SURVEY STATS: THE BRAVE AND THE FADING
I scan a lot of articles. One of my research themes being ROI for Analytics, for which there are frustrating results. One survey found that 70% of companies are not benefitting from their analytics investments. And, worse: the percentage of firms thinking themselves as “data-driven” has declined. Over the past three annual surveys: 37% were data-driven in ’17 to only 31% in 2019. (Source? Google the – “2019 Big Data and AI Executive Survey” – by New Vantage Partners for more stats.)
WHY THE ANALYTICAL-INSIGHT EXECUTION GAP?
Be honest. Most individuals and businesses already know what they could do to be better. Who needs even more analytical insights for more improvement opportunities? What’s needed, instead, are more effective change-management strategies, tactics and tools. Most folks need help to be what they want to be.
How can a distributor immediately engage all employees’ minds, hearts, wallets, and team spirit – to move down a new path of innovation?
TRY THIS LOGIC TRAIN
Discuss with all employees:
- “Who wants more total compensation along with job security, growth, and pride?” (100%!)
- Then we must, at least, grow Gross Profit Dollars per Full-Time Equivalent Employee (GP$s/FTEE), because only increased GP$s can pay for our wishes.
- “What controllable input activities can we do immediately to start to moving GP$s/FTEE higher by working smarter, not harder?”
- Order size assumptions: no one can do two customer-related activities at the same time, like: sales calls, order-taking, quotes, picks, deliveries, invoice-paper-matching, etc.
- If for each activity the average GP$s involved was magically higher, then GP$/FTEE would rise.
- “How, then, do we win more, large-GP$ orders while consolidating small-GP$ orders?”
- Let’s invent some new analytics. Why not rank all customers by their average GP$s/invoice (along with their total invoices)? And, on the side, let’s divide total orders for the year into operating expenses to find out what our average cost per invoice is.
- What do we discover? What next level of questions and new, invented analytics will arise? At some point, what might be our first, easiest experiment to try?
- Scary? Is fine-tuning the status quo, instead, a viable option?
- Help? Have other distributors ever gone down this path that we could learn from?
ANSWER TO #10: Yes! Please feel free to request a copy of my, Core Renewal Roadmap by emailing me. bruce@merrifield.com
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