Welcoming once again all my readers as I reopen my Success Story Series (SSS) with a recent story that gave me huge satisfaction. I shall do it the SAR (Situation, Action, Result) way.
I was offered a COO position in a company in Jan, 2022. This happened to be the same company that I guided in their formative years to lay down the foundation building blocks as their principal consultant.
It so happened that, with a strong foundation built during the consulting engagement in early 2021, I was called upon to make the building floors as well....and I accepted the challenge fully confident on the foundation already built by me along with my operating abilities.
When I joined the company as a COO in Jan 2022, the company was churning approximately 1500 units per month.
I took 3 months to establish the baseline on the various performance parameters before accepting the targets for the FY 2022-23 in the month of April 2022.
There were three specific mile-stone based targets given to me to achieve till March 2023 (12 months' span) -
- Record or touch a churn of 3500 units or more in a month on 3 instances (in any 3 months till March 2023)
- Record a cumulative churn of 8100 units in any three consecutive months
- Show a 20% improvement in the Collection Days to bring it down from an average of 23 days to touch 18 days in any month
The above three targets were not easy in a highly unpredictive market.
On every milestone, a mutually acceptable performance reward was also fixed to keep the motivation high.
Several actions were taken to revamp and restructure the entire organization. I am providing the vital few below -
- Human Resource Restructuring - Human Resource is one of the most important assets for any organization. With the thought that a motivated team can achieve the unachievable, Organization structure was proposed with a target of spreading our reach to PAN India operations. Policies and Standard Operating Procedures were developed and implemented. Vacant and critical positions were filled. Annual appraisal system was objectively defined tying up the organisational growth with the career growth of all the employees. A robust governance mechanism was put in place to review the performance at all levels and at suitable frequency. The board was specifically tasked to meet at least once in a month in a Business Review Meeting to review and monitor the progress and lay down the expectations for future. Since the team was growing, a comprehensive employee induction program was created along with a buddy-up mechanism for on-the-job-training and support in the initial days of joining of a new employee. A process to measure the internal employee satisfaction was also conceptualised. Salary bands were normalised to correct the pay and position disparity and a near horizontal hierarchical system (only 5 Seniority Levels) was created to announce high-impact teams for all the critical success parameters. All the above gave the much-needed momentum.
- Core Values and Organisational Culture - Core values of the organization were carefully crafted to match the mission and vision. A team work culture was recommended for adoption to use the power of 'many in body, one in mind'.
- Supplier Performance Management - Supplier Performance Criteria was suggested to include a 360-degree evaluation around cost, quality, delivery, timely response, innovation, environmental compliances and accuracy of documentation. The evaluation system helped in supplier segmentation to work and consolidate the business volume with those who scored higher.
- Customer Performance Management - We also took a critical view to preferably select those customers who matched our work-philosophy and reasonably supported us to create win-win situations on our way to achieving our goals.
- Documentary and Statutory Compliances - These criteria assumed a lot of importance to meet the stringent taxation and documentary compliances to satisfy the statutory mandates. The KYC criteria also evolved as we screened the suppliers as per the minimum qualifying requirements.
- Operating Guidelines and Mandates/Rules to bring agility in thoughts and actions - Procurement and Sales incentive schemes were conceptualised and implemented to motivate both the procurement and sales teams and this pushed our revenue relatively faster with a focus on profitability as well.
- Quality Audits and Improvement - Quality audits and inspection guidelines helped in supplying good quality material that further helped to achieve a better supplier rating from our customers to secure more and more orders as their preferred partners.
- Industry Specific Certifications - I actively worked on the certifications to prepare our organisation for future. The day-to-day work was aligned with Sustainability Standards like EPR, ESG, BRSR, OBP that helped in gaining repute among our business partners.
- Logistics Fleet : Revamp and Restructuring - A robust and reliable Supply Chain was the key to our success and a stark focus to develop and establish rate contracts with logistics partners went a long way to take us in a premium league when it came to commitment and reliability.
- IT Enablement - Speed of execution got a much-needed impetus to our process-driven approach. The smartly developed MIS reports provided valuable inputs for faster and accurate decision-making.
- 3500 units target in a month was achieved for the first time in the month of Oct 2022 and 3 such instances were achieved by December 2022 thus scaling the first milestone.
- The momentum gained in July 2022 helped in achieving the second milestone of cumulative churn of 8100 units (2100 in Aug, 3160 in Sept and 3510 in Oct respectively) also in the same month of October 2022 when we touched our all time high volume (till then) of 3500 units.
- Collection Days were brought down from 23 days to 17 days in the month of November 2022.
With all the three targets achieved (by Dec 2022) much before the expected timelines, I received applause from the entire organization and my efforts were suitably rewarded as committed to bring a huge satisfaction.
Now you know the power of diligence, focus and team work that can achieve results beyond anyone's comprehension!!!
Can you guess the company I was working for, in the above example??
