As an operations management consultant I frequently work with to business owners to layout the plan needed to address the realities a business’s operations must overcome to survive. I play out in my mind all worse case scenarios the business plan will deal with and then deliver options to avoid them. However, attempting to avoiding what may or may not happen tomorrow from what I see from yesterday sometimes is not where the business’ problems begin.
Often I see where the push to increase revenue drives businesses to totally abandon managing their operations. This happens frequently with the ‘marketing wins all battles’ mindset many business executives develop. They will move all live bodies up to the frontline to market the business’s needs. The defaulting to what seems easy or more fun when the stress of floating a companies budget depends on developing new business.
The operations of a business plays a huge part of how a business performs. If there is no focus on the details of what the business offers there will always be problems with quality and/or reliability of the service or product. There is nothing a marketing plan can overcome if what is being marketed is flawed.
The solutions to developing new business, increasing revenue or just hanging on until some new product or service can be fully developed, all hinge on how strong the business’ operations is managed. If there are weakness in the workflow or inefficiencies in raw materials there will always be a problem in meeting the customer’s need.
Urgency is what pushes business to make mistakes. In these changing times how quick someone can make a change to compete is a reality. When a business’ operations is sound and well managed making changes quickly can be made with little effort. However, when the operations is outsourced or is without dedicated management there is no way for a business to make a change quickly until the operations needed to make the change is secured.
The business’ operation management teams are the Puzzle Masters of a company. When given the resources to succeed the operations group..or person..can put the pieces of the new business plan together so the marketing can begin on a sound foot. Without the dedication to operations the puzzle never gets put together and nobody in the business will know what anyone else is doing.
A business has to address it realities of knowing that what happened today was the result of what happened yesterday which needs to be improved upon before venturing into making something New happen tomorrow.
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