Operations
The KPI that improves when you lose a customer
Ratios move in the right direction for two quite different reasons: the business got better, or the denominator got smaller.
Rialto Bridge
Operations
Articles on operations.
Operations
Accurate, complete, and three weeks late
Most management reporting is judged on whether the numbers are right. The more useful test is whether they arrive before…
Operations
The bottleneck you fixed is still where everyone is looking
You relieved the constraint, throughput rose, then it flattened again, and the whole business is still organised around a problem…
Operations
The seventh direct report
Nothing broke when the team grew from six to nine. But decisions started queueing, and the arithmetic behind that is…
Operations
Your specification is now your supplier’s capability list
Depending on one supplier rarely shows up as a higher unit price. It shows up somewhere much harder to see,…
Operations
The job you accidentally invented
Every growing business ends up with at least one role that no outside labour market can replace, and it usually…
Operations
The order you can’t afford to win
A contract can be genuinely profitable and still be the thing that breaks the business. The P&L is the last…
Operations
Most late payment happens before the invoice goes out
Days sales outstanding is measured from the invoice date, which means the part of the delay you control most is…
Operations
The exception you granted once is now your policy
A one-off concession is almost never priced as what it actually is: a permanent liability bought at a moment when…
Operations
Busy and at capacity are different problems
Businesses that hire because everyone is busy often find the new person absorbed within a quarter, with the same pressure…
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.