Skip to main content

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.
$37 - instant download

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.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

What do you think?

Popular posts from this blog

The Kaizen Checklist is here!

Do you want to get better results from your Kaizen programme? Improve your business results quickly with my downloadable kit (including guidebook, workbook and templates) for only $39. Are you looking for a sustainable way to identify and implement improvements across your business? Practical improvement strategies The Kaizen Checklist is a downloadable kit that you can use with your management team to develop a system that suits your business and allow you to quickly implement Kaizen effectively at your place of work. This works great if you use it as the centre piece of your own internal workshop. The kit includes a 40 page guidebook, a workbook, four appendices and three templates. All parts of this kit are designed to get you up and running as fast as possible. If you are unfamiliar with Kaizen, let me stress that this is a simple improvement philosophy that is so much more than just  ‘a Japanese word for continuous improvement’. I’ll cover what it...
Read more

How to get started with continuous improvement

We all know that continuous improvement is a strategy that is essential for business. It involves constantly seeking ways to improve processes, products, or services in order to achieve better results and outcomes. However, for many people, the thought of starting on the path of continuous improvement can be daunting. The fear of doing it incorrectly or not knowing where to start can be overwhelming.    The key to successful continuous improvement is to start small and gradually build upon your successes. Here are some tips to help you get started if you are unsure of how to begin:   1. Identify areas for improvement: The first step in continuous improvement is to identify the areas that need improvement. This can be done by looking at the processes, products, or services that are not performing as well as they could be. It is important to involve all stakeholders in this process to gain a comprehensive understanding of the areas that need attention.   2. Set specifi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Nail the number one improvement project

Over the past few weeks I have intervened in my client's continuous improvement programmes . I did this for one good reason: They weren't getting results. They caught the improvement bug, like so many organisations do. They got caught in the trap of wanting to change everything now! As I said, this happens to most of us from time to time. You start with some small improvements and you then identify more improvements you could get your teeth into. The next thing you know, you are trying to run ten improvement projects as well as deliver your day job. I know from bitter experience that this usually leads to having lots of loose ends rather than tangible increases in performance. So, what can you do about this? I know that with careful experimenting and resource management, you could find your sweet spot and figure out how many projects you can handle at once. Or, you can take the quick route and pare back your list until you have one priority. The one project that will give you t...
Post a Comment
Read more