Keep your finger on the pulse
/I like to measure my pulse at the end of every workout to see how long it takes to return to resting. It's a great measure of overall well-being. Equally, our businesses have a few key pulses - critical activities that determine the speed at which we meet customer demands and measure our progress.
Recognizing those key health indicators and understanding how your business performs on each provides vital insights for well-being, innovation, and opportunities for getting better.
Consider three examples:
Days from "Quote to Cash" on your top revenue products
Hours from customer complaint to happy camper
Days to complete your month-end close
We all know the importance of an efficient quote to cash process. Whether this takes minutes or years, innovation around production, distribution, installation and onboarding is the mark of a great company. Most businesses could do this better.
Once your product is in your customer's hands, issues may arise as they consume it. Your business's reputation is dependant on the speed with which you can receive complaints, determine root cause, and return the customer to a happy place. Most businesses could do this a lot better!
If you conduct more than a handful of transactions each month, your Accounting team will have to work through the numbers to deliver month-end reports. It may not matter to you whether this happens on day 2 or day 22 of the month, but the time taken is a leading indicator of how well your systems serve your business. The more finagling required by Accounting, the less pristine your business information is. And that doesn't bode well for your ability to make well informed decisions on a more strategic level. Most businesses ... well, you know.
There are many other pulses that could apply. The best innovations arise from focusing on the big picture and not, for example, on the nitty gritty of the order admin process. Other big picture examples:
How long does it take to a new product from concept to first sale?
How long is your sales cycle?
How long does it take for a new hire to become fully effective?
You get the point.
The key is to have a short list of pulses that are critical for your business over the next 18 months, and to make the right moves to get each pulse to where your customers, employees and shareholders need each to be.
YOUR THREE PULSES
Try this week's 5 minute exercise to see whether you can uncover opportunities to make a better business:
List the three pulses that are most important to your company's prosperity.
For each pulse, write down the number of hours or days it takes to complete, start to finish. If that varies, take an average.
Next to each actual, write down the number of days your customer would like it to take.
Now consider what you are doing to close each gap. Are you happy with these actions? If not, what will you change?
Send your results to me at graham@primeFusion.ca and I'll set up a short call to discuss ideas to exploit the opportunities you have outlined.