Finding Common Ground Between CFO and COO–Part 8

[Continuation…]

Creating Irrefusable Offers: Example No. 1

A relatively small manufacturer had several large accounts in its market. However, due to the firm’s smaller size, the large accounts were quite reluctant to buy from it. Apparently, the buyers were afraid that the smaller manufacturer would not have the capacity to deliver the large quantity orders on time.

By setting about to understand its customers and its market better, this small manufacturer was able to discover that, while the larger accounts bought in large quantities—in order to get the price-breaks associated with such large quantity purchases—the firms did not actually consume the large quantities immediately. Instead, they ended up warehousing them for some period of time.

Here is the customizable/upgradeable offer that got the smaller manufacturer in the door with these big accounts:

“Agree to buy from us in the same quantities you have been buying from our competitors (e.g., 250,000 units at a time). We will match the competitors’ prices for these items during an introductory period—so you can gain assurance that we can deliver and you are fully satisfied with the quality. However, since you generally consume these at a rate of about 50,000 units a month, that is how we will deliver them to you and invoice you for them.

“In this way, we will save you the costs and headaches related to storing and handling the excess inventory. Additionally, you may customize your delivery rate—up to double—for any given month with just an email or a phone call to (XXX) XXX-XXXX and seven (7) days’ notice.

“Once you are fully satisfied with our service and quality, you may upgrade this plan by a) adding more products to the purchase agreement, and/or b) increasing your purchase volume on any product at special rates.”

This offer turned out to be a win-win. It helped the customers improve their results while allowing the small manufacturer to do business with the larger accounts without having to make additional investments in production facilities. (It was hard for the small manufacturer to produce 250,000 units at once, but they could easily produce and deliver 50,000 to 100,000 units a month without fail.)

This offer provided additional benefits for the large manufacturers: By taking delivery and being invoiced for the smaller quantities on a monthly basis, the large manufacturers actually experience improved cash-flow.

Creating Irrefusable Offers: Example No. 2

A pasta-maker wanted to take over a supermarket chain’s ordering process by employing vendor-managed inventory (VMI). When the chain’s management balked at the idea, the pasta company developed its own irrefusable offer. The pasta-maker said that they would park a truckload of pasta on the lot of the chain’s distribution center. If, at any time, the pasta-maker failed to deliver on-time what the chain needed, the chain could take whatever was short from the truck free of charge.

This irrefusable offer gave the chain’s management and buyers the assurances they needed to move ahead with the VMI plan. The pasta-maker, however, was so capable that the truck did not have to remain in the chain’s parking lot for long.

Here, again, we see the irrefusable offer being constructed around Toyota’s definition of quality—the customer’s measure of the experience and improved results. Also note that this irrefusable offer was targeted at a market of one with a consciousness of the customer’s specific needs and concerns.

[To be continued…]

Finding Common Ground Between CFO and COO–Part 7

[Continuation]

In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, we introduced the following two diagrams as a pair:

 

This first is a generic statement of dimensions as “effectiveness” and “differentiation.” The second diagram restates these dimensions in terms familiar to anyone who has seriously touched upon constraints management or the Theory of Constraints. Here the dimensions are “Increasing Throughput” and “Breadth of Market through Irrefusable Offers.”

The concept was first introduced by Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt in his book It’s Not Luck. Later he clarified by saying, that a Mafia offer is “an offer [your trading partner] can’t refuse.”

But what, exactly, is an “irrefusable offer” (aka: “unrefusable offer” or “Mafia offer”)?

Irrefusable Offers

The concept behind the “Mafia offer” or the irrefusable offer is that it is an “offer you make to your market—your prospects and [or] customers—to make them desire your products or [and] services” [Theory of Constraints Handbook, p.604] so much that they simply cannot refuse to do business with you. And, to be effective, the offer must be one that your competition cannot or will not easily copy.

Rephrasing that statement using Toyota’s definition of quality, it means making an offer where the customer anticipates an experience and results that far excel anything else in the marketplace. Getting to this point requires the CFO and COO to understand the various market segments that they serve in fresh, new ways.

A good starting point to is to ask: “What is some part of my market or industry has a unique need—or a unique combination of needs—that is not being met by any of our competitors?” In order to gain this insight, the CFO and COO should begin to see how they can blur products into services and services into products.

