Take control of your business destiny

“Control your own destiny or … someone else will.”

This is perhaps one of the best-known rules of Jack Welch, former CEO of GE. You might ask, how does this apply so many years after he first proclaimed it?

In an era when inflation is impacting most every aspect of the economy, including borrowing costs, “pricing power,” that is, your business’ ability to pass some or all of cost increases on to the customer, is often very limited. Your success in finding ways to reduce costs in your business (or household) may well have a big impact on your own “destiny.”

You have more control over your costs than anything else in your business.

So, what do you do? One effective approach that many businesses have used is “LEAN Management Techniques.” The goal of LEAN is to identify and mitigate/eliminate waste in your key business processes. Examples of waste include inventory, overproduction, defects and rework, waiting/cueing, transportation, motion, overproduction, and unrealized employee potential.

Take a few minutes to think about each of these areas in your business:

· Are your key business processes defined/mapped?

· Do your employees fully understand their roles? Are they trained and incentivized to excel? Are there barriers or hurdles that reduce or stop the “flow” of your business processes?

· Do you understand your sales volume and mix well enough to forecast it more accurately so that you avoid excess/surplus inventory, as well as the interest costs to carry it?

· Are your invoices clear enough that customers don’t need to call or email you with questions, thereby keeping your receivables higher than they should be, as well as, again, drive higher interest/carrying costs?

· Do you manage the flow of your inbound materials well enough so that they are tightly timed with production schedules and then sales shipments?

· Does your website have timely and accurate content that your current, (or potentially new), customers can find and navigate through easily and quickly?

· Are you able to serve your customers in the timeframe that they need you to?

· Are there too many handoffs in your processes?

Ten minutes thinking about this now could make a huge difference in your business. Keep it simple.

And it’s just not only about cost reduction/mitigation, but also about making it easier for your customers to do business with you. It’s about creating a sustainable, differentiating value proposition. So, take a few minutes now, and start a plan that makes sense for your business.

You will be glad you did.

SCORE is here to help you through all stages of your business. For information, visit https://www.score.org/tipofthemitt to learn about us, and to find a mentor to help.

Robert Denten volunteers as a mentor for small businesses with SCORE's Tip of the Mitt chapter.

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Control your business destiny