”Close The Gap” - Blog
Cats and typewriters or: Resilience through contractual building blocks
What have a cat, a typewriter, and Lego blocks in common? They are all part of a story about how to get out of the contractual B2B jungle many companies grow today.
Enjoy!
Surviving and thriving in the first 90 days - the poka-yoke of hiring leaders
Ever had a new job, where getting started was a breeze?
HR supported you, your boss had a good plan to get onboarded, and you got all the necessary contacts and tools laid out in front of you.
If you had, you are one of the few lucky exceptions. Many others have often the distinct feeling of sink or swim. And the higher up in the leadership positions you are, the more you are on your own…
We believe there are great alternatives and look at the topic both from the individual and from the corporate side.
Enjoy!
Functional Outsourcing: Your back-end is other companies’ front-end
Consider this: What if your highly skilled workforce could devote their energy solely to their unique capabilities, driving customer satisfaction and enhancing your bottom line? Imagine a scenario where innovative processes, products, and service solutions take centre stage, while routine, tactical tasks are seamlessly handled by specialized entities.
Is now, with the raise of machine learning and RPA, finally the opportune moment for companies to shed back-end activities?
Enjoy!
Leadership Turbocharged: Unleashing 21st Century KPI Mastery
Many businesses are still operating as if they are driving a car by solely glancing at the rearview mirror. Sounds absurd, right? Well, that's how most businesses operate. They rely on just on hindsight focused financial metrics with one months to a quarter delay.
How about a 21st century KPI Leadership System, where you'll have a clear view through the windshield with a dynamic heads-up display.
Enjoy!
How to start a Quality Revolution.
"Quality is like having an ice cream on a summer’s day: you must lick it constantly. Otherwise, you have a mess on your hands".
Quality, most people assume, is a given. But is it? Do not most of us ‘have a mess on our hands’? Do you still remember the feeling when you bought a product at home that was DOA or broken shortly after use? Or the last time you ordered something, and it did not arrive in time? How about being charged wrongly, or the return policy was confusing? These instances are examples of poor quality and negatively impact the customer experience.
It is time to start a quality revolution.
Enjoy!
Aligning the ‘Division of Labour’ with your Organisation’s Purpose, Strategy, and Financial Goals (Part III)
Welcome to the third and final instalment of our mini-series on organisation design. We believe that aligning your organisation's design with the culture and markets it operates in can significantly reduce the need for costly redesigns and organisational reshuffling.
Today, we will delve deeply into the overarching theme of "division of labour," a concept many companies consider strangely as a given. By clearly defining roles and responsibilities, we believe an organisation can mitigate friction between functions, positions, and hierarchical levels, allocating resources to work collaboratively for the firm's customers and products.
Enjoy!
Aligning Functional Organisational Design to Company Culture & Markets (Part II)
What is the correct procurement setup? Central, de-central, or hybrid? If you had asked this question before 2015, many of my peers and I would have provided a very different answer then vs now. Life moved on, and today’s world requires more sophisticated, agile functional designs.
This is the second instalment of the mini-series about organisation design. We believe that if you design your organisation in line with the culture and the surrounding markets, the costly need for re-designing and organisational reshuffling can be minimised.
Enjoy!
Aligning Corporate Organisational Design to Company Culture & Markets (Part I)
How long ago was your last re-organization? Did you move to matrix, global, glocal, central, de-central, or regional? And how about the re-organization before? Was it complementary to what you are doing now, or the other way around? When sitting in business divisions or regions, how do you assess the work done by the folks in headquarters? And if you are sitting in headquarters, are the regions and divisions doing a good job, in your opinion?
In part 1 of our mini-series on organizational design, we hone in on the Corporate Headquarters, and how to do it right - once.
Enjoy!
DSO - Significantly optimising cash flow by changing the focus - mini-series (Part 3)
In part 3 of our mini-series on cash-flow optimization, we hone in on Days Sales Outstanding (DSO), or Payments from Customers.
This is a highly sensitive topic for most managing boards: they perceive significantly more buyer than supplier power and assume that there is little to be gained by focusing too much on optimising DSO without aggravating customers and consequently risking revenues.
This is, however, just a tiny part of business reality: More often, DSO is squandered…! We talk about where, and what to do about it. Enjoy!