Between you and your target markets sit several “customizable” options—the augmented product. For example, your market may be office supplies—rather generic. But the way you deal with that generic market can become a dramatic differentiator and lead to the creation of irrefusable offers.

• Product  - Consider the selection, quality and variety of your product offerings.
• Connection – Consider that the experience of doing business with a sales representative in person is different from doing so over the phone; a paper catalog is a different experience than buying on-line; even the quality of the on-line experience can make a difference (e.g., What does your Web store remember about your customers’ preferences in products, delivery methods, and so forth?)
• Speed – Buying a product that is delivered same-day is different that buying a product that is delivered tomorrow or next week
• Other intangibles – Taking credit cards for payment is a different experience than custom billing; Offering payment terms on major purchases is different from a one-size fits all policy on payments; Personalizing products—colors, sizes, quantities, imprinting, etc.—all change the customers’ experiences and results; ad infinitum

Beyond those augmented product options, today’s sophisticated trading partners are looking for even more, and rather than seeing these as insurmountable challenges, the CFO and COO should be joining forces to find ways to make some or all of these things happen.

• Customizable – More and more products and services are being made customizable to the customers’ specifications and desires.
• Upgradeable – Customers almost always see more value in products where the life-cycle is extended through built-in or optional upgrades. Consider, for example, smartphones and other mobile devices where the operating systems are automatically upgraded with little or no user intervention. Consider those products now being offered with guaranteed trade-in values at the end of a normal lifecycle. Consider those products that a modular, where the customer can start with the “basic” (lower cost) model and extend the product’s capabilities over time by purchasing add-on functionality.
• Online – Even greeting card companies are now offering “smart” greeting cards that are interactive with online services. This drives the customer experience into completely different realms when compared to the simple card-and-envelope. Consider the ability to now offer interactive online training to accompany a product or service purchase. The training need not be limited to only how to use the product or leverage the service. Why not consider customized training about how to best apply the product/service in a particular industry (for example) to increase profits for your customers?
• Anytime access and response – Firms are now offering online knowledgebases to help their customers get more out of the products and services their customers buy. But some have gone a step beyond. Some firms now proactively monitor their customers’ online activities on their website and, when it seems the customer may be having difficulty finding the solution to their problem, a remote agent offers interactive real-time customer support 24-hours a day, seven days a week.
• Learning, anticipating and filtering – As your customers interact with your firm, your firm needs to be constantly learning so that your firm’s response will anticipate your customers’ future needs and filter out those elements that are clearly of little or no use (at present) to your customers. It is wonderful if a hotel chain places in the guests’ rooms a complementary snack for members of its rewards program. But it is even better if, over time, the hotel chain learns that a particular guest prefers chocolate chip cookies to peanut butter cookies and Perrier to spring water, so that no matter which hotel the guest visits, his or her favorite snack is always what is provided.

[To be continued…]

Finding Common Ground Between the CFO and COO – Part 4

[Continued from Part 3]

The Banking Trade

Our next example of how businesses might leverage business intelligence (BI) to segment their markets and thus allow them to increase throughput in significant ways comes from the banking industry. In this case, a bank creates a data bridge between a legacy database and databases maintained by its departments. The new application gives branch managers and other users access to business intelligence to determine who their most profitable customers were and which customers might be above-average targets for cross-selling new products.

Implementing these new tools liberated the IT staff from the task of generating special analytical reports for the departments and gave department personnel relatively autonomous access to a far richer source of customer-related data.

However, the bank need not stop with “cross-selling.” Consider that if the bank has information on “the most profitable customers,” they could dig deeper to determine the geographic and demographic corollaries among their “most profitable customers.” Uncovering and analyzing these corollaries employed in conjunction with a simultaneous thrust to unlock what the bank’s employees know—that is, tribal knowledge—might help the bank develop carefully targeted irrefusable offers. Such offers would undoubtedly allow the bank to

• Sell more existing products and services to new customers
• Create new offers that will attract new customers from the “most profitable” demographic and geographic market segments
• Create new offers that may interest existing customers and make offers that may be even more profitable for the bank

 

Your Business

Regardless of your industry, it is highly likely that a joint effort made by the CFO and the COO to unlock and join two valuable sources of data will lead to many valuable ideas for increasing throughput. Those two sources of data are

• What is available through (formal or informal) business intelligence about your customers
  
  with
• What is available—but probably undocumented and poorly understood—in the minds of your managers and employees in the form of tribal knowledge.

