Performance Archives - Page 9 of 12

Five Metrics that can help Maximize Revenue, Margin and Cash Flow Potential from Existing Business

by sincera | Jul 1, 2012 | Business, Business Operations, Management, Performance, Productivity

For a business or sales manager, the last week of the quarter is a very stressful time. Push for that last-minute sale, run after the documentation for sales orders and contracts, and make sure that all the steps in the book to bill process happen smoothly – it is a race against time. The scope and degree of these activities may vary from company to company based on the setting of quarterly or annual targets but the end objective is usually the same – maximize the revenue, margin and cash flow potential. Cash is always king and any additional revenue is generally welcome, as long as the bottom line targets are met. But extra revenue, margin and cash flow that can be uncovered and pulled out of existing fixed costs is very valuable because it tends to flow straight through to the bottom line. This is where business operations can play a critical role in identifying sources, plugging gaps and putting in place processes to prevent revenue and cash flow leakage that leads to financial under-performance.

Given the timing, today’s blog post is focused on the metrics and areas that act as indicators to these quarterly business objectives. I have been called a “gold-digger” and a “revenue shark” by my bosses (and I take that as a huge compliment :)) and so here are five of my secret sources that help me uncover hidden treasures and meet the stretched targets specifically in the services business:

Metric #1 – Unbilled Revenue:

What: Revenue that has been recognized in previous months/quarters but has not been billed to the customer.

Why: Mainly due to

a) Lack of confirmation/approval on milestones in Fixed Price projects from customer on billing

b) Lack of confirmation/Approval from customer on time sheets in T & M projects

c) Milestones not in sync with efforts in Fixed price projects – we are burning efforts faster than we bill

Impact: Cash Flow (Collections/DSO) Target

Metric #2 – Unearned Revenue

What: Revenue that has been invoiced to the customer but not earned, accrued or recognized.

Why: Mainly due to

a) Advance billing in Fixed Price projects based on a milestone such as Contract Sign off/PO received/etc

b) Lack of Information on man months spent for the revenue in the project

c) Milestones not in sync with efforts in Fixed Price projects – we are billing the customer faster than we are spending the efforts

d) Man-months and/or Total project value for the project not updated or re-baselined in case of fixed price projects where revenue is calculated on the basis of percentage completion – we thought we would be spending x no. of man-months at project start but actually need lesser amount of man-months to complete the project OR the total project value has changed (+/- CRs) and man-months has not been updated

Impact: Revenue and Margin Targets

Metric #3 – Deferred or Unrecognized Revenue

What: Revenue for which we have spent efforts (tagged as billable) but has not been recognized or earned in the period in which efforts have been spent.

Why: Mainly due to

a) Lack of documentation needed as per US GAAP or other accounting guidelines – no signed SOW/contract/PO

b) Orders received but not reached finance or accounting folks

c) Project not created/updated in financial systems

d) Billing inputs not received by Finance in terms of how many man-months spent and where

Impact: Revenue, Margin and Cash Flow Targets

Metrics #4 – Resource Utilization Dips

What: Dips in Percentage of the actual revenue earned by assets against the potential revenue that could have earned.

Why: Mainly due to

a) Real increase in buffer or bench

b) “Hidden” resources in fixed price projects

c) Missed billing for resources in T & M Projects

d) Incorrect tagging or time tracking of resources

Impact: Revenue, Margin and Cash Flow Targets

Metric #5 – Static Backlog

What: No change in Difference amount (i.e. Backlog) of the Value Booked and the Value Billed/Recognized of an Order over a period of time. A healthy backlog is a good sign but it has to be serviced quickly or the order may get cancelled and the backlog will disappear taking away the revenue potential with it.

Why: Mainly due to

a) Slow ramp-up of internal resources for T & M projects

b) Delays in project schedule for fixed price projects due to skill unavailability, etc

c) Delays in hiring

d) Gaps in understanding of customer expectations

Impact: Revenue and Margin targets

Some of the terms above may seem purely financial in nature but business operations in service companies must look deeper into these numbers in order to discover and monitor the root causes of the variations. The variations in the above metrics are an indication of broken processes and work flows within the organization maybe due to lack of integrated systems or communication gaps or discipline. Fail to understand the significance of these metrics and you will fail to reap the benefits in the shape of maximized revenue, profits and cash flow that arise from the tracking and root cause corrections of these metrics.

