Rebooting Your business after lockdown – What will this mean?

When I talk to business leaders in North America and Europe, it comes down to a few key elements – here, I would like to concentrate on just two essential aspects. – the lifeblood of any company -Sales and Supply Chain.

Putting to one side the challenges of remote working, getting staff re-engaged ( I will address this with some new insights next week), and ensuring safety, let’s look at the problems and processes to restart Sales and Supply Chain successfully.

First, let us consider the full scope of this challenge. To switch off a business and its supply chain, manufacturing, service delivery, and customer orders with Government or CEO directives is relatively simple, especially when lives are at risk – “you just do it”. At an extreme, most business has evacuation processes for emergencies that are well-practiced. Most, if not all, have had no experience or tested processes to resume business after 2-5 months closure or operating at between 5% and 30%! And re-opening a business is anything but simple.

I have used the term REBOOT in the title of this article because this is more than a RESUME after the holidays. I’d like to use restarting a laptop as an analogy. 

Much like a laptop that had seven applications running each with ten windows/files open, often with several huge memory gobblers and has not had its programs and processes updated in a while and has been put to sleep hastily. A Sleep followed by Resume command will simply not work. It will not provide the agility and responsiveness that the user, or in this case, the market demands. It will ultimately risk a major CRASH, resulting in losses or worse that, dreaded “blue screen of death” that locks you out, potentially permanently, from your laptop (or in the case of your business, worse, the market).

So what are the elements critical in the REBOOT of the business-related explicitly to Sales and Supply Chain? As volatility continues and new normal is still blurred, a layer of Risk Management must be put on all plans.

For Sales – Existing stock. How can we turn this into cash? Are customer demand signals reliable short-term and medium-term? Do our terms and conditions, especially around lead time, minimum order quantity, pricing, payment, order confirmations, order cancellation/postponement, reflect the current risks. Are they competitive in the market place and can you work with them or do you need to flex some elements?

Supply Chain – Do we have enough visibility into the suppliers and their suppliers to assess the overall impact and risk accurately? Do you know the supply routes and understand the risks and the alternatives, including their options, cost, and risks? Have you re-evaluated the inventory positions not just against the current demand but also considering goods with shelf life and planned NPIs / product/service upgrades?

Has the REBOOT of the Sales Inventory Operational Plan SIOP really got the best foresight to make decisions on which sales orders have real demand with a line of sight to end customer and in the other direction line of sight to your suppliers and their suppliers or are they based on previous norms and hope? What does the operational SIOP look like when translated into the Profitability, Growth, and Cash Flow forecasts? Does it still make sense, or does the plan need to be adjusted before execution?

Most companies, as they head towards the new normal, recognize that demand levels have changed. They are now looking to normalize their SIOP for Q3-Q4 2020 and the first half of 2021. Following the above questions and methodology is essential in navigating this process.

Jonathan Watt MBA, B.Eng (Hons) MCIPS has supported businesses over the last 30 years optimize their Strategy, Business Plans, Sales, Supply Chain and SIOP in start-up, turnarounds with SMEs and large multinational across Technology, Automotive, Aerospace, Rail, Industrial, Oil and Gas, Renewable Energy, Professional Services and Construction. Jonathan works with a broad network of like-minded professionals in UK, Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia. A Sales & Supply Chain Reboot Workshop can gain an understanding of key risk factors using advanced DD tools as well as providing you with a robust SIOP process to successfully restart this critical part of your business – can be facilitated remotely. Please message me to discuss details and options.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/reboot-sales-supply-chain-jonathan-watt

#Sales, #Supply Chain, #Recovery. #consultancy. #COVID-19, #SIOP, #Sales & Operational Planning, #Business Planning

Here is an article I recently wrote and was published

Here is an article I recently wrote for the publication EnergyEngineering looking at the increase in EV’s and their impact on the Electricity Grid.

Contact Energy Engineering directly for a hardcopy of their publication. Energy Engineering magazine provides a diverse and engaging mix of features written by industry professionals on a fast-moving industry that is significant from an engineering, environmental, and political perspective.

As an addendum to this article which underlines the rapid growth as important although the number of EVs compared to the total population is small. With disruptive technologies, especially around software and electronics, there is often a miscalculation of the speed of deployment and market share due to not recognising that the early-stage growth is in fact exponential and not liner. Remember Kodak and the assumption that digital cameras will grow according to linear extrapolation according to moore’s law (processor development).

One of my specialisms is in the area of energy technology and supporting companies successfully introduce new products and scale. Contact me further for a discussion

The article looks at the way technology advances are supporting businesses to have another level of interaction with their customers, which enhances their value proposition providing revenue opportunities.

Existing approaches with customers in a buy what we have model is the old way!

These are the four new connected sales and operations strategies : –

1. Fast with minimum friction response to desire. – Operations need processes that are fast with minimum customer friction throughout the process. Make it easy! Convenience beats loyalty in retail and reality. Amazon’s one-click strategy has proven this.

2. Curated offering – Developing the offering for a customer, providing options and advice based on the customer’s needs. For operations, the task is to understand the customers desired outcome and presenting the best option. The customer’s nutritional objective supports a meal choice which defines the ingredients and the shopping cart. The process is tailored from start to finish.

3. Coach behaviour –Supporting andprompting the customer to make the right buy decision at the right time. After all, customers have been known to forget to order on time. Maintenance and replacement of goods and services are prime examples. Track and support the customer in their buying cycle.

4. Automatic Execution -Using customer data allows a business to predicts and supply-demand to a customer without individual requests. This requires a high level of trust and transparency with the customer and continuous data exchange. It can be packaged with operational performance and availability guarantees.

My takeaways are :

1.    We need to continuously look at and improve the ease with which our customers can do business with us.

The first step in this process is getting data on customer behaviour and look for existing pain points they have doing business with us, plus patterns and systems to improve their experience and value proposition.

2.    Ensuring that our digital marketing, user interfaces, order to pay processes and SIOP process are performing and are aligned.

3. Attack lead-time reduction at every opportunity that benefits the customer.

4. Implement cost-effective enabling technology for collecting customer data and improving operational processes that provide a competitive edge are available today.

How is your business addressing and looking at these? 

The article highlighted a problem I am facing with 2 MBA students I mentor, as well as solutions I have effectively used in consulting with businesses facing a strategic crisis. The key points are the classic strategy models e.g. Porter, while useful in understanding an existing business context may not provide solutions to reshaping it.

”Game-changing strategies, they know, are born of creative thinking: a spark of intuition, a connection between different ways of thinking, a leap into the unexpected.”

Here is an example of such thinking I have applied. As an undergraduate engineer I implemented Health Usage Monitoring Systems (HUMS) on helicopters to support more effective maintenance and after-service. Using the analogies from other sectors such as HUMS in aerospace, I have supported rail companies apply this approach, as well as HVAC companies accelerate the profitability of their after-sales business.

On this specific strategy applicable to driving sustainable profit in after service sales I will write a further article on this since it unlocks efficiencies, value-added services and profits in many other sectors.

Please contact me separately if you would like a discussion on this opportunity area.

Think outside the box and outside your sector.