"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results"...WC
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This artcle provides informaion about transport industry business models and how they measure their performance.
An effective sales process begins with an inquiry or a “Marketing” function generated lead for “Sales” to target to follow up on.
As a first step “Sales” must qualify each target as to its potential as an opportunity, so further time and investment can be justified.
Solution benefits, evaluation, proving and commercial steps must then be completed together with ensuring alignment and commitment of key decision makers, before sales contracts can be closed.
The process can be somewhat iterative with many influences that can change the dynamics that support the confidence to move to the final signature & close stage. If each stage is managed well changes that potentially regress the opportunity can be managed efficiently to get it back on track or drop as may be appropriate.
For the Sales person, managing the opportunity, it is critical that buying signals are constantly monitored to ensure the solution is and is remains seen as the best fit by the prospect. Integral withg this is a must to ensure the prospect parties are all well supported to continue their decision process to buy the solution and/or services being proposed.
A key aspect in the services and software process is a successful sale is generally defined by a contract signing. But the reality is the real work only then begins. So successful sales people start thinking from that in the prospect terms from the very start of the sales process. when the lead is first being qualified. This factor or the lack of it is one of 2 things that makes difference between success and failure.
The second is understanding the sales steps of which there 5 basic phases in the cycle. Theses are all logical and benefical to all parties involved in the sale, and work especially effectively when the process is made transperent for collaborattrive efforrt, and also more than often including the prospect.
With this in mind, by completing all steps in each of the 5 phases provides greater probability success not only for the sale but its outcome too. Failure to do so will almost always result in not only loss of the opportunity but loss of valuable sales time.
Sales Phases
(this list in not intended to be ehaustive but covers the key points)
1. Identify Target and qualify as a “Lead”
a. Understand targets business, their objectives and their competitors
b. Speak to target and be involved with appropriate person
c. Understand targets potential solution and competitors to the offered solution
2. Quality Lead to upgrade to “Opportunity”
a. Indentify key sponsors with demonstrated interest in working with us and our partners
b. Indentify they have Quaffed budget, timeline and compelling event
3. Quality Opportunity to add as “Prospect”
a. Indentify Coach sponsor., Power sponsor, economic buyer
b. Prospect validates value ladder
c. Present customized presentation with needs and current pain outlined and aligning problems and solution vision and Indentifying references to client
d. Setup Pricing Trial
e. Indentify key issues for prospect alternatives to reduce competitive advantage
4. Qualify Prospect
a. Strategy to win developed
b. Negotiate proof step and delver plan to customer to confirm proof agreement
c. Reference checked
d. Proposal completed with ROI
e. Legal documents submitted and pricing understood
f. Close plan created
g. Coach sponsor, Power sponsor, economic buyer committed to buy if proof successful
h. Project plan and tech evaluation done
i. Approvals and sign off chain well understood
j. Proofing completed
5. Commit Prospect to close
a. Presentation of proof to management sponsor + champion power sponsor
b. Acknowledged vendor of choice
c. Meet key players and confirm funding and support
d. Final legal negotiations. Objections and pricing if required
e. Dates for signature confirmed
f. Contract signed
g. Implementation complete and reference-able
h. Ongoing Customer service in place
i. Cross sell and upgrade strategy developed
Today, business faces several risk from both internal and external factors. Several examples can be found in various business, here are some taken from the press
To be more specific what are the risk? Let’s look at some external macro economic risk. A report made by BOT reported that ”overall sales of the business, private consumption and investment was reported to decline due to continuous increase in the cost of raw materials, hence consumers became more cautious in their spending and selectively purchased focusing on quality products. In addition, unstable political situation by protests against the government decreases businesses confidence.”
Internal Risk Management involves operational and system contingency planning to respond to and mitigate damaging events; continuity of operations for the identification of vital records, systems, and processes; and preparation required to ensure that these systems and processes will be available in the event of a catastrophe. We can see those on a day to day operation, weather the raw material will be delivered on time, the logistics deliver the products to the store successfully.
However, having said all this, risk management is not a new subject. It’s just that it hasn’t been processed and managed well enough to be understood and used within the organization similar with strategy management.
An organization has diverse objectives that often seem unrelated to the business goal 
and focused only on departmental missions. Without clear strategic mission alignment and control linked to the business processes, parochial and silo thinking pervades.
Forming and managing strategy requires formal alignment of business process activities to business goal.
In a supply chain the processes deliverables are the assembly of all the relevant activity outputs. In the strategy management process it is the similar with combined result of the various related activities used to achieve each strategic goal.
