News
Is Your Business Balanced?
Cutting Costs to a Bad Business How to Create an Effective Budget Through Balance “I’m gonna cut costs.” That was the recent statement from a presidential candidate on how he would balance the federal budget by reducing the expenses of specific government agencies. But when I looked into the budgets of those agencies, I found […]
Read More...Good Company Differentiators
Good company differentiators are mainly product, process and people with different emphasis based on the business type. I think process rules all, but good people are required to develop good process. Good process isn’t dependent on “star employees” to execute. Good process is repeatable and offers attributes a customer wants – speed, cost, timely delivery, […]
Read More...Errors are Opportunities
There is a saying that mistakes should be treated as treasures not trash and a recent experience reminded me of this truism. While standing in a client’s warehouse an angry customer service rep approached with a customer complaint. The customer had twice received lowercase wooden letters instead of uppercase! The same error twice and what […]
Read More...Distribution System Dilemma:
Whether Robots or People, Process is the Key to Success Without a solid process, even the most technologically advanced distribution system will fail. You’ve probably heard about drones delivering packages in the not-too-distant future, and I believe it. There is so much technological capability available to distribution centers these days, it’s almost scary. I’ve seen […]
Read More...Use Diagnostic Tools and Stop Fighting Fires
Realizing there is a problem with your business is easy in most cases. The hard part is identifying the cause of the problem, and then creating a plan to address it. Unfortunately, most managers spend too much time “fighting fires” without regard to their causes. In some cases, firefighting has become an accepted part of […]
Read More...Death, Taxes and Forecast Error
Focus on what you can actually Control As you read this we are in the middle of re-starting a business that was on the verge of shutting down just three months ago. It’s an interesting story for another time, but suffice it to say we need a forecast for a lot of reasons. The problem […]
Read More...Dark Matter and the Profits it Destroys
According to Wikipedia, “dark matter” is an unidentified type of matter that explains a number of otherwise puzzling astronomical observations. It is basically un-seeable. Scientists think it’s there but it is hard to observe and quantify. That makes it almost unscientific but, generally speaking, scientists think it’s real. We see a similar phenomenon in business […]
Read More...Costs Are Like a Waterbed
How to Really Lower Costs I heard the phrase “costs are like a waterbed” recently in a discussion about how expense management often doesn’t live up to expectations. Press cost down in one area, and it inevitably increases somewhere else. For instance, a concrete manufacturer chose to postpone routine maintenance expenses to save $5,000. The […]
Read More...Would You Buy Your Own Business?
The Answer is in the Process. It’s a powerful question if you are honest with yourself. Imagine for a moment that you did not already own a business and an exact replica of the one you currently own was for sale. Would you buy it? Is yours one of the good ones? Are you better […]
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