Operations
You have two suppliers. Both buy from the same factory.
Dual sourcing looks like resilience on a vendor list. Whether it actually is depends on a question most procurement processes never ask.
Rialto Bridge
Operations
Articles on operations.
Operations
Nine of eleven KPIs hit target. Revenue missed by 14%.
A scorecard can be almost entirely green while the number that matters is red, and the reason is usually a…
Operations
The terms say 30 days. The money arrives on day 58.
The 28-day gap between your payment terms and your bank balance isn't one delay. It's four, and only one of…
Operations
You were flat out in February. The pipeline is empty in May.
The busy-quiet cycle most owner-led firms treat as seasonality is usually something else entirely, and it is generated inside the…
Operations
The team is 85% utilised. Lead times have doubled.
Utilisation and lead time don't trade off in a straight line, and the last ten points of capacity cost far…
Operations
The service is productised. Delivery still starts with a blank page.
Naming an offer and fixing its price is the easy half of productisation. The half that decides your margin happens…
Operations
The job is 70% complete. The first invoice goes out at 100%.
Between the day work starts and the day an invoice is raised sits a pile of money that appears on…
Operations
Stock turns four times a year. Two lines turn twenty.
The inventory turn ratio is a weighted average, and averages hide the thing you actually want to know: which part…
Operations
The deposit is 30%. Materials are 60% of the cost.
A project business can hold a healthy margin on every job and still find that winning more work is what…
Operations
The deal was signed at 6% off. The invoices never got the memo.
Procurement savings are won in a meeting and lost across a thousand invoice lines, and the gap between the price…
Take it further
This is the general pattern. Your business is the specific case.
Everything here is free to read with an account, and always will be. What it cannot do is tell you which of these applies to your numbers, your market and your constraints. That is the work we do with clients.