For this reason, I strongly suggest that for most SMEs (small-to-mid-sized business enterprises) the very first place to look at rapid ROI from business intelligence is to be found in market segmentation.

Understanding Your Customers’ World

One of the errors made by CFOs and COOs in most organizations use a definition of “quality” that is totally objective. After all, how else could or should the firm measure it? Most use a definition along the lines of “without defect” or “within tolerances” or “meeting or exceeding specifications.”

Toyota, however—the firm that came from behind to become a dominating automobile and light-truck manufacturer throughout the world—has learned and predicates it operations on an entirely different definition of quality. Toyota’s measure of quality is:

Does the product make the customer’s experience and results better or not?

Toyota’s concept of quality originated from concepts introduced to Japan in the 1950s by W. Edwards Deming. It was Deming who said:

“Constantly improve the design of product and service. This obligation never ceases. The consumer is the most important part of the production line.”

As a result, Toyota’s measure of quality takes into account, not just what the customer buys, but also:

• Who buys the product: Because the who will lead to different expectations and different feelings about the experience and the results expectations.
• When the product is purchased: Because the circumstances leading to the purchase of the vehicle will also contribute significantly to defining the experience and the results expectations of the buyer.
• Why the product is selected: Because the why is another significant contributing factor to the buyer’s experience and to defining the buyer’s expected results.
• Where the product is purchased: Sometimes product purchases are driven by regional factors (e.g., climate, urban versus rural or back-woods). These factors will affect the buyer’s experience and results expectations.
• How the transaction is structured: The economic construct of the transaction may include multiple factors such as the duration of the warranty, the payment terms, the time of delivery or lead-time, and more. These factors also influence the buyer’s experience and the sense of results.

Segmenting the market requires the whole supply chain to understand the customer because, fact of the matter is, No one in the supply chain has made a sale until the end-user has made a purchase. This is why both the CFO and COO should seek first to understand their customers. Next they should seek to segment their market—because different customers buy under differing circumstances and for different reasons.

These actions should lead to a plan for the creation of irrefusable offers which should, in turn, lead to rapid ROI.

[To be continued…]

The New ERP – Part 35

Death by data

Writing for the Aberdeen Group, Matthew Littlefield and Shah Mehul suggest, "The only way for manufacturers to achieve world-class performance [is] by providing greater visibility into what [has] long been the black box of production. And the only way to do that [is] to start collecting a lot more data on work in process (WIP)." (Littlefield and Mehul 2009) This is an all-too-common misconception that originated long before the inception of the computer, but has been dramatically augmented and expanded since computing power was made available to the business at low cost and on an unprecedented scale with the introduction of the personal computer.

A never-articulated, but oft-held, belief amongst business executives and managers is that more data leads to better management. This thought has been sometimes carried to the extreme in the minds of some executives – and fully supported by their all-too-willing IT departments – to the point that the concept may be formulated along the following lines:

1. More data will help me make better decisions
   
2. Better decisions means that, as a manager, I will be more effective and make fewer mistakes
   
3. If I can know "everything" – have all the data – about my operations, I can manage flawlessly
   

Even as I write this, I am certain that there are business owners, executives and managers busily scouring the Web for new "business intelligence" tools as the next real wave in ERP.

Nevertheless, all the data can tell an executive is what has happened. Data, by its very nature, is entirely historical. (Yes, there are "forecasts," but forecasts – if they are known for anything – are best known for being wrong. Not a reputation likely also sought by executives and managers in pursuit of "flawless" management.

What the historical data cannot tell the executive is, "What lever should I push or pull to produce some particular outcome in the future – an outcome that assures improvement and not just added cost, expense or consumed capital?" Only a sound theoretical framework about how the executive's "system" – read: whole organization – works (or fails to work) can aid him or her in finding "the right lever" and applying the correct amount of force in the proper direction.