I would love to know and learn from you. What terms or metrics do you use to monitor and improve the performance and efficiency of your organization? Where have you found revenue, margin or cash flow leakages in your work? Which of the above metrics would you want to know more about ?

Five Steps to turn your Strategic Initiative into Execution Success

by sincera | Jun 10, 2012 | Business, Business Operations, Leadership, Management, Performance, Productivity

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results – this famous quote by Sir Winston Churchill often comes to my mind when I participate in strategy presentations. Beautiful slideware beautifully presented for maximum impact – but hey! Wasn’t this the vision a quarter back, a year back or two years back and essentially the same strategy couched in the latest business buzz words? You may have discovered the same yourself and experienced a sense of déjà-vu – and we are not alone. Multiple business surveys have revealed that more than 60% of corporate strategies never end up getting executed. The best thinkers and strategists could come together and create a superb vision for an organization but it remains just that – a recurring dream – if not followed by flawless execution. But that is no easy job especially in the current turbulent business environment, globally spread and diverse employees and non-hierarchical organization structures. All the different threads that make up an organization has to be woven together to create an environment where every initiative achieves its objective and on time.

So, how do you take a single line objective or goal in a strategy (say, develop talent in niche areas or target accelerated growth in emerging markets or create a culture of innovation) and convert that into a reality? I have worked on or observed quite a few of these initiatives and the results have varied – some died a quick death, some petered out and a few gathered momentum and achieved the desired objectives successfully. Here are five steps that I believe contribute immensely to operational agility and are critical to turn your strategic initiative into execution success:

Step # 1: Get organized –

Building an execution plan is the very first step. The plan has to be doable, well-defined, and realistic with clear objectives and time lines. Break up the strategy into four or five tactical goals (too many leads to dilution of efforts) and define the tasks, accountability and workflow for each of them. A structure and the process within the structure helps answer the how, what, who and where behind the high level strategy and goes a long way into making the strategy actionable.

Step # 2: Get Executive Sponsorship –

Most often, implementing a strategy involves working across different functions in an organization and you may or may not have control over their actions. Office politics, inter-personal dynamics, conflicting priorities could ruin your plan even before it gets off the drawing board. So get the full support of the heavy weights behind you – you will definitely need it to enforce discipline and collaboration. Get the full buy-in of your top management to make sure that they support not only the strategy, but also the specific plan you have prepared to execute it. Don’t even bother to start without this – you will get nowhere.

Step #3: Get the Right Talent –

Build cross-functional teams around each initiative selecting each team member very judiciously based on ability, personal interest and the special skills needed for the particular initiative. Through this, not only do you get the right talent but also create a shared sense of ownership and responsibility thus spreading the commitment with the organization. This will help in building momentum to sustain the initiative from the planning to execution phase.

Step #4: Communicate, Communicate and Communicate –

Communication is the life-giving oxygen at every step of the process. The rationale behind the strategic initiative and the implementation plan, the benefits that are expected as outcomes from the initiative and the impact of failure of the plan all need to be made transparent to the teams. Provide information, invite feedback and conduct training sessions to increase engagement and improve collaboration. Turn passive detractors into active and enthusiastic drivers of the process by using this powerful tool.

Step #5: Track and Measure –

Set up a steady state tracking mechanism and a schedule for review with the key stakeholders. Choose the performance metrics that best measure the progress (or regress) of the goals of your initiative. It is important to track and measure so that you know if you are winning to celebrate (publicly) or not winning to do course corrections on the execution plan (again publicly). This underlines the seriousness of the initiative and helps overcome the “this too shall pass” mentality in organizations. And of course, what gets measured gets improved, so you end up increasing your chances of execution success.

