How do we make sure we ‘add value’ rather than ‘adding cost’?
Let’s start by giving our guidance on getting to grips with ‘value added’ in terms of serving your customer or managing a specific account.
It’s true to say Senior Managers and business Directors are under more pressure than ever to make best use of their time and resources. This very point makes it even more important for your teams to follow a process designed to add value to everything they do!
Our top 3 points to help identify what is needed and its benefits to your business:
Point One
Ensure your customer values your product or service – Make sure you’re giving your customer what they need by analysing your process. This will help you to discover the ‘value add’ and conversely what is adding unnecessary cost.
If it’s not needed, why are you doing it? From our experience, this has usually been for an historical internal reason, to suit existing system set up or individual expectation.
Point Two
Evaluate and align all your processes to ensure all you do is of benefit to complete customer requirement. Avoid being distracted by fulfilling your own individual or habitual processes ‘we’ve always done it this way’.
Often it’s found; your own systems are a cost to your business rather than a Value Add.
Point Three
Is your organisation designed to deliver customer expectation? If not, you could be seriously reducing your profitability and long term competitiveness.
By using the ‘value add’ approach, you can quickly identify:
- What is actually needed by the customer?
- What is a constraint of your own system?
- What extra can be done to give a competitive advantage?
No matter what systems are in place it relies on team cooperation, common purpose and trust in ability.
In our experience informal processes take hold and as a consequence cease to be as effective. This has placed a greater emphasis on the need to use a different ‘measurement criteria’, providing a more effective use of time and resource.
Our approach takes these; often unrecognised realities, into account and starts by looking at fundamentals with all stakeholders such as:
- What does the customer ‘actually’ want?
- When is it wanted?
- Where should it be placed within the organisation?
- Who is delivering each section of this requirement?
Ask yourself this simple question - are your activities adding value if not; why are you really providing them?
We specialise in working with you to understand what is actually taking place and getting to the core of these questions.
Please ask us how to help you ‘Learn’ about your business and help you to increase profitability. Click here for more about our Operational services
