Which sounds more like your company?

 A. You're pretty sure that you have a customer service plan which  measures satisfaction.  It is, or should be, reviewed regularly by...someone,  who reports the results to upper management when there's a problem.   Communication should be fast, although your not completely sure, but it's not  really your area.  It is being taken care of, that you know.  Revenue is slowly  improving, so the company must be doing something right.  You don't know  what the program costs, but the accountants haven't squawked, so it must be  acceptable.

 B.  Customers are regularly asked for their feedback, whose results  are recorded in a standardized database.  The data is reviewed by  an assigned person whom everyone knows, and is disseminated as  least once per month, and more often when needed, as the data  is available on-demand.  Plus, the data is folded into ongoing  amendments to the marketing plan, which of course your company  also has, to maximize what is effective, and to stop what is not.   You have several years worth of data to draw comparisons against,  which helps you to see what works when economic times are poor,  moderate or good.  You know where your customers come from at various times of the year, and how much they  are likely to spend on each visit.

 

If "B" doesn't look familiar, it might be time to review just how your company is operating.  It's easy to become distracted with rising transportation costs, changing suppliers, competition, innovation, sales, paper work, and all the other things you must do just to stay in business.  Leaving customer patronage to chance is not the way to continue success for you, your employees or your customers.  We also look at other types of plans, like different suppliers, growth, debt, efficiency, employee satisfaction and name a few.  For example, we've known since 1913 that an assembly line is how to produce a large quantity of products efficiently.  But that does not mean  that part of the process could not be improved, modernized, or outright replaced.

Part of the original modern production line at Ford Motor Company is shown.

 If your production line had to stop because your primary supplier ran out of parts and your secondary supplier  had only low-grade components and your tertiary supplier forgot who you were, it means there's likely a problem  with your inventory process, delivery system, and/or periodic reviews of the manufacturing process.  These  problems are not due to lack of highly trained personnel -- usually the contrary.  Your achievers are busy doing  just that.  Allowing somebody else to help you review, particularly when they are not involved in the day-to-day  operations, often leads to original ideas and observations, or in some cases bypasses possible friction points  where two groups do not communicate well with one another.

 Perhaps you have developed a marketing plan.  Money is spent, the plan is put into action.  But was the plan  effecient?  Should you switch strategies, or just modify the existing strategy?  Or perhaps the whole objective  needs to be changed.  This can be difficult to review if you did not record the thought process of what led to the  original marketing plan in the first place.  We will show you how to document, plan and later measure the results  of such a plan -- automatically -- so you later can compare results to objectives, and quantify just how close you  got to your original objectives. 

 No one said running a business was easy.  AG Advice and Support will help you look at your business  processes, or help to build ones where none exist.  We will show you how to measure the results of a process  consistently, and how to use the results in future plans.  Sounds easy?  So is investing in the stock market -- buy  low, sell high.  It's not the concept, it's the discipline that makes the process work.

 

"An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage."

- Jack Welch