The Vision Company Assessment

It should be noted that each Company has a unique history, product and/or service offerings, and competitive advantages. As such, each Assessment will contain some custom elements.

The analysis of the business will take two to four business days to complete. It is best to perform the analysis in half day to full day increments, depending on the needs of the business and the availability of the key employees. We are very sensitive to the needs of the business, it is imperative to accurately complete the company assessment as soon as possible but the daily needs of the business to serve its customers has to always come first.

The first meeting is usually the most informal, lasting for approximately two hours to tour the company, understand the current state of the business and the industry, and get the ownership’s best summary of what is important to them.

We will look at everything that is occurring in your business. We will talk to every employee, we will observe every process and we will challenge everything that you do. That includes all of your selling and marketing activities, how you estimate, and all of your daily operational activities. We are going to quickly understand how your strategy and operational activities are integrated.

Assessment Stages

STAGE 1: The first major element of the Assessment is to review what is already in place. All management reports, daily operational metrics, monthly operational reviews, monthly sales reports, minutes from sales meetings, monthly and annual income statements, monthly and annual balance sheets, feedback from customers, ISO or any 3rd party quality audit reports, organizational charts, job descriptions, processes and procedures, and project status reports. It is always helpful to quickly develop a Vision of the company and use the existing data to see if management and ownership understand and interpret the data in the same way.

STAGE 2: Keep in mind that we are focused on profits and no matter how complex your business questions, we have the capabilities and experience to solve your problems with real-life answers. It is imperative that all manufacturing companies wring out costs and re-invest those savings into new products and services, marketing and advertising, and more sales professionals to grow the revenues. We have many templates, questionnaires, and pre-developed forms to complete as part of the Assessment. At this stage, we are essentially performing a gap analysis of the information that we need and the information that we were able to get from the existing information already in place. The balance of the information will have to be found from interaction with the employees of the company. We need what we need to perform an intense, brutally honest analysis. Typically, all the root causes of the issues that need to be addressed become very obvious when we complete the analysis.

STAGE 3: Now that all functional areas of the company have been scrutinized it is time for the Vision team to analyze and discuss your company and come up with the action plan of attack to transform the company by reducing costs across many functional areas while energizing the employees and ownership. All of the time, we will keep in mind that the company’s customers are the judges that matter most and will ultimately decide if we are making an impact that matters.

STAGE 4:  In this stage, we are actually taking an iteration step to present to ownership our first thoughts and our first presentation of the opportunities and problem identification. It is very important to make sure that the Vision team and the company grasp the facts and the current state of the business in a consistent manner. There will be some brain storming and some Q & A at this stage for the benefit of sketching out the priorities and the going forward actions.

STAGE 5: After careful analysis and discussion, the Vision team presents a detailed plan of action to transform the cost structure of the company, dramatically improve profits, improve the quality of life of ownership, and send a clear message to the company’s customers that they are excellent at what they do, and are ready to take on more business. This is always the first place to start in growing revenues, with your current customers. Your current customers better think that you are a low maintenance supplier and have open capacity or you will not be considered for more business. The best way to send your customers the signal that you are ready for more business is to be an excellent supplier now----manifested by perfect quality, 100% on-time shipments, short lead-times, and great customer service communication. The Vision Assessment will detail the costs and the expected returns on executing the detailed plan of action.

GOOD STRATEGY + GOOD EXECUTION = SUCCESS