Ready, Set, No!

With the work we undertake with one of our great clients, they send us their Dashboard, each day, that summarises what has happened in the business, that day. It contains key financial and non-financial data, which they transpose from their in-house software system, and generally provide some commentary about the day's happenings in the business.

Late one afternoon, we received our regular, daily update, with the following thrown into the mix:

?"We had the aircon people booked in today but they will be returning on Monday as they didn’t have a tall enough ladder"

What is, seemingly, a throwaway line reveals a huge amount, not about my client, but about the air conditioning business that was supposed to be looking after my client. It raises questions, like:

1. Who is planning the work for the service technicians in that business, each day, and how is it planned out?
2. Does the company not retain data about each of their client sites, with specifics around access, special equipment requirements and the type of business that it is?
3. When the service team is sent on the road each day, are they thrown a list of jobs and locations? Or, is a conversation taking place, between someone at head office and the service techs, before they go on the road, to discuss the day's happenings?
4. What money are they making on service calls vs. what money could they be making on service calls, if they sorted themselves out?
5. What's the level of frustration that their clients are experiencing when the air conditioning service technicians needs to come back twice to site, and disrupt proceedings for a second time?
6. What level of confidence does this instil in the minds of the client that this supplier can get the "big stuff" sorted, if they can't manage the "small stuff"?
7. What questions are being asked of the client, before booking in the service call, to gain as much information as possible, that will make the experience as seamless as possible, for the customer?

Once, when working with a great client on putting together a modular training syllabus for their business, we were on site with them, and their team, on a Saturday morning, as they recorded, on video, how they went about their work. What struck me was that the first 20 minutes on site were spent trying to find water, to hook their equipment up to? On this particular day, there were six of their team on site. That's two hours of lost time, all because there was no site data, for a location they'd visited annually for over a decade, retained in their operating system.

Whether you're running a team of service technicians, bending steel in a met fab shop, or managing multiple client files in your professional office, what are the little inefficiencies you've allowed to creep into your business, that could be substantially impacting your profitability.

This Week's Tip

Profit is generated in many different ways in business. One of the keys is through the efficient allocation of resources, particularly when you're undertaking low margin work. Minutes are dollars.