Posted on Tue, Jan 26, 2010 @ 01:25 PM
Industry: Agriculture - Dairy Equipment
Function: Finance, IT, Business Development
Location: Global
Our client (a $1.5 billion portfolio company owned by a European PE firm) designed, sold, and installed sophisticated, customized agricultural systems globally. The process of design selection, delivery, onsite installation, and startup would often be the first experience a customer would have with the company. A positive experience would lead to higher wallet share capture with increasing margins in the aftermarket sale of parts, service and consumables. Conversely a negative experience would often lead to only minimal purchases (i.e. sole sourced items) and alternate vendor selections for service and material for the installation lifecycle that averaged upwards of ten years. The primary metric was the On-Time, In-Full Delivery (OTIF) of capital sales for projects. Our client was experiencing an unprecedented level of backlog and missed deliveries due to both internal and external factors primarily:
- The implementation of a new ERP system,
- A new organizational design splitting the order fulfillment process into two different legal entities,
- A new management team at a key supplier, and
- Record capital sales in 2008 as a result of high milk prices.
These factors created a degradation of capital order delivery to an estimated OTIF rate of less than 20% for the first nine months of 2008.
An MMG associate joined in the last quarter of 2008 through the end of 2009 to lead the day-to-day capital goods order management and delivery process--and to improve delivery performance and operational effectiveness, reduce inventory levels, and improve customer service. Our guy led a cross functional Project Sales team to establish processes, roles and responsibilities, documentation, and metrics for managing project orders. In addition, the team sought to improve communications between the supply chain, the sales team and independent distributors, and key suppliers. Finally, significant coordination and management was required to ensure that consistency and commonality was achieved in the North America and the European designs.
As a result, the OTIF percentage on a monthly basis improved to over 90% on a consistent basis by the beginning of 2010.
As part of the project, we also designed and led a ‘voice of the customer' survey creating a discussion and scoring template, conducting customer/ distributor interviews, analyzing data, and reporting results and actionable recommendations to the senior management committee. This allowed the MMG team to identify and address the systemic root causes of the On Time, In Full delivery failures.
Finally, the effort also included the re-implementation of the risk management system for capital good sales (suspended during the ERP installation). We introduced a customer sign-off process that validated the training, documentation delivery, and system performance--creating a written record to reference against potential, future claims, and providing critical "post-sales" expectation-setting and support.
Posted on Sat, Mar 14, 2009 @ 07:45 PM
Industry: Financial Services
Function: HR; Strategic Planning
Location: Domestic US
This
regional financial institution was stalling in its growth, under
scrutiny from regulators (US Treasury Department, Office of the
Comptroller of the Currency) and faced take-over threats.
Working with the firm’s strategic planning and
organizational development functions as well as senior management, we
aligned the firm’s human capital “management systems” (business
planning & individual development planning, incentive plans &
systems, training and development offerings), and to link these systems
with business performance. We built a corporate-wide performance
management system that enabled comparison of business results across
the firm, establishing effective communications across internal
stakeholder groups. Every senior manager accountable for a business
unit or function (more than 30 in total) built business and personal
performance plans, was evaluated against those plans, was
incentive-paid based on performance, and had an integrated development
plan.
On the basis of this effective performance
management system, the organization was able to move out from beneath
regulatory scrutiny, and return to profitable growth.
Posted on Sat, Mar 14, 2009 @ 07:42 PM
Industry: Pharmaceuticals
Function: New Product Development
Location: Domestic
A major pharma company had a slow and serial clinical-trials management process, facing challenges to integrate across teams and across functions in new drug development. We worked with business- and functional leadership to develop and introduce team-based process improvement, focused on improving the speed and effective performance within and across the business’s clinical trials teams. Our solution, an action-learning oriented approach, used contemporary team experiences, “public domain” materials, custom-developed video, and deep-dive exercises. With this well-rounded approach, the program addressed the fundamental changes in behavior needed from team members, and the changes in process needed to support faster concurrent product launch and marketing efforts, across multiple functions and geographies.
Posted on Sat, Mar 14, 2009 @ 07:32 AM
Industry: Retail Automotive, Financial Services
Function: HR; Corporate Communications
Location: Domestic US
Our client’s brand (a Japanese import automotive
manufacturer) has grown steadily to a position of global leadership in
automotive sales and service.
However, its finance company in the U. S. market
has been challenged by growth and internal cultural issues to develop
an “Employer Brand” to equal the power and recognition of the “product”
brand.
We worked with senior executives and HR
management to define the company’s “employer brand attributes,” outline
key next steps in its HR and Performance Management systems
implementation, and developed a communications plan with key
communications deliverables, designed to reach key stakeholders, inside
and outside the company.
The work overtly acknowledged and addressed the
unique needs of different workforce generations, and defined a
multi-channel communications approach to carry the message to them.