Introduction
Six months into his new job, Greg is desperate. The list of problems he faces might signal the end of his career as president of the Cosmetics Products division of Amalgamated Consumer Products Corporation, Inc.
Imagine coming to work and facing these conditions day after day:
• Revenue and profit falling short of commitment
• Dreadful customer service, resulting in sales managers spending more time apologizing to customers than in building the customer base
• New products introduced late, and then not meeting share, revenue, and profit expectations
• Inventories expanding outside the walls of the warehouses, while orders are shorted, and expired and obsolete products are scrapped
• Functional managers who are operating as silo managers, and are at each others’ throats
• Marketing campaigns repeatedly beaten by the competition
Whether you are a senior executive or a mid-level manager with aspirations to reach the senior management ranks, you can empathize with Greg. Without robust, integrated management processes, disasters like these are all too common.
We hope you have avoided the simultaneous convergence of all these conditions. Greg has not been that lucky. He has to deal with all of them.
In this book, you’ll look over Greg’s shoulder as he confronts and overcomes these conditions. You’ll watch him make some traditional, expedient, and very counterproductive decisions as the pressure to improve business results increases. You’ll watch as he learns to think differently about his company’s business processes and their impact on the entire supply chain. He will learn how to integrate those business processes to meet the needs of his customers while simultaneously improving service to his suppliers, employees, and shareholders. No software or any other magic bullet or quick fix can deliver the turnaround that Greg needs. Instead, Greg learns that excellent business results depend on a system of well-designed and fully integrated business processes operated and managed by knowledgeable and committed people. Greg’s journey will change the way he manages Cosmetics Products and will change the way every employee operates within that business. The journey from near failure to becoming the “best of the best” is long. There are no easy solutions to the problems Greg is dealing with. You may be tempted to stop reading when you come to a potential solution for your latest nagging problem. We encourage you to resist that temptation and keep reading to get a vision of what is possible.
Amalgamated Consumer Products Corporation and the characters in this book are figments of the authors’ imaginations. But the people, the businesses, the situations, the challenges, the conversations, the conflicts, and the outcomes are based on our experiences, the success of our remarkable clients, and the collective knowledge of our esteemed colleagues in The Oliver Wight Companies. We hope you benefit from Greg’s journey and, like Greg, develop a new, comprehensive way to think about and improve your company’s business results.
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