The pain from broken systems effects businesses in multiple ways. Some of the common pains include high customer service costs, high warranty claim costs, frustrated employees and low customer retention. Of course all these pains eat away at your profits and impact your ability to remain competitive and develop loyal customers. I’ve recently experienced this [...]
Optimized for whom? Your employees, your customers or neither?
March 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment
I was checking out at my local grocery / general merchandise store and witnessed the shopper in front of me struggling through the checkout process. She was required to maneuver her cart a 90 degree angle so that it was assessable to the checker. “Like parking a car in the garage”, the checker suggested. Then [...]
Balancing Capacity and Sales for Profitability
December 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment
What’s the link between sales, profitability targets and capacity planning? How do you grow your sales, optimize capacity and maintain the level of quality and service that your customers require? Let’s start by looking at profit, which is simply your sales revenue minus your costs. If you increase your sales, but your operating costs go [...]
Focus – Making it Work for You
September 18, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Have any of you ever done the magnifying glass experiment? The one where a magnifying glass is used to capture the sun’s rays, focusing the intensity of that energy and incinerating a dry pile of wood scraps. The focus provided by the magnifying glass harnesses the sun’s typical pleasant warmth into a burning force. So [...]
5 Tips for Surviving an Economic Slowdown
September 18, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Engaging in business Process improvements can be a great opportunity to lower your costs… There’s nothing like rising gas prices, an erratic stock market, sagging sales, and gloomy economic projections to get everyone worried about a potential economic slowdown or imminent recession. What’s a business to do? Here are 5 tips to prepare your business [...]
Need to Cut Costs Without Crippling Your Company?
September 6, 2010 By Leave a Comment
These days, it seems like everyone is feeling the pressure to cut costs in their company. Oftentimes this cost cutting needs to occur so the company can survive in the short term. But how do you ensure that the results of those cuts don’t damage your ability to satisfy your customers? That they still receive [...]
Need a Recipe for Sustained Improvement?
August 15, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Dear Steller Solutions, I’ve heard you are an expert at Lean Manufacturing, a process improvement system with a lot of great press and results across the globe. I hired a consultant to implement Lean Manufacturing on one of my assembly lines last year. Frankly, I thought it was a lot of good ideas, but my [...]
I Will Survive…
February 15, 2009 By Leave a Comment
If your business mantra sounds like a corporate remake version of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” – you’re not alone. It seems like everywhere you turn these days, we’re getting more bad news about our current “financial crisis”. Businesses that were well positioned for growth are shifting into maintenance mode. Businesses that were just getting by [...]
Is It Time to Create Your Own Economic Recovery Plan?
November 2, 2008 By Leave a Comment
…beat the competition by being flexible and adaptable. Okay – So it’s been a wild ride over the past few months in the economy, and predictions for the future may have you sleeping fitfully these days. Many of us are assessing the damage to our retirement portfolios and our ability to access credit and wondering [...]
