Over the past months, the recession, depression and financial crisis have barely been out of the news. While there is a wealth of bad news around the impact on businesses is very patchy and despite the media, some businesses are doing well.  Notwithstanding, there are a number of areas worthy of attention in every business.

The number one tip is do not stop marketing. When organisations feel the need to tighten their belts, it is often the marketing spend that is cut. This is the worst thing that a company can do as you become invisible to all but your most active customers. Look closely at what and where you are spending on marketing, gauge what is having an impact and only stop doing the stuff that is not creating an obvious stream of revenue and leads. While you are looking at marketing, consider some of the newer ways of reaching your market such as video or podcasts? Differentiation is key here and should be trying innovative marketing approaches to create a distance between you and your competitors.

Secondly, cut out the waste. This will mean different things to different business models.  In a manufacturing model cut work in progress to an absolute minimum. Avoid tying cash up in raw materials, stock and items that are simply waiting for the next step. In a non-manufacturing environment focus on the activities that generate an income or create value and eliminate the rest. Look for activities that waste time, such as searching for information or poor filing. There is more on this subject here.

Thirdly take a close look at your processes. Is there a better way of achieving the same end? Are they making you inefficient, could you cut costs? In good times most companies let processes get a bit flabby so long as they get the job done. Now, however, is the right time to cut out the flab and challenge why things are being done in a particular way?

Often having an outsider look at your business and challenge the status quo can result in huge differences both to costs and income. If any of the above have piqued your interest, get in touch.

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1. Don’t add page text as graphics (Gif, PNG or JPEG).
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If you want to know about ‘Our Do’s’ for getting your website listed on Google, then visit our website at www.itoeye.co.uk and sign up for our November email newsletter.

I was at a networking talk recently on Lean techniques and how they can be applied to non-manufacturing processes. Manufacturing companies, following the thinking of people such as William Deming and Eliyahu Goldratt, realised a long time that costs can be taken out of systems by ensuring that waste is kept to a minimum and quality is built in to the process.

Waste is a broad concept that includes everything not directly related to achieving the desired outcome such as unnecessary work, movement, scrap, cost, expenditure, research etc. In manufacturing terms this equates to ensuring that stock and work in progress are kept to a minimum. This has some interesting side effects. For instance a common belief is that an expensive piece of equipment, a computerised (CNC) lathe for example should be working all the hours that are available; i.e. the asset should be sweated. However, if you step back a bit and think of the whole process, it becomes clear that in any process there is always one step that is the slowest in the system and that dictates the overall throughput. Once the bottleneck is identified, it can be eliminated, machines can be added, manpower can be employed etc, but the overall effect is merely to move the bottle neck somewhere else. In effect what happens is that raw materials are consumed at the rate of the fastest step in the system, partially worked materials (Work in Progress or WIP) build up at each station in the process and the system still only creates finished goods  at the rate of the slowest step with the additional bonus of now lots of money is tied up in the system in the form of unfinished parts. If you also consider that if a quality failure occurs somewhere and there is a lot of WIP this will equate to a large amount of money being wasted. The lessons here are all about understanding the bottleneck and running the system at the speed of the slowest step.

How can we apply this to non manufacturing processes?

Firstly, understand the process, this is sometimes called As-Is. Map it out, analyse it, find the bottleneck, identify the inefficiencies, determine where the organisation supports the process and where it doesn’t. Is there IT involved? Does it support or hinder the process. Where is the work in progress building up, for example is there a pile of unpaid invoices, are the contracts department struggling to match invoices to contract numbers? What does this mean in terms of your business. Especially in terms of cash flow, liquidity and staff morale.

Next determine the metrics associated with the process and actually measure them. Metrics are good for a number of reasons, firstly they allow you to determine if any changes actually make a difference, and secondly they enable you to drive behaviour by encouraging the fleshy part of the organisation to understand what constitutes "good" and to focus on achieving it. Consistently.

The next step is to create the picture of the ideal process, the To-Be state. This is best done in a group, with a shared understanding of the goals of the process, the variations that occur and the peaks and troughs in demand. The key is to be pragmatic and to ensure that the process can really work in practice.

