Operations
Headcount grew 30%. Output grew 8%.
When a growing firm adds people and throughput barely moves, the usual suspects are the wrong ones. The arithmetic is more interesting than weak hiring.
Rialto Bridge
Operations
Articles on operations.
Operations
The service was productised in January. Every delivery is still bespoke.
Fixing the price is the easy half of productising a service: the margin arrives only when the work behind the…
Operations
Call volume is up a third. The customer base is the same size.
Some of the work an operation does exists only because the operation created it, and most reporting systems are built…
Operations
The stock turns four times a year. The catalogue has 1,400 lines.
A blended stock turn is an average of two very different businesses, and the one quietly consuming the cash is…
Operations
The deposit is 20%. The materials are 60% of cost.
Collections work on the tail of the cash cycle. The hole is dug in the first fortnight of the job,…
Operations
Three quotes are required. The incumbent writes the spec.
A tender with three bids can still be a single-source purchase in disguise, and the tell is not in the…
Operations
The bank balance has never been higher. Two thirds of it belongs to customers.
Deposits and prepayments can make a fragile business look liquid, and the moment the illusion breaks is rarely the moment…
Operations
Utilisation is 92%. Nothing arrives on time.
When a business pushes its people closer to fully booked, delivery dates stop slipping gradually and start slipping all at…
Operations
One supplier is 60% of cost of sales. The relationship runs on purchase orders.
Concentrated supply is not automatically a problem. What matters is whether the concentration was chosen, and what the arrangement looks…
Operations
The dashboard has thirty-one metrics. Last quarter, none of them changed a decision.
Most reporting packs are accurate, comprehensive and inert. The useful test isn't what a metric measures: it's what a different…
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.