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Growing your business through on time delivery performance

Everyone expects products and services to be delivered on time. It’s a basic ‘satisfier’ in any business transaction or project. So, why would I be writing about this as a strategy to grow a business?

The world changes quickly (I’m sure that you have noticed!) and with these changes comes new problems to overcome. Customers change their buying habits, new products and services add complexity to the organisation of the delivery and production side of your business. Expectations are increased through the ongoing proliferation of e-commerce and on demand services. So, although on time delivery is expected it is not always experienced.

There are so many unknowns in day to day business, that getting let down with deliveries is something that most other businesses want to avoid. Becoming a supplier of choice, because of your superb reliability in keeping your promises (the right product / service in the right place at the right time), can help you to win more business. People want to work with businesses that can keep their promises.

If you want to improve your own business’ on time delivery performance, and want to position yourselves as the ‘go to’ people in your industry, consider the following:
  • Find the delays in your business and figure out how to eliminate the pauses that are present in your business process. Many times these delays can take the form of meetings to make decisions, poor organisation of workloads and a lack of coordination between internal departments. Find these delays and remove them.
  • Make a list of all the obstacles you know there are in the business that stop your clients from getting a Class ‘A’ service. There will be things that niggle you that you will know must be a problem for your customers. If you get direct feedback from your customers about these issues then this is an opportunity to take advantage of the information. Figure out ways to make it as easy as possible for your customers to work with you.
  • Look at your business and spot the triggers that lie within your business. How do orders get started? How do your staff know how to undertake certain actions that convert your customers’ needs into paid invoices? Being clear about these triggers and making sure that they happen without failure can make a huge difference to the consistency of your business’ on time delivery performance.
  • Create an action list and get started with making the changes you have identified to your business. Without action you will only have ideas on how to improve your business; it's the results that count.

Becoming the best supplier in your industry can be a really effective strategy to grow your business through repeat and expanded sales. Hopefully you have now found a way to look at your business that will allow you to improve how you deliver your products and services on time and reap the rewards of increased sales and higher profits.
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If you aren't quite sure how to take these ideas forward and want to have a more structured (and rapid) approach to improving the on time delivery performance of your business then check out my 'On Time Delivery Kit', which you can learn more about here. In essence it is a ready to use management approach to help businesses improve how they deliver their products and services on time.

Good luck with your improvements,

Giles

About the author
Giles Johnston is a Chartered Engineer who specialises in helping businesses to grow and improve through better business processes.
Giles is also the author of Business Process Re-Engineering and creator of the 'Making It Happen' continuous improvement strategies course.
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