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| Strategic Planning FAQ's |
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:
This brings you some major benefits:
Do you have the inclination, time and the experience to do all this by yourself? If you don't - Call us at (978) 640-0803 today for more information. What differentiates us is that we help you achieve the business results you want. Instead of leaving you with reports and analyses, complete with recommendations that you cannot implement, in binders that collect dust on your shelves, we:
By helping you achieve the results you want, we make sure you are independent and can continue achieving them after our engagement has ended. What areas of Business do you specialize in? We specialize in being Generalists. With in-depth experience in a wide range of businesses and business functions, we often have more expertise in some areas than specialists in that area do. This breadth of experience helps us create solutions for our clients optimized to their needs. We 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. Our experience includes working with electric distribution utilities, electroplaters, building trades contractors, specialist construction firms, and others. Our high-tech experience includes firms like IBM, Honeywell, Gillette Corporation, Zellerbach Corporation, Concurrent Computer, Alliant, Applicon, ... You are a Generalist. Why hire you when I need a specialist? Being generalists with extremely wide areas of expertise does not mean we have little depth. Many years under my belt of working with many different people and cultures and getting results inspite of difficult circumstances, have given us considerable depth as well, often greater depth than some specialists with less experience. We 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. We look beyond your immediate problem to determine what other areas of your business impact it and how it affects other areas. This allows me to create a solution that resolves not only your immediate problem but, often, many others as well. 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 us to do a "Business Assessment" only, or you could engage us to get you the results you want. Either way, after discussing your objectives, we generally start off by assessing your business processes including:
The action plan includes specific recommendations to address the issues we uncover. When the action plan is done, you can either:
If you'd like us to to help and guide you in implementing the plan, we will structure a mix of on-site time and phone support to suit your timeframes and budget. We 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 we’ve helped companies and the net improvement in their performance:
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, we apply our 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. We apply our 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, we refer you to a member of our team who specializes in the area where you need help. What kinds of problems can you help us solve? Clients typically contact us because they face questions like:
We have helped clients find optimal and profitable answers to these questions and many others like them. 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. There are many ways of ensuring you have the cash you need when you need it. Each has an associated cost. Your objective is to minimize this cost. 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. A simple spreadsheet, listing by week, exactly when you expect customers to pay you and when you expect to pay your suppliers, is the lowest cost yet versatile cash management tool. Adding total expected receivables for a given week to the starting cash on hand and subtracting expected payables tells how much cash you end the week with. This ending cash becomes the "starting" cash for the following week. Negative cash-on-hand indicates you need to take preventive action and how much time you have to prevent problems. (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 when the actual transaction will occur. So, while they are acceptable as top-level indicators of preformance, they might not reveal problems with timing. You, as the person with utlimate responsibility for your company, should be concerned about ensuring adequate cash on hand at all times.) Call us at 508-481-1190 if you need any help in this area. Is my pricing competitive and profitable? Do you know when to walk away from negotiations because the deal is no longer profitable? 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. 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
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, employees need to know exactly what their responsibilities are and how well they are performing. We 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!
How long is a typical engagement? We stay with clients as long as it takes to achieve their goals. 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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