Performance Improvement

We work with management, for management to improve your business performance. This can be as simple as evaluating product or customer profitability and building those changes into a change management plan or involve a more complex solution and will involve one or more of the following:

• profitability analysis
• design and implementation of metrics
• inventory management to improve working capital
• cost reduction programmes
• management information, budgeting and reporting
• supply chain analysis from a working capital perspective
• sales and marketing analysis
• new product analysis

How we work

In order to improve performance quickly, we look at those products or customers that are loss making or the least profitable. If a business can reverse underperformance the effect on earnings is dramatic – often more dramatic that investing in growth and certainly much quicker.

It can be the most frustrating experience for a company to self-analyse and it is often better to run a one-off exercise and come up with solutions and then implement.  People can find this incredibly difficult though because there are cultural blocks to change and ‘blind spots’ in every company built up over years of established ways of thinking. 

This is what we do:

We identify the real costs associated with each product and create a picture for the board that shows clearly the contribution from each product line, customer or machine or depot.  We factor in the true cost associated with each so that you the client can decide whether to raise prices, cease an activity, invest in change – operational or financial, change supplier or simply to have the information to hand to tackle a difficult negotiation with a dominant customer.  These are all consequences that have arisen once the CEO and his board have had our findings set out before them.

The value of an independent firm doing this cannot be overstated.  An independent consultant standing in front of the team and setting out the facts can break the mind sets that all companies have at times. 

Here are some of the outputs that we have created for managers:

• Pricing models for managers to use on new business
• Contribution models for profit by product and by customer
• True machine costs, utilisation and usefulness
• Working capital tie-up by product
• Peer group analysis

We have worked in the following sectors:

• Automotive
• Manufacturing
• Speciality chemicals
• Financial services
• Plant and labour hire

Contact us

For an informal free discussion about how we could help you get the best from your business, please contact Adrian Doble on +44 (0)7767 205 680, or complete and submit the online form below.