Looking Over the Fence

Published in: Georgia Printer, July 2002

Useful information for change is almost always there.

A recent Harvard Business Review article titled "Read A Plant - Fast" brought back a flood of memories. Why more companies don't send key personnel to visit other organizations to learn better business and production practices is a mystery to me. Throughout my consulting career of more than 13 years, I've rarely visited or worked with a client or client's customer from whom I didn't learn something useful to enhance their future work performance.

It's nearly impossible for a graphic arts company CEO or, for that matter, production or accounting personnel to visit a customer's operations with the assigned sales rep, tour their receiving and storage area or talk to their marketing and design people without gaining useful information -- information that ultimately benefits both organizations' importance to each other and their future performance.

This leads me to the question: "Why don't more graphic arts company management teams visit their target customers' or even their suppliers operations?" And if they did, would the benefits outweigh the costs?

A Customer Focus

Let's approach this issue from a different perspective. Most sales reps and CSRs have utterly complex positions that almost no one in manufacturing or accounting is interested in filling -- or having to learn. It's frequently acknowledged that most respectable production and accounting folks don't understand what is required for successful customer and business development in today's environment -- and somewhat understandably, would prefer not to learn. In fact, when a sales rep or CSR comes through the door with a complex or challenging project, you can watch the folks from production, accounting or other support staff run for foxholes.

Yet in a typical graphic arts organization everyone, without exception, impacts what the customer experiences and receives. The range of issues is almost infinite: from electronic files that are difficult to open, to properly labeled and packaged product, to invoices, to calls concerning a late payment.

To test the issue and potentially open Pandora's Box within your own organization, go ask any sales rep or CSR whether they receive the consistent support and understanding they need from the rest of the organization to be successful in their job and accomplish what their customers need. Then ask them what should change organizationally to foster improvements in what they're able to accomplish.

Be prepared for a reaction that varies from prolonged silence, to a downcast, hang-dog look, to a verbal response such as, "Do I really have to answer that or could we go for two out of three questions?"

Part of the truth of the matter that needs to be taken into consideration is that the "front-end" personnel who have daily interaction with customers (i.e., CSRs, estimators, receptionists, sales reps and even prep department contact folks) constantly have to adapt to changing needs, expectations and requests. However, our production and accounting personnel do not experience this type of forced customer interaction. Consequently, they understandably expect information and performance levels from customers and front-end folks to fit their traditional frameworks of information.

In effect, most of our front-end departments are constantly being pushed to perform in a manner that our production and accounting people expect. Yet customers' changing needs are dictating otherwise. If we look at our largest customers, there's almost always evidence that we developed them by doing something different or radical -- something outside of the norm of how we usually do business.

Another truth is: Customers know their needs and demands are often unreasonable. However, these "necessary folks" aren't being arbitrary. Their market demands force them to find graphic arts suppliers who are committed to delivering what's needed -- whether it makes sense or not. The supplier of the future is one who is truly in its target customers' businesses.

Performance Improvement for Customers Needs

This brings us to the following strategic questions:

• What performance improvement initiatives are each department working to implement within the next three to six months?

• How will each improvement be meaningful to your customers?

When I conduct confidential interviews of folks in various client departments, I'm sometimes surprised to hear criticism of sales reps, sales management and CEOs for what's not as they think it should be. Before I conclude each interview, I try to ask a couple of questions that are intended to provoke self-examination by the interviewee.

The questions I ask include:

• What have you improved in your department in the last three to six months that benefits customers?

• What are you working to improve at this time that will benefit the company's working relationship with customers?

• How often do you visit customers' operations?

If by rare chance there's a positive response to these questions, I follow up with: "Do your sales reps, CSRs and senior management know that you're working on this initiative?"

My point in this review is that, with rare exception, if I can get key production and accounting personnel to visit the operations of target customers, key suppliers or other top-performing graphic arts plants, we can more quickly facilitate performance improvement and the ensuing stronger customer/supplier working relationships for our future.

Once you decide to take the challenge and make the visits, preparation is key. Pre-visit questions that can be useful to assist a production or accounting person in preparing to visit an outside facility include, but are not limited to:

• What is this company's differentiation and business development strategy in its marketplace?

• What are their best (and worst) performance areas relative to their competition?

• What are the company's key performance initiatives or goals for the coming six to twelve months?

• How can we impact what this company is working to accomplish?

Answers to these questions lead to an entirely different, deeper set of questions such as:

• What's the status of this company's central scheduling system relative to ours?

• How does this company's supply chain and inventory level measure up relative to ours?

Where Do We Start?

The leadership for change and continuous performance improvement in an organization is critical and ultimately comes from not just the CEO, but also from department heads and front-line personnel.

Somewhere in your organization there needs to be individuals with an "itch" that reminds them that what they're doing is just not good enough.

In effect, no one has a franchise on curiosity, inquisitive ideas or conceiving new ways of looking at what could be. But to fast forward this process, we need purposeful stimulation. Visiting customers' operations to discover meaningful needs for change is just the beginning. You can also learn valuable information by: examining your suppliers' operations and taking advantage of their educational programs, visiting graphic arts plants that do not represent a competitive threat, and attending technical and educational programs sponsored by associations.

A Searing Example

We have a client in the Northeast whose production performances we've tried to keep quiet for reasons that may become apparent. In my opinion, this company is alive as an organization today because of the outstanding, day-in and day-out performances on behalf of the pressroom for their customers. In essence, the pressroom management represents the company's distinguishing competitive edge to their customers. This company produces jobs mostly for graphic designers and New York ad agencies. Their typical six-color, sheetfed makeready requires less than 30 minutes and less than 100 sheets -- on average. With some frequency, this graphic arts company knows they can even win lower-range web work if production cost and price are a priority to the buyer.

Visiting companies (not representing competitive threats) have learned much about how to emulate this competitive edge for themselves. However, no one has surpassed this company's pressroom performance, and in my opinion, this is because the pressroom manager is in constant pursuit of additional performance improvements. Every time I visit, he has at least one new performance enhancement he wants to show me.

Similarly, we have another client in a Southern textile mill town who, with less than $10,000 invested in mail list management software, a PC and a printer, began managing customers' direct mail pieces with merged fixed and variable images. With the recent improvement in the economy, this client has experienced an increase in business that has exceeded last year by 40 percent.

At still a third client, the prepress manager, on request, has developed a Web site that allows designers to conduct preflight tests from their personal computer workstations - before they ever send in their files -- thus saving days of delays and improving the reliability of production schedules and deliveries. This customer-friendly preflight system has also lowered prepress costs and, predictably, customers' invoices.

Summary

Through all of this generation of ideas, inspiration of what could be and follow-through seem to separate those who aspire to be successful from those who are. While some folks "play with an idea," a few rare individuals seem to unconsciously hold themselves accountable to not only follow up, but also prove what could be.

CEOs and department heads don't have a patent on leadership and performance improvement initiatives! Great ideas for improvements can come from any position in an organization. The ultimate key, however, is how we nurture these ideas or kill their existence. Each organization delivers its own verdict.