Oct 14, 2011 | Customers, Management, Personal Rant, Small business
It seems that new ACCC chief Rod Sims is getting serious about the reality of the power of the two major supermarket retailers.
At the same time, Andrew Reitzer MD of Metcash is giving the ACCC a headache over his presumptive execution of the purchase of Franklins from Pick n’ Pay before the Federal court had ruled, simply on the basis that the business was bleeding cash, and the transaction had to be done, even at the risk of the consequences of an adverse finding.
An interview by Alan Kohler of Reitzer and the accompanying commentary give a great insight into the thinking behind the only real alternative to the power of Coles and Woolworths.
The overwhelming power of Coles and Woolworths has nevertheless not stopped the evolution of niche retailers like Harris Farm, competitive regional supermarkets like Drakes and Ritchies, and market entry of Aldi and Costco. The downward pressure on purchase price has however wrecked havoc on the Australian food manufacturing sector, with very few left, and those that are in pretty shallow water, with the only really large domestically owned manufacturer left, Goodman Fielder performing poorly.
I can only hope that in the new environment of more aggressive review of the retailers, that the plight of the domestic manufacturing sector is adequately considered.
Oct 12, 2011 | Management, Small business
This is a simple measure I try to foist on all my SME clients, the Monday morning “NCC meeting”. It is just as important to larger businesses, but my clients are mostly SME’s.
It involves a meeting of the key cash sensitive executives, (generally the MD, Beenie, Sales and Purchasing), and tabling a daily record of cash in and out, and rolling forecasts for the week and month to come. The participants table the decisions and expectations of the next week, and month, and looks at the cash consumption of week past. Very simple, 10 minutes when the routines are established, but a very valuable 10 minutes, as it surfaces potential cash problems before they bite .
Measuring the cash flow of a business is a bit like going to the doctor, the first thing he measures is your pulse and blood pressure, if these are OK, chances are the patient is OK, if not, look further. The NCC is the commercial equivalent, and anything that shows up here as being out of expectations requires further examination.
Oct 7, 2011 | Change, Lean, Management
A while ago I helped a mate move flats. He had only been there about 5 years after becoming a “bachelor” again after his family grew up, but the significant amount of clutter accumulated was unanticipated, and surprising. All sorts of proposals, manuals, brochures, old gear, and stuff that at some point passed the “might be useful one day” test had accumulated, and the clean out released lots of space, and a recognisable organisation for the remainder.
It occurred to me that businesses are the same, they accumulate all sorts of organisational and personal clutter that takes up valuable space and time, creating blockages and “work-arounds” in processes, effort that would be unnecessary in a cleaned, disciplined environment.
An aggressive clean-out of physical stuff, but more importantly redundant processes and rules from time to time would deliver significant productivity benefits, at very little cost.
Sep 30, 2011 | Change, Leadership, Management, Operations, Personal Rant, Small business
The news that Fosters will be sold to SA Miller Brewing represents almost the last Australian food and beverage business with a global brand has now disappeared. I say almost, as I can think of no other, but some may argue that a few sales in Fiji or NZ constitutes global. To my mind, it does not rate.
Why is it that we seem to be unable to build and sustain food businesses from this country?.
Australia is now a net importer of packaged food, according to the AFGC 2010 report, and yet we are an abundant producer, particularly of broadacre commodities, grain and meat. Most people when told we are a net importer go into a state of disbelief, and yet the march of imported food, and the decline of Australia’s manufacturing base has been happening slowly over a long period.
It’s pretty easy to blame the evolution of globalisation of supply chains, the domination of Woolworths and Coles, regulation imposing costs overseas competitors do not have, the geographic spread and relatively sparse population denying the economies of scale, but the reality is that it is a management failure. The failure is shared by boards and shareholders who have tolerated a complacent management, discouraged long term strategy in the chase for short term returns, and simply disengaged with the basic drivers of competitiveness over a long period.
The only hope left is that a few SME’s will emerge from the heavily culled pack that remains, but it seems to me that they have missed the boat, and the barriers that the businesses that existed 30 years ago, and should have breasted, are now simply too high for the small guys to tackle without the scale and capital resources necessary. Our one hope is that there is a processing breakthrough, technologies like the CSIRO High Pressure Processing technology offer some hope, but they are unlikely to be the savior by themselves.
Almost gone, down to the last gasp, what on earth will we do then? Or don’t we care?
Sep 28, 2011 | Lean, Management
Years ago as a senior manager in a large organisation, part of the monthly routine was to write an APP report: Achievements, Problems, Plans, kept to an A4 page, used as a scene setter for the more detailed monthly report.
At the time it was a pain in the posterior, generally done at the last minute, with the objective of getting it done, rather than communicating the context of the rest of the report.
In short, a squandered opportunity.
How much better it would have been to use the APP as a summary of the context and detail of the functional responsibility I carried, something that had performance measures built in, and that was useful. In time it may have evolved into an A3 type report that I have more recently been using as the core tool of project planning, but the attitude that it was just a pain eliminated the opportunity to be creative and constructive with it.
How many good ideas are being squandered in your environment?
Sep 22, 2011 | Leadership, Management, Operations, Small business
One of my clients, a modest sized business inhabiting a narrowing but quite deep niche of manufacturing, has over a period of time put considerable resources into training their essenial technical people to be expert in the fields vital to their success.
A topic of discussion and concern has always been, “how do I get my investment back when I train them, and they leave?”
Perhaps the better question to ask is “what happens if we do not train them, and they stay?”