Hence to achieve Business Growth, “Product Marketing” and “Sales” activities in the right order and mix of energy will produce the best “Sales order” outcome” This in turn may also require other underpinning activities such as “Customer Service” aimed at quality and retention to achieve the business objective.
Strategy planning cannot be done in isolation. If the whole organisation is not considered, then completing resources may be parochially assigned to actually negate the objective. For example an IT 100% up-time for all systems globally may be a primary mission objective. But that may not actually reflect the priority and reality or changing strategic needs of the business.
In a strategic management approach priority to reassign IT people to ensure a marketing system has uptime priority only at peak times, when it is needed, may serve better than maintaining an always ready state. Conversely IT resources may be better placed to add a business intelligence capability for target market planning so the marketing system can achieve higher penetration when programs are run.
Effective management reaction of the strategy contributing activities is also key. A routine activity and outcomes and results review to relative contribution weightings shows low contributing activities that need to be cut and where others may be re prioritized to achieve maximum bang for the buck with more certainty.
Outcomes achieved in the following table which shows a strategy for growth that involves a number of departmental activates. The original plan executed was change as the contribution mix showed it could get that same outcome by reducing low contribution activates. In this case increasing direct client contact yields the required results so allowing the advertising program to be cut.
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Responsibility |
Weight |
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Result |
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Plan |
Actual |
Plan |
Actual |
Variance |
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Grow Existing Business |
100.0% |
100.0% |
30% |
31% |
103% |
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Activity Marketing |
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TV Advertising slots |
50.0% |
48.4% |
4 |
3 |
50% |
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Sales |
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Tele-sales calls |
30.0% |
225.8% |
3000 |
7000 |
233% |
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Major accounts calls |
10.0% |
174.2% |
100 |
180 |
180% |
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Customer Service |
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Re-training people |
10.0% |
9.7% |
30 |
3 |
10% |
In a typical organization strategy planning template you can see the matrix is are oriented to business strategies rather than departmental goals. In this way management can set strategy and then ask service department to plan activity to achieve them.
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Function |
Department |
Strategic Goals |
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Increased Operation Effectiveness 0f 10% |
Sales Growth Of 25%
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30% Market Share |
Sales Margin Up 3% |
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Performance Control |
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Management |
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Planning |
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Compliance |
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Governance |
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Relationship Management |
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Marketing |
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Sales |
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Operations |
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Production |
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Customer Service |
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Finance & Admin Services |
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Customer Accounting |
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Compliance Accounting |
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Management Accounting |
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Information Services |
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Hunan & Contract Services |
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From functional perspectives, contributions to each strategy can vary in terms of activity outputs with common outcomes or results the measure of success. Just like a supply chain process, silos are flattened and common objectives are aligned.
Risk Management is not taken concern much in organization. However, almost everyone practices risk management everyday e.g. taking the route to work, arrange priority during work or even basics such as organization who to date during Valentine’s day. But when it comes to business decision, it turns out that a lot of people don’t know how to handle it. Compare this with having a family, I’m sure every one is excited when the off spring is born.
Risk Management from the very first day e.g. how to take care and bath him, what does he want when he cries, is this milk safe, what if it goes wrong … I’m sure all young couples face those risk, yet manageable.
One of the reasons that risk management wasn’t taken care in organization is that no one is [assignedto be] responsible for it.
Everyone thinks that it’s the boss’s job, not mine. To a factor yes, the boss takes the risk and he has to manage it – however, the criteria for good decision making comes from good information, of which comes from good data and source. If the information is not correct, scattered, unreliable etc., it would possibly be impossible for the management to deal with risks.
So the question really is, “Do we have quality and analyzed information to use when it comes to decision making?”.
True corporate performance management is very different from the management systems traditionally used in organisations.
How should an organisation go about the transformation of their planning and reporting processes to one that supports real, effective performance management?
Identifying the difference
Effective performance management systems focus on the development, communication and monitoring of strategy. Tactics will derive directly from the strategic plan and include both financial and non-financial measures.
Non-financial measures will typically outnumber the financial ones because financial goals are generally the result of activities, and it’s these activities that need to be planned and monitored. Effective systems are continuous, with each individual process – planning, budgeting, forecasting and reporting – integrated with the others.
This enables budgets to be derived from rolling forecasts and compared with actual results in the same system. It allows planning and budgeting to be continuous and transparent, triggered by events rather than dates on the calendar.
