Hello everyone! I hope you had a great summer. It was nice and hot! It’s already September… Traffic is back, it’s back to school and the leaves will soon start to change colour. My summer has passed very quickly. I have worked different mandates and would like to tell you about them. My marketing team tells me that you seem to like reading real stories. So here it is.
First, I celebrated 2 years in consulting. I am very proud of it and I thank all my clients!
I intervened this summer in SMEs that were all in different fields (this is interesting!). From construction to robotics, cosmetics, distribution and services.
What were the challenges faced by these companies? The first one was in very strong growth, to the point of not knowing what to do next. Another was struggling with delivery issues, another with a desire to triple its annual revenues over 3 years, another wanted to implement a Lean culture in order to be more efficient and finally two others had to expand.
Those are great challenges, don’t you think? I had the pleasure of helping these companies. Here’s a summary of one of these mandates.
Let me tell you about the fast-growing company. After several years of efforts towards developing its clientele, this startup company finally got several contracts… at the same time! I’ll agree with you if you tell me it’s a nice problem. But it’s still a problem because now they have to deliver all these projects. Many projects were falling behind, becoming late. Customers are not screaming yet, but it shouldn’t be long. What should they do? Where should they start?
One of their challenges was recruiting. They had to quickly hire new employees who didn’t meet all the requirements. They were quickly put to work, without integration, sponsorship or coaching to help with learning their new job. The result after several months: some employees still didn’t know what they had to do. Some left. The projects were still behind. We were able to help with putting in place clear job descriptions that are aligned with the mission and vision of the company. It will help them with future hires. We also suggested establishing an integration and sponsorship for new employees, which will be put in place in the future.
Another challenge they were facing is the lack of standardization. Several products with similar application were being design for different customers but there was no standard in the design. They were starting every project from scratch. For example, some parts used on different products could be standardized so that they could be part of many products, reducing the number of parts to buy and store. Standardization would facilitate assembly, testing and even after-sales service. Therefore, we established an action plan aiming at standardization.
The last challenge was that no manpower planning was done for design. Being an engineering team, it was difficult for them to plan the work of a design team. We have put in place a planning process and capacity analysis for this team. It was now possible to control these steps in order to deliver on time.
I will tell you more about other mandates in a future blog.
You are not alone experiencing challenges in your business. Do not hesitate to contact us if you need help.
With pleasure! Liza