process improvements – Cooper Mann Consulting

Lean and Mean – Improving Sales and Distribution Performance

It is surprising that, even in this world of Internet marketing and online commerce, many businesses are operating at levels far below their potential. Reliant upon people rather than information and process, these businesses are weighted down by their legacy approach to getting things done. They throw money and personnel at the problem, adding more “fat” to the business and making sustainability just that much harder to achieve. The right approach, and the mantra of all manufacturers and distributors, should be to work “lean and mean”, applying technology and business principles which support agility and improved process efficiency.

The center of lean business is in operations, and includes all aspects of the “order” processing and support systems. From the point where an order is sought, to the point of order entry, and through to delivery and service – all aspects of the operation must be addressed for the business to achieve maximum success. Innovating in operational areas, such as in order management and distribution, can help the business rise above others in the market and create a significant competitive advantage.

What becomes challenging for many businesses is the fact that years of working in established “silos” often makes it difficult to introduce the cross-functionality necessary to support lean operations. It is not sufficient to simply suggest that the organization work collaboratively to streamline processes from order through to service and support. Work groups and team members must work together and adapt to delivering process improvements, following through with the actions necessary to turn the philosophy into bottom line results. Good support is required to keep customers, and a good product is necessary to support increased sales. No aspect of the operation stands alone, so each is necessary to participate in making end-to-end improvement. Additionally, back-office processes must be aligned to work collaboratively where required, supporting efficient operations rather than creating unnecessary bottlenecks or delays.

The key to developing a lean and mean, high performance operation is applying the technology and principles which translate into improved profitability and customer retention. In many cases, the same solutions which create customer “self-help” capabilities are also solutions which can address similar needs for internal business users. Ultimately, the goals are elimination of redundant or error-prone processes, establishing the sharing and secure collaboration of information throughout the organization, implementing integrated systems which allow users to efficiently perform their particular tasks, and working cooperatively with others in the supply chain to maximize the real-time capability and efficiency.

Rather than continuing to utilize basic record keeping solutions, or accounting products which aren’t prepared to address the specific operational aspects of the business, owners and managers should be looking to the tools and solutions which will help them develop the framework to support improving operational performance, turning people knowledge into sustainable business profitability.

Make Sense?

Accountants and Small Manufacturers: Getting in Front of the Ball

There’s a lot more to accountability in a manufacturing or inventory-based business than simply keeping track of money in and money out. Particularly in an economy when nobody can afford to build or stock products too far ahead of demand, it is essential that these businesses have a means to not only track and manage purchasing, manufacturing, distribution and stocking activities, but to understand conditions or trends which impact the flow of materials and cash through the business. Read more…

The True Cost of the Cloud

Excerpt from article on Intuit Accountants News Central: The True Cost of the Cloud

“Accounting professionals are strongly encouraged to adopt cloud computing models in their practices, and there can be little argument that mobility and access are driving the need. In concert with the messages supporting mobile access to business information – and the value of anytime, anywhere access – cloud service providers are strongly suggesting that the overall cost of purchasing and maintaining information technology (IT) in the business is much lower when a cloud computing approach is used.

Arguments over the total cost of IT and related services become somewhat subjective. Many business owners and managers fail to consider the value of their own time spent dealing with business technology issues, much less the time spent by in-house employees and remote workers. To further complicate the issue, dramatic changes in process support and delivery, connected service and cloud computing approaches are impacting business productivity and profitability in new and dramatic ways. As a result, every business should consider the costs and the benefits of this new connected and collaborative working model.

At the core, cloud computing is really just an outsourced IT service that addresses the various levels of application and computing infrastructure. From IaaS (infrastructure as a service) to SaaS (software as a service) and all things in between, a viable cloud computing approach for a business may encompass little more than co-location of physical server and network resources with a third-infrastructure provider to something much larger scale, such as offloading virtually every aspect of application management and delivery to a SaaS solution.

Because there is no single, correct definition of what makes up a “cloud” service model, attempting to compare costs directly to a more traditional IT approach is quite complicated.”