Transforming a dream into a reality in business or in life is not easy nor is it guaranteed. But then who said business operations was easy? I have seen initiatives succeed using the above steps (and all of them are important for successful execution) and as Marcel Telles said – A company can seize extra-ordinary opportunities only if it is very good at the ordinary operations. So the journey may be tough but the rewards would definitely be worth it – at the very least, you would not have to sit through the same strategy being presented for the umpteenth time in a new shape.

Tell me what I have missed out and where I might be wrong. How do you turn your strategic initiative into execution success? I would love to learn from you and get better.

Business Operations Performance Metrics: Employee Satisfaction – Five Leadership Tips to Lead Remote Teams with Ease

by sincera | May 28, 2012 | Business, Business Operations, Career, Leadership, Management, Performance, Productivity

Employee turnover or attrition is one of the biggest factors that limit an organization’s growth trajectories. With the pressure on margins and the competition for talent, it makes a lot of sense to explore and implement strategies that work as well as or better than financial benefits to attract and retain top talent and increase their productivity. One such benefit is to offer work life flexibility to your people, call it remote work, virtual work, mobile work, telework or telecommuting, work from home – it essentially means moving work to your staff rather than moving your staff to work. In a recent article in HBR by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, she shared some interesting statistics – when surveyed about the possibility of working remotely, 83% of Millennials and 75% of Boomers say that the freedom to choose when and where they work motivates them to give 110%.

Common sense and multiple surveys tell us that remote working is a win-win situation for both organizations and employees – why has this mode then not been adopted more widely? One key reason is that managers and employers are not really comfortable extending this mode of working. There is a certain reluctance arising from the fear that there will be an impact on productivity levels if people are not there working right in front of you. I have worked in a remote mode and have managed geographically dispersed remote teams for most of my career – and have found a greater than 25% increase in productivity and efficiency levels for both myself and my teams. Working remote is a responsibility – and I have written about the worker aspect of it in my earlier post. Today’s post is focused on the leadership responsibilities of the manager and or employer on making working from anywhere, anytime effective.

Leadership Tip #1: Engage – Communication at all levels and through all available channels is key to success in connecting the “isolated” team members and bringing them together as a team. This is not about the technology and tools (of which a myriad variety is available today) but about the basic steps to create an emotional connection. Listen, converse, and reach out often to build a rapport with your team members and a shared environment of trust. Create frameworks and processes for communication, decision-making and problem solving for your team with guidelines on how, when and where people can interact with each other to set the expectations and the pattern. Mailing lists, weekly one-on-one calls or meetings, chat sessions, social media sharing all help bring people together.

Leadership Tip #2: Empower – Micromanagement of tasks and depending on physical proximity to keep track of your team is of course no longer a possibility here (and should not be so even in regular work environments). So let go the old style of leadership and move to outcome based leadership. It’s all about trust. Give autonomy (with accountability) to your teams. Set goals with deadlines – make sure that your teams fully understand the goals and have the support that they need to achieve them – and track them on outcomes instead of tasks. Address problems early and be available to your teams. Promote “intrapreneurship” within your teams, sit back and enjoy watching them GO.

Leadership Tip #3: Enable – This one is about technology and tools. Create a secure and efficient environment for your remote team to work seamlessly without hassles. Microsoft, SAP, Cisco and many others have great tools to ease remote working. Simple things like good internet bandwidth, power backups and laptops, Conference Bridge and WebEx, project management tools all have a big impact on productivity when working remote. Evaluate the options that best fit the team and the business needs and provide the facilities to your team to enable productive working across multiple time zones and locations.

Leadership Tip #4: Energize – Enthuse your remote teams by providing a shared vision and purpose and making it clear about how their work contributes to the success of the organization. This is extremely important in a virtual environment where team members may feel isolated from the organization and ambivalent about the hits and misses in the organization. Ensure that there is no disparity in compensation, promotion eligibility and benefits between the people who work from office and those that don’t. Make your teams successes and contributions visible throughout the organization. Encourage the team to mentor each other and make wins and losses a joint responsibility by celebrating wins and learning from mistakes together.

