Business Process Optimisation

This activity can be applied on the whole spectrum of processes, going from Management Processes, Core Processes down to Supporting Processes.

The methodology is rather sector independent and will always follow a rather traditional sequence:

Preliminary phase: Determine Business Needs, Assess the AS-IS situation and agree on Improvement Opportunities.
Conceptual phase: Design the TO-BE situation, develop the Implementation Strategies, develop all required changes on Business Processes, Organisation and Facilities, end with defining the Implementation Plans.
Implementation phase: Migrate, Operate and evolve into a Continuous Improvement mode.

Customer Service Optimisation

The target Service Level of the target Customer is determined by two major factors:

What is exactly the service expectation of your target customer
What is your Competitive Strategy?

The optimisation as such will consist of the following steps:

Measure your performance at the start.
Investigate the extended value chain of your product or service, from raw materials to Customer.
List required optimisations and decide on realistic, feasible improvements.
Determine the Supply Strategy for your products (MTS, ATO, MTO, ETO, …).
Optimise your Forecasting, Sourcing and Internal processes in order to guarantee a certain service level for all variability.
Determine needed Raw materials, Work In Progress and Finished products’ inventory levels.

At the end the Working Capital needs will be determined.

Interim Management, supported by Management Consultancy

We at General The Goal go for a specific type of Interim Management, to be seen as an extension of Strategy Implementation: this means that our activity should be more than just managing/maintaining the daily operations.

There should be a challenge in improving the business processes, the service level, the working capital or another problem to be solved.

Strategy Implementation

Before starting the implementation of a strategy, there are some basic conditions that have to be fulfilled:

Values, Mission, Vision and (Corporate and Competitive) Strategy have to be clearly documented.
The Board of Directors and the Executive Management have to declare and to be convinced that this set is still valid.

The implementation as such consists of several major steps:

Plan the Strategy (how exactly will we do it).
Align the organisation (Explain the strategy to everybody in the organisation).
Plan Operations (plan to do it at the operational level).
Execute (do it).
Monitor and learn.
Adapt and re-iterate.

Working Capital Optimisation

Working Capital Optimisation cannot be studied independently of the Target Customer Service Level.

Starting from a certain Target Customer Service Level, the exercise will consist of finding the optimum Total Working Capital for three main elements:

Needs on Supply Side (Inventory, Transport Time, Payment terms).
Internal working capital needs (Raw Materials and Work In Progress Inventory, and Workload).
Finished Goods working Capital needs (Inventory, Transport Time and Customer Credit).