The transition to performance management
It is not advisable to implement all the changes required in one “big bang”. The most successful route is a series of phased implementations that address key business “pain points” in the context of a long-term performance management strategy.
Step 1: Secure senior management ‘buy-in’
Performance management is an opportunity to improve business processes and strategic decision-making. It must be led by senior management. Good corporate governance requires that the assets of an organisation are used effectively in the interests of shareholders – the performance management system is no exception.
Step 2: Define the data required to manage performance
This should be based on measures within the strategic and supporting operational plans, not just accepting whatever data is already available. It is likely that the data measures and metrics needed are not currently monitored.
Step 3: Define the processes required to manage performance
Draw out the processes required to plan, budget, forecast and monitor this new data. Determine who needs to be involved in each of these tasks and what should be the trigger for each process. Compare these ‘ideal’ management processes with current ‘reality’.
Step 4: Assess current system capabilities
Review the systems in use to support these processes.
Systems older than three years old are unlikely to support effective performance management. New solutions have arisen to specifically meet these requirements and interact with existing systems, using the web to provide users with a single point of contact.
Step 5: Highlight current pain points
Having reviewed current systems, note the ‘pain points’ being experienced and identify the causes. For example, if the budgeting process takes too long, what are the contributing factors?
Step 6: Set priorities
Areas that cause the most pain will need to be addressed early. It is important to ‘fix’ the root cause, not just the symptom.
Then deliver small incremental changes on a regular basis.
Begin by including these measures as a supplementary report until they can be embedded within the processes independently.
If existing systems are inadequate, implement a new system first but keep the old reports and measures until users have got used to using the new technology.
Quick wins
Finally, there are some tasks to kick-start performance management with very little effort.
Publish the strategic plan. Web technology means it’s easy to make available through the organisations intranet.
Refer to the plan when users submit forecasts and budgets.
Get operational managers to submit a tactical plan with both the budget and the forecast that show the cause and effect on how they intend to deliver their own goals.
Follow up with requests to report on the success of their plans to deliver goals.
Written by Chris Field, Performance Management Business Consulting Manager, UKIMEA, Infor Thursday, 26 June 2008
http://www.dofonline.co.uk/management/moving-to-true-performance-management3576.html
Related links
http://www.infor.co.uk/
Someone once asked me what is important to measure
I cannot remember who asked but this list of I found on a website gives a fairly good idea of how to approach the issue.
What does logistics have to do with performance analytics. Take a look at how Wal Mart get stock from China. I wonder how that compares to other solutions?
So what exactly is a BI?
Intelligence or information gathering in business terms broadly covers employment of analytical processes for performance advantage.
Succinctly put, Business Intelligence (BI) systems present decision based information by systematically analyzing an organization’s own business data directly from its source.
With mature disciplines of Performance Management (PM) systems, we now see consistent and better organized data available. So greater emphasizes is now on analyzing, hence the now high visibilty of the BI software category.
In a competitive business software industry with a plethora of choices, Business Intelligence systems are even more responsive.
The BI tools now come with sophisticated analytically based graphics and intuitive ineractive end user reporting and reduce massive online data sources to simple and decisive value.
A client of mine asked “.. will change the hard disk on the ERP server, so she is worried how [they] can check that the data is transferred correctly to the new disk?”
My response was:
—
I’m not sure if the ERP Server HD’s are Raid/SAN or any platform. My comments are as follows;
- Strongly caution “Precisely everything has to be the same” — some programs/sw checks on HW indentity, be very careful
- Strongly recommend of doing a full clone of the HD instead of coping/moving
- A complete run through test with the user to check if the functions of the application are as normal as prior to change.
- A change management document from various related party of the change to for later audition.
—
Nowadays, with storage technologies like SAN/RAIDS, it seems that ordinary HD swaping is completely out of normal operations.
A friend of mine had a very bad experience when he was informed that the Data were completely backed up – running to find out later that the backed up data couldn’t be restore because they were stored on the same hard drive!
Today I went to the FPO seminar. The interesting part was on the speach made by Mr. Surapong, Ministry of Finance and Dr. Veerapong. In summary, Thai’s economic was a failure due to the policy droven by the Bank of Thailand, covering Inflating rate, fiscal policies and execution plans. Together with these is also the lack of “hosted acency”. External and Internal factors were considered both Macro and Micro – however, every agency think in thier own way and come up with thier own action plan. More ecomonic plans are coming out to stimulate the economy, but who knows – maybe this is an election campaign.
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