Leadership Tip #5: Exemplify – It all begins with you – walk the talk and set the right example through your own actions. Be proactive, alert, transparent and always available for your teams. Put in more effort to stay connected with your teams, appreciate often and be sensitive to the work-life balance of your team members. Working remote needs a lot of integrity and honesty and not everything can be laid out in black and white in policies and processes. Influence your teams through your own example and by being a role model so that there is no confusion within the teams on the “right” way to do things in a remote work environment.

These tips and ideas are not new – managers have been using them to ensure their team’s success in regular work environments. However, these become even more important in a remote working environment. By improving communication, learning to manage by outcomes rather than tasks, and nurturing and sustaining trust between managers and employees the entire organization benefits. I can also safely say that my management skills have significantly increased through working and managing in the remote mode.

What tips can you share from your experiences in working flexibly – did you find productivity improvements? What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them? I would love to hear and learn from you.

Five Life Skills that can Give Wings to your Career

by sincera | May 12, 2012 | Career, Life, Managing Yourself, Performance, Productivity, World of Work

“Life skills” are defined as psychosocial abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life. They are loosely grouped into three broad categories of skills: cognitive skills for analyzing and using information, personal skills for developing personal ability and managing oneself, and inter-personal skills for communicating and interacting effectively with others. Mastering these life skills will not only make you successful at work and life, but more importantly will make you immeasurably happier too!

Here are the five Golden Life Skills that have made my work and life a fascinating journey:

Life Skill #1: Listening – It’s not just about your auditory senses. That of course is the first step. But what makes a difference is how much of it you absorb. When in your first job, everything is new, everything is exhilarating and everything is exhausting. The learning curve is superbly steep. Listen, Observe and Absorb- the golden rules to internalizing your work. Listen with your entire being, hang on to every word being uttered, and in no time you would have mind mapped your role. But do remember that this is an on-going process to grow!

“Every person in this life has something to teach me–and as soon as I accept that, I open myself to truly listening.”~Catherine Doucette

Life Skill #2: Initiative – Go that extra mile to try out things, even if it is something you thought you could never do. Chances are that you will be treading on ambiguity and unknown territories all the time, since it’s your first job. So it would only do truckloads of good to say Yes, more than you say No. Take the plunge! Having taken innumerable head dives myself, I can tell you that the results are immensely gratifying!

“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step”~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Life Skill #3: Relationship Building– This is one of the key factors to convert your job into something that you look forward to, instead of viewing it just as work. Building personal connections with colleagues always adds that extra zing to your day and keeps the workspace stress free. And on days that are blue, these relationships help you sail through, keeping your productivity intact. They have the potential to last a life time too!

“Remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That’s why it’s a comfort to go hand in hand.”~Emily Kimbrough

Life Skill #4: Resilience– Since we are learning perpetually and alternating between baby steps and giant leaps, we are bound to falter. But, this is the nature of the game. Take a moment, pick yourself up and get going. You’ll only get better. Be it our work or relationships, when we bounce back, it’s always with renewed vigour to prove ourselves and shine. Keep moving.

“The bend in the road is not the end of the road unless you refuse to take the turn.”~Unknown

Life Skill #5: Giving Back– It is said that the more you give, the more you get back. When you give your 100% and more to your work, what you are also doing is expanding your own horizons to grasp more and thus in return adding value to yourself and your organization. This is an iterative process. Since my first job luckily has been in the social sector, I can see the direct results of my work in the smiles of the children I work with. It is a heavenly feeling.

“You make a living by what you get, but you make a life by what you give.”~ Unknown

Today’s guest post is by Nilisha Mohapatra.

