Intro:  Group50 and ProMexico have partnered together to bring to our readers more insight into the advantages of Mexico as a business partner.  The following article is the first in a series of articles on Mexico, written by Juan Carlos Briseño, ProMexico’s Los Angeles Trade Commissioner Mexico:  A country savoring the moment, the niche, the current global trends and the “attractiveness” of a country with the proper human power, operational costs, proximity, innovation and trade agreements.  Yet it is crucial to add formal, professional promotion, facilitation and guidance in order to capitalize on Mexico’s endless business opportunities. The good news for Mexico:  Its Federal Government has understood this.  …Read More

On Friday 6/25, we awoke to the screaming headlines about the citizens of the UK voting to leave the EU.  Brexit was a reality.  All the experts and the polls were wrong!  Leading up to this there was tremendous volatility in financial markets and uncertainty about the impact of Brexit on global financial markets and business.  Business executives that we have been working with have displayed the “deer in the headlights” look: strategically frozen in place while waiting to see what happens.  Now what?  …Read More

Every organization views Customer Service as a critical function for their business.  It has a significant impact on your Voice of the Customer (VOC).  Customer service is on the front line of interfacing with the customer, but it isn’t the only function that interfaces with your customers.  Finance, Shipping, Sales and Marketing also play an important role in customer service.  The Customer Service group acts  …Read More

The importance of proximity to the customer is a greatly recognized principle that can derive tangible benefits for any organization that desires to improve market synergies.  China vs. Mexico is quickly becoming a market proximity consideration.  The results can be multiple fold.  First, proximity increases customer loyalty, it gives the organization greater flexibility to execute changes faster and adapt based on the voice of the customer.  The ultimate result …Read More

Every company is faced with some type of restructuring activity during its history.   The restructuring process is painful and often unsuccessful.  There are two basic types of restructuring:  financial and operational.  Financial restructurings are often a result of poor operational performance and the reality that the management team has not responded quickly enough to changing business dynamics. In this case, a wall to wall cost takeout is called for. Often, the need to restructure is a gut reaction by senior management in response to perceived weaknesses in the business.  This article focuses on operational restructuring and the process for planning and successfully implementing it.

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Executives are faced with a conundrum when they are trying to decide on when and how to hire a consultant. There are typically 5 issues that nag an executive during this decision making process.  Those issues typically go along these lines:

• Consultants are too expensive; especially the top tier consulting firms and they don’t get real, measureable value
• Every professional who is unemployed or underemployed is a consultant until their next job and they don’t have the appropriate bandwidth; but they are cheap
• Finding a consultant or consulting firm who is a cultural fit with the organization
• Finding a consulting firm who has all the functional resources required for an entire project.
• When to admit that we really can’t solve the problem ourselves

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In the Group50’s series of Talent Management Blogs, we defined “Talent Management” as a set of integrated organizational HR processes designed to attract, develop, motivate, and retain productive, engaged employees. …Read More

In an article I wrote about writing your company’s chapter on 2016, I asked if your view was optimistic or pessimistic. The first couple of weeks of 2016 should have reigned in all of the optimists, unless you are one of the lucky few who have a business that is absolutely bullet proof, or you have completely forgotten what an economic downturn is like.It is already here. All of the companies and countries whose fortunes are tied to oil have cut back their capital spending by as much as 80%. In the United States alone, that amounts to over $90 billion in reduced spending in 2015 and the worst isn’t over. Middle Eastern companies have reduced their spending by similar amounts. Not included in that is …Read More

For most of us, 2015 has been one of those years where business leaders were continuously faced with new obstacles to progress. Tepid demand, a strengthening dollar (+13%), the first interest rate increase in 8 years, a slowdown in China’s growth rate (-30% to – 50%, depending on who you listen to), oil down (-30.5%), volatile stocks on the DOW which is down (-2.2%) for the first time since 2008, geopolitical turmoil, a decline in the manufacturing index (-14%), etc. etc. etc. 2015 should be a reality check for …Read More

It doesn’t matter what size your company is or what industry you are in. Every company is challenged with delivering a Known Good Product or Service  Let’s face it, companies are only about offering products and services. When working with clients, I often ask their definition of a Known Good Product and am usually surprised by their inability to give me a good answer. They often say that it is a function of cost or quality or customer satisfaction or profitability, but I typically never hear them say …Read More

In the previous Talent Management Blogs, we defined Talent Management as a set of integrated organizational HR processes designed to attract, develop, motivate, and retain productive, engaged employees. Hypothetically,we have created the job requirements, determined that we need someone to fill a role, recruited and hired a great new employee and provided the training required to be successful in their new role. So now your “new employee” isn’t so new (+6 months) and you want to ensure …Read More

You would think that in today’s world, effective supplier management programs are well defined and utilized throughout every company. The sad fact is that we have worked with middle market companies up to $500M in annual revenues who don’t have an effective supplier management program. The smaller the company, the worse it gets despite the fact that supplier management is one of the 7 critical business processes that every company must master in order to achieve long term success. Many organizations have …Read More

