Blog
Why manufacturers need a CRM
I think I’ve seen nearly all the many innovative and out of the box ways companies come up with to get around using a CRM – I could write an article on it. It begs the question though. Why try and get by without a CRM? That’s not a question I’ll even try to answer […]
Plain English S&OP for SME manufacturers
If you are a president or plant manager of a manufacturing company, you have likely heard the buzz word “S&OP” thrown around a few times. If you are the curious type, you’ve probably even gone a step further and decided to do a couple searches to see what this S&OP thing is all about. And […]
Some low hanging fruit mid sized manufacturers can use to lift performance
If you are like me, when you first started really looking into S&OP, you realized very quickly that you were headed towards what felt more like studying to get your PhD versus getting practical advice on how to improve your planning and operations. It’s so easy to get caught up in the various levels of […]
Do manufacturers need a sales team?
As an owner of a SME manufacturing business, I’m sure you’ve asked yourself this question many times over. Reality is, most manufacturers rely on repeat business and word of mouth so it’s a totally valid thought to ponder especially as right now your sales team are probably out there hanging with existing customers keeping them […]
S&OP – Too much theory and BS for SME’s?
One of the big buzzwords that’s been around in the Manufacturing industry for some time, at least with the larger organizations, is “S&OP”. S&OP stands for Sales and Operations Planning. You may or may not have heard of it yet, but a quick search will quickly show you that a bunch of others have. Many […]
How sales forecasting can be used to leverage up the performance of your business
Believe it or not, many SME Manufacturers, or small businesses in general, operate without really investing much effort in creating a sales forecast. Considering the benefits that even having the most minimalistic sales forecast in place can offer these businesses, this is a pretty eye-opening situation. It’s completely understandable how this happens. Many small business […]
Reporting shouldn’t be this hard
We’ve all been there at some point. There is important information that we need to extract out of our business to make an informed decision on something. We could be trying to figure out if we have the proper production plan and required raw materials to cover our shipments to our customers/distributors for the next […]
Why you DON’T want the constraint to be in your sales team
In talking with many manufacturing owners over the years, it’s amazing to me how some of the owners put so much of their focus into improving the efficiency of their production capabilities, yet you start talking about how many shifts they are running and you find out they aren’t even close to utilizing their existing […]