Business Operations Performance Metrics: Gross Margin – Five Steps to Improve your Margin

by sincera | May 6, 2012 | Business, Business Operations, Management, Performance, Productivity

~~The success combination in business is: Do what you do better and do more of what you do. David Joseph Schwartz ~~

Margin improvement – this phrase usually conjures up images of budget cuts and lay-offs – and strikes fear in the hearts of the toughest managers. But it really does not have to involve any of these things – costs reductions though important should not be used as the only lever in any margin improvement strategy as you soon run out of cost reduction options. Gross Margin (as I wrote in my earlier post on key performance metrics) is the mother of all metrics and the quickest way to determine if your business in on track or not and acts as an early warning system to put in place margin improvement initiatives. So, a quick definition of gross margin:

Gross Margin (%) = (Net Sales – Cost Of Goods Sold)/Net Sales

The gross margin represents the percent of sales that the company keeps after incurring the direct costs associated with producing the goods and services sold by a company. The levels of gross margin may vary dramatically based on the nature of business (products or services, manufacturing or retail, etc.) but the principles and strategies behind improving margins boils down to two things – increasing your sales and increasing your operational efficiency to bring down the cost of goods sold.

Thinking through some such initiatives that I have been involved in and noting what worked and what didn’t, these are the five steps that I came up with that I believe are critical to the success of any margin improvement initiative:

Margin Improvement Step #1: Customer profiling or Knowing your best customers – It all starts with the right data that gives you the information that you need, in this case a profile of your customers (or customer segments) that gives you a view of where your profits are coming from. Pareto’s principle applies here too; around 80% of your profits would come from 20% of your customers (or segments). Now you have identified where to focus your energies on – sell more in high profits areas and less in the low profit ones. This will also help in reducing the cost of sales that arise from keeping alive or going after customers where you are consistently not making any margins.

Margin Improvement Step #2: Order to Cash process or Leaving no money on the table – Take a close look at all your internal business processes and systems that are in place to book orders, bill them and collect the cash. Where are the revenue leakages – do you have a method to track unbilled and deferred revenues and plug these? Are invoices being raised in time or are customers being essentially financed by you? Do you have policies to regulate and control warranties, refunds, credit notes, etc.? Little things add up to a big dent into your margins over a period of time.

Margin Improvement Step #3: Pricing Policies or Enabling your Sales force Effectiveness – The quickest way to increase the gross margin is to increase prices. Even a 2-3% increase in prices brings in a big jump in margins and the people who can do this are the sales team. So are the sales people in the company aware about the linkages in pricing and margins? Is there clear communication and transparencies in how pricing is done within the organization and how it translates into bottom line for the company? Are there tools that can help sales make better decisions by giving them access to real-time data on profitability? Making key stakeholders aware of the tools at their disposal and how their actions impact the outcomes is a big step forward in any improvement initiative.

Margin Improvement Step #4: Operational Excellence or Reducing inefficiencies – This is all about doing more with less and driving performance improvement through the smart use of metrics. Look at all areas of waste and inefficiencies – space that is not being used, people that are not being utilized, advertising that is not working, projects that are out of control, inventory that is gathering dust, supply chain expenses, travel costs, etc. Translate this into a plan with measurable outcomes and deadlines and assign clear ownerships.

Margin Improvement Step #5: Rewards and Celebrations Or Creating a Customer-focused Culture – Tie the incentives, awards and rewards that you give to your employees clearly with the margin goals. Tie Sales bonuses with the levels of margin that each sale brings in and not just the revenue. Celebrate early wins to reinforce the importance of the margin improvement initiative. Positive reinforcement works best here. Research shows that companies with a customer-focused culture that consistently deliver value beyond customer expectations grow at rates that exceed industry averages. Customer Focus is a profit strategy and the way to achieve long term profitability is to build and sustain the culture of customer focus within the organization

What steps have I missed ? What business operation metric do you use to measure margins? What has worked for you in improving margins? I would love to learn from you.