Employing reams of data will not keep you and your management team from spending precious time, energy and money optimizing the efficiency of departmental silos while reducing the efficiency of the organization as a whole. Investments in business intelligence in the absence of a sound theoretical framework will not prevent you and your managers from building work-arounds to keep work moving instead of solving problems that repeatedly delay revenues or disrupt operations. In fact, data – wrongly understood and improperly applied – may actually move your management team to take actions that sacrifice quality and lead time in a mistaken attempt to increase production or meet standard cost goals.

What's wrong here?

As H. Thomas Johnson, professor of Business Administration at Portland State University, puts it, "Causing [such] destructive practices is the assumption that financial information not only defines the purpose of the business, it also provides the primary means to control the financial outcomes of a business…. A key reason [that] American companies fail to emulate Toyota's long-term financial results is their belief that managers can use financial targets as 'levers' to control those results." (Johnson 2006)

Professor Johnson's argument is precisely the reverse of that stated by Littlefield and Mehul. Johnson argues that U.S. executives and managers tend to believe that they can employ relatively linear and one-dimensional data – the data they use to report on the financial performance of operations – to "understand, explain, and control" the results of those operations, "even though the results emerge from nonlinear and multidimensional operations." Toyota's executives and managers do not make this same mistake.

In fact, while Littlefield and Mehul state that "world-class performance" can only be achieved by companies developing systems to give them "greater visibility into… the black box of production," Toyota has, in fact, achieved "world-class performance" by virtually assuring that accounting has no visibility into "the black box of production." In Toyota's arrangement, corporate finance knows only two things about "the black box of production": 1) what goes in, and 2) what comes out. Everything else is invisible to "accounting." In fact, it may be because "Toyota makes virtually no use of management accounting targets (or 'levers') to control or motivate operations" that they have achieved financial performance levels that are "unsurpassed in its industry." (Johnson 2006)

Understanding your operations

Inside "the black box of production," Toyota's managers are highly visual in their management style. They do not believe that they "know" or "understand" what is happening on the shop floor simply because they have worked in the plant ten years, or 20 years, or more. They believe that to understand how to improve again and again, they must thoroughly understand what is happening today – everyday. Toyota managers employ genchi genbutsu ("going to the place") to see first-hand where and why there is any delay or disruption in production of quality products. These managers understand that the sought-after financial "results ultimately emanate from, and are explained by, complex processes and concrete relationships, not by abstract quantitative relationships…." (Johnson 2006)

Whether you and your management team choose to employ the Toyota method of genchi genbutsu and asking "Why" five times to get to the root of what needs to change, or if you choose to employ the Thinking Processes (as we have discussed elsewhere on this site and in this series on The New ERP – Extended Readiness for Profit), do not fall for the line that "more data will help you manage better." Avid IT staffers aided by value-added resellers (who genuinely believe the mantra to be true) are more than happy to have you spend your money on systems to collect, organization and report on more and more data. However, if you do not yet understand your "system" thoroughly – if you have not yet developed a sound theoretical framework by which to manage your enterprise – most or all of what you spend to obtain "more data" will be wasted.

©2009 Richard D. Cushing

Works Cited

Johnson, H. Thomas. Manage a Living System, Not a Ledger. December 2006. http://www.sme.org/cgi-bin/find-articles.pl?&ME06ART83&ME&20061210&&SME& (accessed November 18, 2009).

Littlefield, Matthew, and Shah Mehul. Operational Excellence in the Process Industries: Staying Profitable Through the Downturn. White paper, Boston, MN: Aberdeen Group, Inc., 2009.

The New ERP – Part 25

Choosing a vendor or reseller

In the traditional Everything Replacement Project, there are several different paths that a firm may take to decide which reseller they wish to employ in the project. (Here I will use the term "vendor" or "reseller" interchangeably to some extent. There is real distinction, and I do not mean to minimize that difference. If your firm is choosing from among value-added resellers – "resellers" – then they have a greater opportunity to select the actual personalities that will be involved in the deployment. On the other hand, if you are dealing with a national or international vendor directly, it is quite likely that you will be "stuck" with whomever is assigned to your account by the vendor barring, of course, what could be a contest of wills over the personnel.)

