Here’s my top 5 recommendations:

1)  Assess and improve your processes

Look around.  See that crack in the ceiling?  Of course you don’t – you’ve ignored it for the last 6 years, why would you see it now?   A good business process review is in order – a “full 360” examination of how well each process is working will reveal lots of opportunities to streamline your business and cut costs – while positioning for growth.  You want to be able to handle a lot more business without a significant increase in personnel.  Contact me for a free worksheet tool to help you get this done.

2 )  Improve your customer service!

Price is interesting, but today customer service is king.  If you can’t deliver on time with high quality products and services, somebody else will.  Invest in customer service improvements.  Delight your customers, not just satisfy them.  Survey them (with tools like Survey Monkey) to make sure they’re delighted.

3)  Shorten your lead times

Like customer service, someone else will deliver sooner if you can’t.  Look at all elements of lead times – they’re not all on the shop floor, by the way.  A tremendous amount of lead time improvement can be achieve in the front office, in areas such as quoting, planning, etc.  Lead time reduction is a critical part of becoming a lean organization…so get lean already!

4)  Tighten your controls.  If you have inventory, what is your inventory accuracy level?  No, really, what is it?

If you’re going to rely on systems (as you should), one of the key metrics in your operations is inventory accuracy.  It’s at the core of all the assumptions that systems use in their logic.  I’ve heard many a business owner tell me that “we have an inventory problem”, to which I always answer “your inventory system is probably just fine, it’s you’re everything else’ that isn’t working”.  Inventory accuracy is very telling about how well your processes are defined and controlled within the system, and is the best report card for operations to measure their controls.  So, how are you measuring inventory accuracy?  Gut feel?  I wouldn’t buy your company.

5)  Invest in Ecommerce 

Still depending on that tired looking electronic brochure of a website that your nephew did for you back in ’99?  Well, welcome to the 21^stcentury.  Your customers and suppliers expect more (see #2 above).  Figure out how to collaborate via the web with your customers and suppliers – it will keep your costs low and your customer service high.  Don’t underestimate the importance of ecommerce, regardless of whether you pride yourself on the “personal touch”.  Consider that generation Y or Z customers communicate differently, and perhaps don’t think they need to speak with you.  What about your South Korean manufacturer?  Staying up until 2:00 AM is not exactly what anyone would call a productive way to spend your time.

I was informed by the attendant that they would be closing in 45 minutes.  “No problem, that’s all we need them for.  How much for two chairs until closing?” I asked.
“That will be $25 please, which includes a $5 deposit”, she said.
“You’re joking, right?  You’re not really going to charge me the full day rate for less than an hour?” I asked.
“I’m sorry, sir.  That’s our policy”, she replied.
“Are you the manager here?” I politely asked, to which she replied “Yes”.
“You must be able to do better than that”, I pleaded.  “I really feel like I’m being ripped off.”
“I’m sorry sir, no exceptions” she said (plus a whole long explanation story which I completely tuned out).

At the conclusion of our little exchange, almost like it was staged, a guy walked up with his family to return two chairs.  While still standing with the rental manager, I sensed opportunity and quickly explained my plight.  He gladly offered the chairs to me, and I offered to split the cost with him, which he refused.  Five minutes later, I was sound asleep for a much needed half hour nap.

Time was up.  No problem…it was time for dinner anyway.  I then returned the chairs and collected a $5 deposit (courtesy of my earlier friend) from my inconsiderate attendant/manager, along with a no-charge dirty look.  In case you haven’t been following, the score is attendant zero, Len $5 ahead.

For all of you loyal Attivo Group customers out there, if we ever have a policy in place that doesn’t make sense, please notify me at once so we can fix it immediately.  Customers should never feel like they’re getting ripped off.  Also, please review your own customer policies on a regular basis, and solicit feedback from your customers on how to improve your products or services.  You just might wind up with more business, not to mention a whole lot of goodwill.