Booth Associates - Business

Business Processes, Administration and Service

Do You Recognize Any of These Situations in Your Company? The following situations are common in the administration and support areas of many organizations.

The processing of orders is a major bottleneck in keeping our customers happy.
We always study our past performance data when we make decisions, but we must be doing something wrong because our decisions are often found to be wrong in the long run.
In our company, all types of paperwork weave through a path of delays, approvals and frustrations.

Here are some examples of how Booth Associates can help.

Dealing with Variation

The following is an example of how problems in the administration and support areas can hurt your company.

The executives in a sales organization were concerned with low morale among their sales staff. After interviewing the sales people, the administrators found that many of their sales staff were frustrated when their efforts were not rewarded consistently with sales. During months when they worked the hardest, they often had lower sales than in other months. Sometimes, when they had not worked hard, their sales were high. If a sales person had a low-sales month, they were brought into the sales manager’s office where they were told that they needed to work harder. Many times they were confused because they had worked very hard that month. On other occasions, when they had not worked particularly hard, they had high sales and were singled out to be praised among their colleagues. On these months, the praise only made them fear the next month when they might not do as well as in this month. Then they would be chastised again for poor work. Frustration was the name of the game, and morale was very low. These sales people were being victimized by management’s failure to understand variation and how to deal with it realistically. Management needs to learn how to respond to variation. When variation is dealt with correctly, employees feel better about their work, their performance improves, and greater profits result.

Processing Orders

The following is an example of how Booth Associates can save you money in the administration and support areas of your company.

A company processed about 9,800 purchase orders per month. There were 30 clerks performing this function, and each one should be able to process between 20 and 25 purchase orders per day. It should be possible to process between 13,200 and 16,500 orders per month. Yet, with only 9,800 orders coming in, they were getting further behind each day. About twice each month, some of the clerks would have to come in on weekends (at time-and-a-half) to keep from getting completely bogged down. Orders took almost 5 weeks to be processed. Customers were unhappy and some were moving their business to competitors. The process by which the orders moved through the company was in trouble. An analysis of the order-completion process revealed the root problems which were causing the delays. The process was revised and the order-processing time was reduced from almost 5 weeks to only 7 working days. In addition, the number of clerks was reduced from 30 to only 24. The savings in salary alone is over $130,000 the first year. Customers began expressing appreciation for the prompt service they received.

How Booth Associates Can Help

If you recognize any of these or have other problems in your company, we can help you. We have helped many companies improve their bottom line, and we’ll do the same for you. Please see our list of services and contact us.