Implementation is the difficult part. Managing the change encourages and supports people to adopt the new approach and make it work. A key element of this is eliminating waste. This means taking away all the encumbrances that stop the process from working slickly and ensuring that everything needed to do the job is to hand. So, necessary files should be close to hand and easy to search. Clutter that adds nothing to the job should be removed. Where possible standards should be adopted, so that roles can be mixed and matched without a need to get to grips with someone else’s way of working. Encouraging a culture that always looks for improvements will pay dividends once the initial pain is overcome. Now is the time to take another look at the metrics and trumpet the improvements. If bonuses or benefits are aligned with the metrics the performance can only improve.

The things that struck me about this approach is that it really is obvious. If a clerk costs the organisation 20,000 a year and spends 20% of their time searching for information that equates to a wastage of 5,000 that potentially could be eliminated by merely tidying the filing. Multiply that across all the processes in an organisation and the potential for savings is considerable. The approach is also very simple.

This blog has only scratched the surface but nevertheless, think about it for a couple of minutes. How much could you save by improving your processes. Would that mean that there is more free time to do more profitable tasks? Does this let you get on with the projects that have been on the back burner? Would you get paid faster? There are any number of ways in which this type of study can very quickly hit the bottom line of your organisation.

If this has piqued your interest. Give me a call.

Chris

01420 588172

Do you choose a co.uk or a .com?
You need to think of your target audience, is it important to them that your business is seen as a UK based one. If the answer is yes, choose a .co.uk. If you want to be seen as a world player and attract customers from all over then a .com would be a better choice.

Should you use your company’s name?
The short answer is yes, but you should also consider other names based around your company’s services and products. You can point as many domain names at a website as you wish, some web users prefer to type in what they feel are obivious domain names in the hope of finding a website, rather than using a search engine. For example my company, I to Eye, owns a domain name www.powerpointbackgrounds.co.uk which markets some of our PowerPoint templates.

Other things to consider when choosing a domain name.
Don’t make the name to long, especially if you intend to give it out over the phone. Avoid to many hypens etc as customers will find it hard to remember, especially true if you intend to use it as part of your email address. A well chosen domain name can help your search engine rankings. 

Where to buy your domain name?
Choose a company that publishes its contact details, including an all important technical support phone number. A domain name controls access to your website and email, so it is important that you can speak to someone when there is a problem.

I have had to sort numberous problems out for customers who have purchased online from companies that don’t offer telephone support. Quite often these customers have been without email or a website for weeks.

If you need help or are looking for a Hampshire web designer please give me a call on 01962 737989.

Water Filters

Does your tap drinking water taste awful?

The Chlorination of water supplies is normal in the United Kingdom and is carried out to keep the water supplies fresh. That’s fine, but when you purchase a loaf of bread you don’t eat the plastic wrapper ~ you discard it first! It’s the same with chlorine ~ we recommend you remove the bad taste before drinking your water.

You need to consider fitting a drinking water filter system.

By installing a simple, under the sink water filtration system you will remove the chlorine from your drinking water supply. This will also reduce other contaminates found in tap water and make drinking a glass of water a much more pleasurable experience. After all, you and your family deserve to drink the finest water available.

The water filter system of your choice is normally installed out of sight under the sink and the purified water is dispensed by a separate tap on your sink or work top. The disposable cartridge is easily changed and it is recommended it is replaced on a regular basis to ensure water quality is maintained.

By choosing a suitable water purification system, you will dramatically improve the taste and quality of your drinking water for a fraction of the cost of bottled water. You will also be helping the planet by reducing unneeded plastic bottle wastage.

What can you do? 

Water purification is the way to go. The installation of a water filtration system is straightforward and home filtration systems can be easily fitted by the DIY person in an hour or so and will provide clean drinking water for all of the family to enjoy. No need for expensive juices to hide the flavour of chlorine. Freshly filtered water is great for drinking, cooking, washing vegetables and salads.

If you would like ice cold drinking water on tap consider fitting a domestic chiller system.

To find out more about Everpure, Doulton, Omnipure, Aqualyze  and other water filter cartridges follow the link below.

What can be done in hard water areas to eradicate scale damage?

Boiling hot drinking water systems, coffee machines, vending machines and ice makers will all suffer in hard water areas from the effects of lime scale.  Water is the single most important ingredient for food services therefore its quality becomes extremely important. To reduce the buildup of lime scale and protect your equipment consider fitting one of the Everplus ion exchange systems.

Please visit our web site at www.drinkingwater.co.uk for more information on filter systems.

Andy Manning

Managing Director

Eau Coolers Limited