay with you for as long as it takes you to achieve your goals and abjectives
Not one day more or less.
An implicit rule at all times is that I will stay until you can sustain desired results without further help.

What role do you typically assume?

This varies based on each client’s needs. Roles vary from acting Chief Operating Officer (COO), Interim General Manager, advisor, coach, mentor, guide, analyst, program manager, and even “Dutch Uncle,” when necessary.

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