DPO - Significantly optimising cash flow by changing the focus - mini-series (Part 2)
In part 2 of our mini-series on cash-flow optimization, we hone in on payments to suppliers, covered in Days Payable Outstanding (DPO).
External materials & services purchased are the largest cost block in most product-based companies. Hence, the cash flow improvement leverage is significant. Different from cash trapped in inventory, DPO management needs two to tango.
Why is it, that many companies can’t dance with their suppliers?
Inventory: Significantly optimising cash flow by changing the focus - mini-series (Part 1)
This marks the beginning of a three-part mini-series on the perennial subject of cash flow optimisation, focusing on the manufacturing and Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) industries. The series argues that while finance must report on cash flow, operations should own the metrics. For practitioners along a company's value chain, the three posts can also act as a refresher…Let’s start with inventory!
‘Defragment' your business via Process Mining: gain speed, cash flow, and profitability in days
Process Mining is playing perfect TETRIS with your processes - it is lean an six sigma, infused with 21st-century digitalization. It is super-fast, and can help any company to gain speed, better cash flow, and higher revenue and customer satisfaction.
As always, we just have to do it - and accept that only very few people in leadership positions internally have experience with it - since it is just 10-15 years old. So, who leads with agility and digitalization in mind?
Is operations outsourcing still a viable option today?
Outsourcing, spin-offs, in-sourcing, reshoring, re-vitalising operations - what is the best approach towards improving customer satisfaction and the triple-bottom line? For 30 years the answer of most boards when competitive pressure was ramping up, was either spin-off or outsourcing to other continents. While there can be good reasons for spinning off or outsourcing parts or full operations, in the 21st century we should be relentless in assessing our tool box, and rather than grabbing the most used, shiny tool, we should understand the opportunity in our company first more thoroughly. This blog-post gives this topic a bit of a spin…enjoy.
Diversity and Inclusion (DI) - simply human
In many companies generating revenues in the United States, United Kingdom, South Africa, or India, there is awareness of the concept and regulatory requirements of diversity and inclusion sourcing. However, with the exception of some clear leaders in this field (often headquartered in these countries), most companies make little or no strides to significantly change the status quo regarding D&I unless governmental contracts or public opinions are at stake.
It is therefore not surprising how many leaders in corporations underestimate the societal needs and regulatory requirements for D&I sourcing while overestimating the efforts to establish the processes in their own companies.
The blog post shows, that it is not difficult to a) understand the why of D&I, and b) set up a great process around D&I that benefits the company and society.
Creating a digital supply chain twin - operating at the speed of thought
Digital transformation, Internet of Things, blockchain, OpenAI and ChatGPT happen for most companies more in the media and consultant presentations than in their own world. There is scepticism, disbelief, and maybe even panic, followed by short bursts of activism that typically die quickly like fireflies.
So, what shall we do about it, and why?
Procurement - on ‘steroids’ or: improving margins - for real
The times when strategic sourcing was solely a procurement function topic, with the main focus on cost and supply base management, are long gone in most companies.
Today, epidemics, natural and man-made disasters or disruptions are happening far too often for a cost-based, multi-layered value chain.
While the issues getting more and more complex, and the speed of change is dizzying, our internal corporate coping mechanisms often stay as simple and inadequate as 20-30 years before.
So, what needs to change?
Net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in your supply chain in 1’000 days
While we moved from local to global supply chains and trade, half of the 1.6 trillion tons of greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution around the 1750s occurred since 1990.
A fundamental re-design of our supply chains towards GHG emission net zero targets is needed now - and the solution is right at our fingertips - market forces & competition.
Part II: Implementing a 21st-century supply chain - now
The highly improbable event, coined "black swan", described in the 2007 bestseller of options trader and statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb, became a herd animal that shows its black feathers in spades in our supply chains. The second part of the blog post addresses the “size of the prize” of change and gives initial guidance on the change project set-up.
Part I: Implementing 21st-century supply chain - now
The highly improbable event, coined "black swan", described in the 2007 bestseller of options trader and statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb, became a herd animal that shows its black feathers in spades. The individual events occur in most cases as irregularly in a local setting as before. We have to consider alternatives to today’s global supply chains - now.
What is the role of procurement in the new reality of AI-enabled services like ChatGPT?
ChatGPT: Not just an intelligent typewriter…