Oct 12, 2011 | Management, Small business
This is a simple measure I try to foist on all my SME clients, the Monday morning “NCC meeting”. It is just as important to larger businesses, but my clients are mostly SME’s.
It involves a meeting of the key cash sensitive executives, (generally the MD, Beenie, Sales and Purchasing), and tabling a daily record of cash in and out, and rolling forecasts for the week and month to come. The participants table the decisions and expectations of the next week, and month, and looks at the cash consumption of week past. Very simple, 10 minutes when the routines are established, but a very valuable 10 minutes, as it surfaces potential cash problems before they bite .
Measuring the cash flow of a business is a bit like going to the doctor, the first thing he measures is your pulse and blood pressure, if these are OK, chances are the patient is OK, if not, look further. The NCC is the commercial equivalent, and anything that shows up here as being out of expectations requires further examination.
Sep 30, 2011 | Change, Leadership, Management, Operations, Personal Rant, Small business
The news that Fosters will be sold to SA Miller Brewing represents almost the last Australian food and beverage business with a global brand has now disappeared. I say almost, as I can think of no other, but some may argue that a few sales in Fiji or NZ constitutes global. To my mind, it does not rate.
Why is it that we seem to be unable to build and sustain food businesses from this country?.
Australia is now a net importer of packaged food, according to the AFGC 2010 report, and yet we are an abundant producer, particularly of broadacre commodities, grain and meat. Most people when told we are a net importer go into a state of disbelief, and yet the march of imported food, and the decline of Australia’s manufacturing base has been happening slowly over a long period.
It’s pretty easy to blame the evolution of globalisation of supply chains, the domination of Woolworths and Coles, regulation imposing costs overseas competitors do not have, the geographic spread and relatively sparse population denying the economies of scale, but the reality is that it is a management failure. The failure is shared by boards and shareholders who have tolerated a complacent management, discouraged long term strategy in the chase for short term returns, and simply disengaged with the basic drivers of competitiveness over a long period.
The only hope left is that a few SME’s will emerge from the heavily culled pack that remains, but it seems to me that they have missed the boat, and the barriers that the businesses that existed 30 years ago, and should have breasted, are now simply too high for the small guys to tackle without the scale and capital resources necessary. Our one hope is that there is a processing breakthrough, technologies like the CSIRO High Pressure Processing technology offer some hope, but they are unlikely to be the savior by themselves.
Almost gone, down to the last gasp, what on earth will we do then? Or don’t we care?
Sep 23, 2011 | Communication, Customers, Innovation, Small business, Social Media
Ask a SME manager in packaged goods, “would you like a phone call from Woolworths ordering stock of your new product for every store in the country?” and you will most likely get a tear with the nodded head.
Enter the “Orabrush” story, they got the call from Walmart without any of the usual begging.
There are many hurdles for SME’s in the packaged goods industry to jump before distribution in the major retailers can be obtained, and then the problems really start, because SME’s lack the resources to move the product off shelf before the trial period runs out.
Social media has helped over the past couple of years, you now have the opportunity to reach highly targeted groups of consumers, and deliver them a message, but generally it has not helped much to get the product on shelf in the first place.
Orabrush really broke the mass market model with a product I still find odd, but great creativity and lateral thinking combined with social media has turned the product into a hit, and can now be found in Walmart stores around the world
Have a look at the Youtube ads in the link, gems.
Sep 22, 2011 | Leadership, Management, Operations, Small business
One of my clients, a modest sized business inhabiting a narrowing but quite deep niche of manufacturing, has over a period of time put considerable resources into training their essenial technical people to be expert in the fields vital to their success.
A topic of discussion and concern has always been, “how do I get my investment back when I train them, and they leave?”
Perhaps the better question to ask is “what happens if we do not train them, and they stay?”
Sep 16, 2011 | Customers, Management, Sales, Small business
SME’s in the Australian food industry are up against it if they see their futures as suppliers to the major chains, who require a combination of utter commitment, globally competitive costs, and supply certainty requiring substantial scale and the attendant capital base.
Added to all that, small business has it all in front of them in any stoush with a large corporation. Metcash, the nations largest wholesaler, and effectively the third force in Australian FMCG via its supply arrangements with independent retailers seems to relish a fight.
They chose to fight Andrew Bunn, a small retailer in Canberra who went to the wall, and then accused Metcash of breaking their supply contract. The blue Metcash then picked with the ACCC over their proposed purchase of Franklins has been entertaining. Metcash informed the ACCC they would go ahead with their purchase of the Franklins chain from Pick n Pay before the ACCC delivered its decision, ballsy call, justified as the Federal Court gave them the go-ahead, but the ACCC is now appealing the decision. Who knows what will happen next, but the ACCC must assert its power in the marketplace or become irrelevant, but whilst the legal stuff drags on Franklins is bleeding cash, virtually removing them from the scene as an ongoing concern, whoever owns them.
I’m sure there is more to come, but none of it matters much to the SME manufacturer facing a small number of retail gorillas who exercise their power ruthlessly, and without any empathy with their suppliers. The ghost of Eric Bender who inhabits the memory of the few of us still around who dealt with him, would shake his head in dismay, and take another drag.
Sep 9, 2011 | Marketing, Small business, Social Media
A while ago I wrote a short post about QR codes, saying I thought they had the potential to change the way we think about marketing.
Subsequently I came across this post and video on the Social Media Examiner site, that adds to that view, and having seen them work at a trade show a week ago, as a means to capture information off the name tags of attendees, I am even more of the view, that here is something genuinely new, not just a refinement or divergent use of an existing technology.
An update from July 2013. QR codes seem to have stalled, the potential seen by marketers, myself enthusiasticly has not come to p[ass. This post by Marketing Charts details a report that looks at the numbers, and concludes that QR codes are perhaps a failing tool in the marketing arsenal. I for one am having a bit of trouble with the conclusion, somewhere, we have missed an opportunity.
