Monthly Archives: March 2011

Implementing VFS: A Beginner’s Guide [2011] (Consolidated Links)

VFS: Value Focussed Sourcing

Implementing VFS: A Beginner’s Guide

  1. Part I
  2. Part II
  3. Part III
  4. Part IV
  5. Part V
  6. Part VI

Looking to Transform? Make Sure The Organization is Ready!

Transformation, which many companies will require to survive the next few years, doesn’t work unless it’s taken seriously, and the organization is ready for it. To judge awareness, ask these “six questions for company transformation” from a recent Industry Week article.

  1. Where is the Organization’s Culture?
    Before an organization can begin a change management initiative, it must understand the culture of the organization. What are the beliefs and expectations of the employees? If this is not understood, then it is not likely that an initiative can be designed to change their spirit. And unless the employees get behind the initiative, there is no hope for success.
  2. What starts the process?
    Most companies want to take action right away, but action is often no more effective than reorganizing lines on an organizational chart, which is rarely effective. A successful transformation begins with knowledge — a pervasive awareness of what needs to change, why, and how it will improve the company’s situation.
  3. Whose culture is it?
    The organizational culture must be owned by the employees, not by the management team or the consultants brought in to lead the change management initiative. Furthermore, the effort must allow the people to reach their potential or the change will not be as successful as the organization hopes.
  4. How Do You Know If You Are Making Progress?
    It’s not just about the metrics, which won’t convey meaningful information for months, but about the visible changes in behaviour that signify that change is taking place within the organization.
  5. When Can You Change the Culture?
    Change can only happen now, not at some future time. Each day must be an effort focussed on meeting that change.
  6. Why Do People Change?
    There are two critical steps to transformation success. The first is to understand that organizational culture will need to change. The second is to understand why it will change, which is not always obvious. For more details, see the article or The Seven Arts of Change (DavidShaner.com).

When Will Analysis Be Ubiquitous?

It seems that analysts across the board are finally recognizing the need for good data analysis. For example, this recent article in Industry Week on “mastering complexity, driving out complication”, notes that what most manufacturers are missing today is an adequate way to analyze and interpret collected data in terms of what are the potential impacts and risks on the business. Add this to all the articles preaching the need for spend analysis to get direct, indirect, and logistics costs under control, and one sees that the need for analysis across the board is now ubiquitous.

But yet only a small number of companies have solid analytical tools. Most companies still don’t have basic spend analysis applications that allow them to see where their organization spend is going. Far fewer still have Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence (EMI) applications. But until there are data analysis applications across the supply chain, significant cost-saving opportunities are going to go unidentified. So when will analysis be ubiquitous? How many more years are we going to have to wait?