In the previous Talent Management Blogs, we defined “Talent Management” as a set of integrated organizational HR processes designed to attract, develop, motivate, and retain productive, engaged employees. Hypothetically, we have created the job requirements, determined that we need someone to fill a role, recruited and hired a great new employee. We need to spend a bit more of the Company’s money to Welcome the new employee (On-boarding) and provide the proper skills and knowledge (Training and Development) to provide every opportunity …Read More

I was recently working with a division of a $1B company who was having problems with the introduction of a highly engineered product in a foreign country. They were struggling with manufacturing a complex component in a new product that was introducing a disruptive technology.

They recognized that this new product introduction was complex and that successfully introducing this product was the basis for their Market Effectiveness. They knew that that new product introduction programs typically generate their highest sales and profit margins in the fist 12 months after implementation. Disruptive product programs that are poorly implemented …Read More

In the previous Talent Management Blogs, we defined “Talent Management” as a set of integrated organizational HR processes designed to attract, develop, motivate, and retain productive, engaged employees. Thus far, we have reviewed how to develop a set of skills and competencies to drive Job Descriptions, hiring criteria and Performance Management and we determined how many employees with the right skills and competencies were needed to deliver your business goals.

The focus of this blog is to develop …Read More

We continue this series of blogs pertaining to global business practices and some of the lessons learned from decades of experience implementing global expansion strategies for Fortune 500 companies. Middle market enterprises desiring to start or continue their international and multinational expansions are well advised to reflect on some of these critical factors when creating their distribution strategy. One of the early strategies to enter a foreign market is that of setting up foreign distribution. …Read More

 

Are Customers happy with the way you handle their complaints? Are you?

We all know that complaints handled well can open a portal to new opportunities. Back in 2008, customers were telling the company I worked for that we were not so good at handling customer complaints. None of us were surprised… we were frustrated ourselves with our mish-mash of process and tools and the impact of the poor quality …Read More

We begin this new series of blogs pertaining to global business practices and some of the lessons learned from decades of experience with implementing global expansion strategies for Fortune 500 companies. Middle market enterprises desiring to start or continue their international and multinational expansions are well advised to reflect on some of these critical factors. First, we consider globalization a do or die strategy. Clearly Fortune 500 enterprises have demonstrated this fact by their …Read More

In the previous Talent Management Blogs, we defined “Talent Management” as a set of integrated organizational HR processes designed to attract, develop, motivate, and retain productive, engaged employees and we reviewed how to develop a set of skills and competencies to drive Job Descriptions, hiring criteria and Performance Management. Wikipedia defines Workforce Planning as “a continual process used to align the needs and priorities of the organization with those of its workforce to ensure it can meet its legislative, regulatory, service and production requirements and organizational objectives.” In simple and direct terms… …Read More

Unhappy with your current DC? Expanding to a new region?

Whatever your reason for wanting to open a new warehouse or distribution center, you know that the decision can’t be taken lightly… and 3PL providers don’t make it easy to do side-by-side comparisons of their services and prices. There is more to developing an analysis of the options than …Read More

In the previous blog article on Talent Management, we defined “Talent Management” as a set of integrated organizational Human Resource processes designed to attract, develop, motivate, and retain productive and engaged employees. The initial step in the overall Talent Management process is to determine the skills and competencies a person requires to be successful in a given role. Most organizations use “skills and competencies” interchangeably and define them as: the knowledge, expertise and aptitude to do something well; the …Read More

 

Are you getting all you can from your best 3PL Warehouse Provider?

If you are using more than one 3PL warehouse provider and each one is a standalone partner, you may have opportunities to simplify day-to-day operations and maintain or reduce your SG&A costs, even if you expand your distribution network. Let me tell you a quick story. …Read More

The concept of the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is not new and for many not a bit exciting. But, it is a critical part of the acquisition process and has been successfully used for the analysis of Information Technology and government procured products for many years. It is a mainstay of the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR). Yet, the concept of the Total Cost of Ownership hasn’t been universally adopted by middle market manufacturing and distribution companies as part of their standard Supply Chain Management Solutions. Middle market companies …Read More

Time based Key Performance Indicators provide significant insight to how quickly your organization responds to the needs of internal and external customers.  They tell a story that every leader needs to pay attention to.  Which of the following time based Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are being tracked in your company?

 

 

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Talent Management is a set of integrated organizational HR processes designed to attract, develop, motivate, and retain productive, engaged employees. The goal of talent management is to create a high-performance, sustainable organization that meets its strategic and operational goals and objectives. John Hopkins University I particularly like this definition as it first focuses on the outcomes from productive and engaged employees. This is the model I follow when helping organizations “think about their integrated organizational Human Resource processes.” Whether you have a robust Talent Management process or you randomly …Read More