Business Operations Performance Metrics: Cash Flow – Five Steps to Improve your DSO

by sincera | Apr 21, 2012 | Business, Business Operations, Management, Performance, Productivity

Happiness is a positive cash flow ~ (Fred Adler – Venture capitalist) ~

Most of us in business or in sales have heard this – Revenue is vanity, Margin is sanity and …Cash is king. I have written about the importance of tracking cash flow related metrics in one of my earlier posts and now want to capture some of the “hows” behind the “whats”. A commonly known and accepted metric for measuring and tracking the cash flow situation in a company is the DSO* or Days Sales Outstanding. DSO is used to determine the effectiveness of the order to cash process of the organization as it depicts the average number of days it takes to collect an order and turn it into cash after a sale has been made. The lower the DSO number, the less time it takes to collect receivables and the better you are able to manage your short and long-term business needs.

While technology plays an important role to make your collections process as efficiently managed as possible, it is my firm belief that no technology can provide benefits the way it is meant to unless there is a clearly defined process and enough checkpoints in the system. Every stakeholder needs to know his/her role in the process and have access to the information necessary to focus on functioning in the most efficient way possible given that this process involves multiple functions (sales, billing, treasury, collections) or in the case of small businesses the same person wearing multiple hats.

Here are five simple steps that have worked for me in streamlining the order to cash process and improving the DSO metric:

Step # 1 – Start at the beginning: Before you make that sale, have you checked what payment terms are you agreeing to and what conditions need to be fulfilled to trigger the payment from the customer? This is where sales plays an important role. When and how the payment will be received is as important as how much; and will save a lot of time for people downstream if sales negotiations take these too into consideration. For services contracts, payment milestones should be structured in a way that your spend is aligned and not more than the cash inflow at any point of time. Negotiate the best terms possible and make sure that the terms are clear to both you and the customer and are recorded.

Step # 2 – Update your records: Once the sale is made, whether you do it manually (through a simple Excel) or through a tool like SAP, record the important information in a tracker and set reminders. The minimum information should include the date when the invoice has to be raised, the date that it falls due, the supporting documents that are needed to get the customer approval on the invoice, who and where the invoice needs to be sent to, and the mode of payment. Review this information periodically and ensure that it is up to date.

Step # 3 – Communicate: Make sure that every stakeholder knows what is expected of him/her in advance so that people are not scrambling around after the invoice is due. For example, this could mean the delivery team knowing that there is a requirement for signed acceptance certificates for a product or time-sheets for a service, the treasury team knowing that a performance bond is needed for payments, the invoicing team to raise the invoice on the exact date that it can be raised and not waiting for the end of the month or the sales team knowing that a system record is required at the customer end. The idea is to be prepared so that you don’t lose days in processing time in raising the invoice and after the invoice has become due.

Step #4 – Follow-up, Follow-up and Follow-up: Ok, so if you have done the three steps above, the invoice will most likely be raised on time and now comes the painful part which involves customer relationship management and possibly a little bit of tact and diplomacy (collections-speak for not being a pain in the you-know-what) and lots of perseverance. If you know who the person is, in the customer organization, who is responsible for the processing of your invoice, I have found it helps to touch base twice before the invoice becomes due so that you are paid on time without the need for umpteen delays and follow ups internally and to the customer. Once, before the invoice is raised, call the customer contact and confirm the process requirements at the customer end so that you raise the right invoice in the right way. And then, a second time after you have raised the invoice and before it is due, confirm that the invoice has been received and it is cleared for processing. This helps eliminate surprises and the need for follow-up after the payment is due.

Step #5 – Continuous Improvement: Metrics, Dashboards, Regular reviews and Continuous Improvements go hand in hand – I am a great believer of this. You may know what to measure and how to improve the metric but unless you include the mechanisms to maintain a sustained focus, things just slip eventually. So, maintain a dashboard that can track all of the items above and the connected metrics (Accounts Receivable buckets, Unbilled revenue, etc.), map that against the DSO trend, set up regular reviews to discuss what is working and what is not, celebrate the wins and work on what part of the process needs improvement. Keep the extended teams informed on the changes and their impact and make them a part of the success too to demonstrate the importance of cash flow management to the overall business.

What have I missed? What processes do you follow to manage DSO? How important do you think this metric is? I would love to learn from you.

*DSO: The most common calculation: (Ending Total receivables/Revenue (or Billing) for the Period Analyzed) X Number of Days in period

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