Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Increasing The Bottom Line Might Require Batch Invoicing Delivery

By Patty Summers


From the instant an entrepreneur makes the decision to take the challenge and start some kind of business, the game is on. The first thing that happens when a new product or service arrives on the market is scrutiny by consumers and competitors. Surviving as a business means shaving every bit of waste from all processes, and implementing batch invoicing delivery is smart execution.

One free enterprise staple is the notion of producing something that works and offering it at a reasonable price. Of course the definition of these ideas is subject to discussion, but in generally it defines what business is all about. What companies keep relearning is that it is the customer who gets to define the what is good and what is correctly priced.

The US market learned this in a very surprising and dramatic way around 1970 about the time of the first oil crisis. The decades after World War II saw the nation become a global manufacturing powerhouse. Most of the world was tired of sacrifice, so consumerism was in high gear, and the most sought after items were all marked made in America.

Everything was working in favor of the US business monarchy, plenty of labor available, massive production capacity and a more than willing market, the only problem was satisfying demand. The mistaken lesson learned was a collective arrogance that the success was due to superior management and work ethic. The idea that the war had not been fought on US soil did not make a big impression, until a few decades later.

With the arrival of small automobiles and high quality appliances and all manner of entertainment devices, American manufacturers found themselves scrambling to discover what had happened. A prevalent joke was the next management fad was whatever the Japanese were doing today. The surprising discovery was the Japanese miracle was guided by two American management experts.

The key, it seemed was to seriously listen to customers and even employees, and then adopt the good ideas that one discovers. By actively seeking out customer desires and building those features into the products, the market was a much more accepting place. Even more stunning was the discovery that these ideas and methodologies had been surfaced in the US first, but were largely ignored.

The biggest reason for the resistance to the ideas was that they had the audacity to believe that management needed training, implying that not all the problems were caused by line employees. The notion that managers needed to listen to employees and customers ran contrary to the routine way of conducting business. Faced with the obvious success of the methodology however, they soon fell in line.

Looking at production in a process-by-process way searching for ways to eliminate waste in any format was a new paradigm for successful companies. One of the most frequently wasted resources was time, and through elimination of wasteful efforts, the bottom line improved. Instead of the traditional serial invoicing system, switching to batch invoicing delivery was a winner.




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