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Sue and Simon discuss Chapter 8 - How do I find my next set of Productivity improvements? from their book "Every Second Counts: How to Achieve Business Excellence, Transform Operational Productivity, and Deliver Extraordinary Results."
Welcome to the Productivity Podcast . Sue returns as we get back to the book . Every second counts and we are today talking around Chapter 8 , how do I find my next set of productivity improvements ? Hi , sue , feels like a quite timely one , considering at the time of recording . We've just gone through the budget and that was the previous podcast .
Speaker 2
Yes , I actually think there'll be lots of people that are looking for extra savings now .
Speaker 1
So Chapter 8 then really starts to get us into productivity roadmaps , so developing the productivity of an operations journey , not an end point . As I'm sure you all know , if you stand still , unfortunately you kind of get bypassed by everybody else . And we've seen that over the years with , unfortunately , the likes of Debenhams for those who remember Blockbuster video and again timely pieces of record home base are in the news . So unfortunately that happens . The world takes over . But a productivity roadmap should set out future improvement opportunities and when and how you're going to get there . But it's not just something that stands still , is it Sue ?
Speaker 2
No , and a roadmap should be something that you update and review and refresh regularly so context can change . There's kind of probably people are now having to find extra savings under what they thought because of national insurance contributions or national living wage or various other things there's there's always something that's that's kind of an extra cost . So it needs to be a living thing that we that you review and constantly review , because you can have a project in there that you're expecting to deliver a certain amount of savings by a certain time . It might be that that doesn't deliver on time , or it you can do it earlier or you know there's lots of reasons why things might change and you need to keep it up to date .
Speaker 1
It's not a dusty document to leave in a drawer and you shouldn't wait until cost pressures are high or there's challenges from senior team halfway through the year , if sales aren't as good or there's a the headwind for different reasons it's . It's sometimes easier and best place to do it when things are good and trades good .
Speaker 2
It can feel a bit strange to be doing at that point , but actually at some degree that's the easiest time to do it yes , and if you're in an operations role in an organization , ideally you'd have a productivity roadmap , you might call it something else , but but that principle having all my savings opportunities set out and it's something that you work from and review and and look to add to all the time , because I mean , as we know from our time , in those sorts of roles , there's always somebody that wants you to find some extra savings to pay for something . So there's there's always that hunt on for better ways of doing things .
Speaker 1
And roadmap , just a series of projects or programmes that you've got listed and when they're going to land , what hours they're going to add in and take out the kind of net benefit .
Speaker 2
Yeah , and it should be over multiple years . So you'd want kind of a little bit more detail the closer you are , so for next quarter you should have a very good idea of what you're going to deliver . Five years out you might be less clear . I think always keeping that view on what's coming on the horizon , what's going to change , what opportunities are there going to be , is a really important thing , and there are some projects that just take multiple years to sort of develop and deliver them as well so if people are scratching their heads , where are the best one or two places to start looking ?
Speaker 2
Technology's always a good one and it can be a trap as well . So If it's technology that's kind of already proven I mean , for a lot of businesses things like self-payment , self-ordering , all those sorts of things are a real big help and it's established technology they're not that much more expensive than putting in ordinary tills . It's kind of it's tried and tested . Things like electronic shelf edge labels and those sorts of things . They're kind of a bigger investment but they're kind of getting there and there's more business cases and there's lots of places where you're looking at perhaps things like auditing software .
Speaker 2
So there's lots of trackers that are done still on bits of paper , whereas if you can digitise those , actually that technology can be relatively cheap and saves you time producing your documents and tracker books and all those sorts of things and actually does it means you've got central visibility . So it unlocks a whole load of other opportunities . So I tend to favour going for technology that's tried and tested , kind of a known return on investment . There'll be a space for looking at future stuff and developing things . But I think it's it's really risky to hang all your hat on savings from some hugely expensive it program that's going to deliver in three years time , because the chances are it'll cost more than you thought and it perhaps won't deliver what you thought , and things might have changed a bit by then .
Speaker 1
So technology is a good place to look , but clearly with some warnings any other places .
Speaker 2
Yeah , behind the scenes tasks are always a really obvious place to look .
Speaker 2
So the things that , whatever your operation does that adds value . So , whether that's picking in a warehouse , whether that's kind of serving customers , whether that's in hospitality , retail , you know , whatever sector , there's always the thing that that's the bit that the customer pays for . Whoever your customer is then supporting that , there's always a whole load of other tasks , so it might be things like stock handling . So to get the stock where it needs to be , it can be things like admin paperwork it needs to be . It can be things like admin paperwork , cashing up all those sorts of things . That it that if you can either eliminate them , reduce time spent on them , outsource them , digitize them , they're really good places to to do , because the customer doesn't notice and it tends to make life easier for your teams as well if you can get rid of some of those , those tasks too yeah , quick wins around accelerating plans , pulling forward implementations or phases of rollout so you get the benefit earlier feels an obvious one , but sometimes it's also set in stone and people don't like to go back to it .
