| Case Studies |
David, and his wife Maria, ran a fire door manufacturing plant that was not producing the expected profit. Our evaluation discovered that doors that should have taken no more than 45 minutes to make were taking up to four hours or more. It did not take a genius to fix this one. Steve and Jane's electroplating business was causing many, many sleepless nights. Equipment that had almost passed its used by date was breaking down constantly. Customers were complaining about the lateness of the delivery and the poor quality. The re-work was killing the businesses. And high debt levels prevented expenditure on new equipment. We could not save this one. Michael's printing business was growing rapidly. But Michael did not know how to properly cost his work. As a result he incorrectly charged his customers too little, thereby denying the business the profits needed to secure the future of the business. We changed his costing method to make sure he covered all expenses and made a profit. Peter ran a mail order book store that carried inventory equal in value to his annual sales. Yet he could not figure out why he lacked the finances to expand his business or pay his staff well. We helped him understand that it's not the size of the inventory that is important in mail order selling and showed him a better way to manage inventory. Terry, on the other hand, had a great business manufacturing aluminum windows. It was taking anywhere up to three weeks for a job to get through the factory floor, a distance of not much more than 60 feet. We showed him how to eliminate this bottleneck and taught him and his staff how to get the jobs finished on time. Meanwhile, Ray and his brother had fine engineering equipment sitting idle in the recent business downturn. A little creative marketing, however, would see a turnaround even in difficult times. Pat was completely frustrated by the lack of good financial information from his business . . . information that would help him make quality decisions about the future and what needed to be done. We soon had his staff providing the right information on time, and the business flourished. Sam was one of the nicest guys you could meet. His cleaning business revenue was about $1.3m a year. He would get commercial cleaning contacts, find subcontractors to do the work, and pocket the difference. But he made one mistake. He listened to the bank and borrowed around $750k when interest rates were low, but they went higher. We arrived on a Monday, and he had sold the family home that weekend to reduce his debt, but still he and his wife were in trouble. She was upset at losing the famly home, and he was in tears in front of me as we tried to get things in order. On our second day on the job, his wife asked us to leave because we were costing too much money, she said. I wanted to know if we left, who would fix the problems we had identified in our analysis. "I will", she replied. So I asked, "Well, if you know how to fix these things, how come you didn't do it before we arrived?" We don't know how this one ended. Probably bankruptcy . . . and divorce.
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Dear Business Owner
In spite of all the books written on management and all the advice offered by so-called business consultants, 80% of new businesses fail within five years.
I know, I’ve been there when they’ve failed and cried with the owners who, in despair, have lost everything.
You see, in many ways, a business consultant is like a doctor. He has to find problems and cure them — otherwise the business could fail. But sometimes the business doctor is called too late, and all he can do is offer consolation to the family.
At Clarion Communications, we specialize in identifying and fixing problems before they lead to terminal illness.
Sleepless Nights
Business problems are not an accident. They are the result of poor and inefficient work practices. As a result, thousands of businesses each year suffer from insufficient profit to pay the business owners for their time and trouble.
And there’s a good reason for this. Business owners need more than good advice. They need someone to help them implement proven methodologies in their business.
Most owners would like their business to perform just like a symphony orchestra. Everyone starting together, working together in complete harmony, and doing whatever the conductor (that’s the business owner) wishes at the time of the performance.
Yet few businesses perform as well as the symphony orchestra. Which is why there can be so much disharmony in the workplace . . . and sleepless nights for the business owner.
When the business owner gets the same tool that allows the symphony orchestra to succeed, then the business will succeed with spectacular results.
In spite of all the technical expertise that exists in an enterprise, businesses still fail. And they fail because they lack the management practices that make a business highly successful.
And this is where Clarion Communications fits into the picture. Our analysts are seasoned professionals who understand how a business works. They can quickly identify the impact that poor performance is having, and help business owners identify how much profit is being lost.
But Clarion Communications is not just interested in finding out what is wrong and telling business owners how to fix it. Our Consultants are skilled in implementing what is necessary to overcome the problems that are identified. One client, an opal jewellery manufacturer, paid almost $30,000 in consulting fees to one of the top consulting companies and all he got was a 60+ pages report on what they thought the problems were. Beautifully presented, of course, but useless unless put into action. In less than 10 working days we fixed the problems and left the business owner receiving more reward for his effort.
Needless to say, our fees were less than half he paid for the report, but with us he got results.
This is not an isolated story. Many business owners buy information to help them, but find it difficult — sometimes impossible — to implement what is needed in the business.
Five Key Principles
Business owners are often surprised to find that there are five key points that are inescapable in business. These points provide a sound framework for establishing business practices on sound Christian principles that have been tried and proven in the marketplace.
Read the case studies. Do these stories sound familiar? If they do, then your business may well need a health check to discover how it can improve its profitability.
Big problems don’t happen by accident. Every big problem starts as a small one. And even when it was small, it was sending clear signals to management that something was wrong. It’s just that management either didn’t listen, didn’t understand the signal, or else could not decide what to do about it. This is why it has been said, “procrastination kills.”
But business has a strange way of treating those who are successful. Take Trevor, for example. His wife had recently committed suicide, and was totally frustrated by a business that had grown from $500,000 to $1.5 million in six months, and the staff would not leave him alone long enough for him to complete quotations for his customers.
All our clients have one thing in common. In one or more areas of the business things were not going as well as they should have. They were all under-performing businesses.
Well, the truth is, there are many businesses that meet the definition of under-performing.
Yet each of these businesses would not have had these problems if they had work practices in place that would identify these problem areas so they could be corrected before they got out of hand.
For this reason, our initial analysis is more interested in identifying real issues rather than providing consultants who might bring dubious improvement to the business. When real issues are identified, then people with the right skills can help put in place those practices that are necessary to improve the performance of the business.
And when the Clarion Communications analyst completes his job, the business owner will have a report that is
- Confidential
- Industry specific
- Complete and thorough
- Objective
- With specific recommendations
A Clarion Communications analyst uses proven methodologies that uncover unfavorable conditions in the business. From this, a business owner can expect:
· Early warning signs of any future problem
· Identification of core business problems and what they are costing
· To know what employees think of the business
· To know what is affecting profits or causing losses
· To know the strengths and weaknesses of all employees
If you think there is something missing in your business, that it is not performing as you would like, then click below to obtain a health check on your business.
Yours sincerely
Dr Ian Hodge
VP Consulting Services
Clarion Communications
P.S. Remember, we do not take consulting projects unless there is an identified problem in the business that, when fixed, will return to the business more than enough money to cover our consulting fees. Our inexpensive business evaluation is designed to provide this information to the business owner.
When you undertake a business evaluation, we’d like to send you FREE the first in a series of lessons on business management.