The simplest and most straightforward approach is the one most often followed by small- to mid-sized firms. This one-step process may be flatly stated as: Decide which software you are going to buy, and then take whatever reseller happens to come along with that software. This simple, single-step process makes decision-making very easy, but it may not necessarily garner for your organization the best-qualified persons for achieving success in your Everything Replacement Project.

Other organizations recognize the risks inherent in not placing some kind of hurdle between themselves and a potential traditional ERP reseller. Therefore, either their management team or their hired consultant will create a vendor screening process. While the process itself takes various forms, it usually includes gathering seemingly important data about the potential field of resellers like:

• How long the reseller has been in business
  
• How many clients the reseller has
  
• How many times the reseller has implemented the software under consideration
  
• How financially stable the reseller is
  
• How many references the reseller can supply
  

Now, as important at these various aspects might be in selecting any vendor with which your firm wishes to do business, only one of these elements even approaches what might be important in helping you and your team achieve more of your goal of making more money today and in the future. Specifically, that would be the last point – client references.

Unfortunately, when most organizations get their hands on client references from a vendor or reseller, they squander the opportunity asking questions like these:

• "Was your project completed according to schedule?"
  
• "Was your project completed within budget?"
  
• "How were you treated by the reseller?"
  
• "How long did your project take to complete?"
  

Now, never mind that the differences between the project being considered by your company and the project undertaken by the reference company may be as different as night from day, what do these questions really tell you about the things you should actually be considering? Why are not there questions like the following included in the mix? Are not these the really important questions to be answered?

• "Before selling you the software, did the reseller really help you come to clear understanding of the very specific areas where improvement would lead to your firm's ability to make more money tomorrow than you are making today?"
  
• "Have you seen real and measurable improvements in your organization's ability to make more money since the reseller sold and implemented the technology in your business – over and above your preexisting growth trajectory?"
  
• "What is your calculated return on investment for the money you paid to this reseller?"
  

I am compelled to reiterate (see prior posts): Any traditional ERP effort – or any other kind of improvement project on which a firm spends its precious and irrecoverable time, energy and money – for which there is no measurable improvement in Throughput, Investment or Operating Expenses is a failure whether or not it was completed on-time, within the budget, or with huge self-congratulations.

The Toyota measure of quality

Toyota, a company that emerged from the rubble of post-World War II Japan to become the world's leading supplier of cars and light trucks, developed a very interesting concept regarding "quality." For Toyota, quality is not about defect rates or meeting specifications. Toyota's management agrees that there is only one measure of quality that counts, and that is the customer's measure.

Toyota's management principle is that the customer measures quality in two ways: the first metric is the customer's experience. Note that all of the questions in the traditional ERP's reference checking were related to the customer's experience. Toyota's second customer-centric measure of quality is the customer's results. Now, with a car or light truck for personal use, the results sought may be nothing more than ego-satisfaction (like the guy that goes out to buy a Titan pickup, or the ecology-centric individual that buys a new Prius. But, in business – in your enterprise – real results are not so ethereal.

Note that none of the questions in the traditional ERP's reference checking list of questions dealt with the vital results that drive business improvement. In my opinion, limiting reference-checking to such vain questions is only a waste of time for executives and their teams. Consider instead additional questions along these lines:

• Did the reseller demonstrate keen insight into the core business issues that are keeping you from making more money, causing inventories or demand for new investment too high, or creating undue upward pressure on operating expenses while your business is growing?
  
• Was the reseller able to work competently with your management team to unlock "tribal knowledge" so that both you and the reseller's team were able to easily comprehend what was working and not working in your organization?
  
• Did the reseller help you create a set of rational metrics by which to measure the success of your ongoing improvement efforts?
  
• Were the reseller's consultants able to help you focus your efforts and investment on the critical areas that could and would lead to making your firm more profitable in the near term, or did they replace everything and hope for the best?
  
• In short, do you feel like your organization is more profitable today – having engaged the reseller's team – than you were before?
  
• Did the reseller leave you with something truly valuable to your organization other than hardware and software?
  

Asking questions like these would surely bring to light differences between those resellers and consultants engaged in traditional Everything Replacement Projects from those delivering value-based approaches like the New ERP – Extended Readiness for Profit.

[To be continued]