Speaker 2
And it can be that as you're doing a project , you find that there are bigger benefits than you thought and actually you can make sense to make it faster , or there's different opportunities . So once you've got a project plan yes , once you start to see your benefits flow through , it's always worth another look to see what you can do to get even more out of it and outsourcing , some things that outside agencies can do for you , which is interesting , because I'd use cleaning as an example in retail , where people have moved away almost from outsourcing and bought it in-house .
Speaker 1
Yeah , what I tend to see with that is you've then got people that aren't skilled in doing that , so they're mopping the floor with a mop that's full of grease , and they're just mopping grease . They're trailing water around the floor with the cleaner , so it feels like a cost saving , but actually is your quality ? The same are your standards ? The same is your quality . The same Are your standards , the same Is your safety the same , et cetera .
Speaker 2
Yeah , and outsourcing , it can be things like your cash handling , which you know people are taking less and less actual cash these days , but actually you can just give your cash to you . Whoever delivers your change has probably got a big cash counting centre so that they can take on those sorts of tasks . And the good thing is that if you particularly look at the tasks that you end up having to do out of hours , then they're really good ones if you can reduce them , because it pushes more resource back into , kind , of the hours when customers want you . So those things that tend to stretch the day , you know a lot of people will either stay late to cash up or they'll get there early to do the cashing up . So if you can really reduce down that time to push you more hours into the time when the customers are there , then that's a double benefit . Case studies examples have you got anything you can share ?
Speaker 2
When we do studies for people , a big part of what we do is identify opportunities for doing things differently . So when we do studies , we'll be able to tell people exactly how long they spend doing some of those supporting tasks . So whether that's um , you know , food preps , a great example where we've worked with people who've , you know , brought in whole cabbages and actually you can buy chopped cabbage . Um , it saves time , it's , you know , it's , it makes it quicker and doesn't actually impact on the , on the quality of the of the food in any way . So there's , there's things like that .
Speaker 2
Um , there's also thinking about the whole whole chain . So generally , within an operation , you're one part of it and there'll be . There might be downstream parts , but there'll certainly be upstream parts of that . It can really help looking across the whole piece . So we work with people that have looked at things like how their warehouses operate and how they operate . That impacts how the , the retail operation behaves . So if you get your stock that's sorted well , you know , in reasonable quantities , nice and easy to unpack , it's much quicker to put things on the shelf than it is if you get a massive a delivery that you have to go through , sort it . Everything's jumbled up and you don't know what you've got .
Speaker 1
Makes sense and then finally in of quick wins . So we've got some things around using new site openings and refits as a testbed to try so it can be insightful and clearly can be absorbed in some of that cost If new stores aren't there or organisations aren't expanding , new restaurants etc . Other ways of doing small scale trials to learn quickly , revisit and tech solutions I think you you've touched on . I think one of the big ones is then it's not all about the salary budget . There are other costs .
Speaker 1
So clearly in recent years heating and lighting have caused them , caused lots of headaches around their cost increases . So have they been revisited ? Are the timers in place ? Do you go to ? Do you have lux meters so you go to half lighting when there's lots of sun and it's bright in the location ? So there's lots of things to look at . You've talked around comms , so assuming things get done , we always have a debate around receipts and till rolls . Do you need them ? How long are they ? Is there an opportunity to digitise there ? So it shouldn't all be around taking salary out because there are other costs in the business .
Speaker 2
And it's easy to overlook them . It amazes me how many retailers we go in and they give you a huge , long receipt . I actually think I wonder what your till roll bill is over a year and I think you could probably halve it .
And having said , you know you need to be cautious with things like tech , so don't over invest and all that sort of thing . You do reach a point when you've been doing changes for kind of a number of years that you do have to actually start to think the brave stuff and think , well , actually , if I change this totally , so some of the time you have to think that , more extreme , further out , get a bit blue sky . You might not ever go that far , but actually it might give you new ways of thinking about what you're doing now . And you know there's cost changes and there's business changes and there's customers change . You know it's important to keep looking at things and revisit what was unthinkable and unsuitable five years ago . The world's changed .
Speaker 1
It might be different now , yeah , and certainly the cost profile . So that's a summary of chapter eight . We'll be back with chapter nine , which leads on quite nicely . Is the projected saving real ? Thanks , sue , thanks .
