A keen eye for details can uncover big savings. In my experience, I've found that watching trends is vital to success - if you can pick up on a key trends and get better positioned than your competition and/or jump on-board with strategic innovations early, you'll be guaranteed [...]
Customers deserve flexibility in how they receive products and services, e-commerce is a requirement for business success. Are you offering e-commerce options for your customers? If not, you'll be left in the dust! It is no longer an option for companies if success is an objective. E-commerce eliminates time [...]
The business environment has changed and will not "return to normal"; instead, a "new normal" is emerging. The U.S. and the world economy have been in a recession for at least a year, and the media is starting to discuss a slow recovery. Whether the recovery is weak or [...]
How do you and your organization develop or maintain a winning culture? In my 20 years of experience in working with multiple companies across multiple industries and globally, there is a lot of talk about culture; however, little to no impact - bottom line results. On the other hand, [...]
How effective is your ERP selection and implementation process? Published in "The ACA Group" website, November, 2011 ERP system implementations fell off the grid during the recession; however, I've seen resurgence in the last year. Companies are thinking about investing again. However, although businesses are picking up, they are [...]
No matter how much you plan, you’re going to face challenges. But learning to hurdle obstacles effectively will save you valuable time and a lot of grief. As I've yet to run across an executive without obstacles, learning how to effectively deal with them has to be a top [...]
Businesses continue to cut back as the economy continues to worsen - seemingly every day. Cutting costs in a reasonable and smart manner is required; however, cost cutting alone rarely achieves success. As one of my mentors used to say, the best problem to have is a cost problem [...]
My procurement mentor exemplifies "profit through people" and can achieve more on a golf course in 2 hours than an entire team of Harvard MBA's could achieve in a year. He took all the complex terminology, confusing pricing indicators, economic trends and world events and turned it into a [...]
The key to effective cycle counting is to not get bogged down in resolving every dollar, but rather focus on the significant discrepancies. The main goal of cycle counting is to cycle through your inventory to ensure inventory accuracy on a consistent basis. (In contrast, a physical inventory is [...]
Customer collaboration is always a good idea; however, leveraging customer collaboration during challenging economic times can be one of the keys to success. Pick up the phone - some of the largest successes I've seen result from simple yet critical conversations. It can be as simple as calling a [...]
