Do It Like Dell: Improve Your Processes For Maximum Results
by Jeffrey Mayer
It's the beginning of the new year. You're thinking about your goals and how you can become more successful. But if you're like most people, you get bogged down because you believe that in order to increase your income you must increase the hours you work.
You feel trapped in a Catch-22.
With this thought in mind - the only way to increase your income is to work more hours - I read a recent article in The New York Times about Dell Computer's ability to reduce its costs of production by increasing its efficiency.
Dell's gotten so good at this that it has become the world's largest - and most profitable - computer maker.
There's a tendency in business to promote - and brag - about how big, and or successful, a business is. But the real key to running a successful business is to keep your fixed costs down, while striving for new ways to increase operating efficiencies.
Once that's been achieved you focus on how to advertise, market, promote and sell your products.
Dell has turned the process of making computers into a science. Dell's production team takes videos of its most productive workers - they're called Master Builders - and uses them as training tools for other workers.
Great Idea: Learn the best from the best, and you become the best.
Dell's designers are thrilled when they can eliminate a single screw from a product. That saves the assembler about four seconds on each computer built. Four seconds may not sound like a lot, but it adds up when you're building almost 50,000 new machines before lunchtime.
For comparison purposes, in 1991 Dell's 4th quarter production was 49,269 computers, about 550 per day. Look at how they've grown.
When Dell tries to save production time, they're trying to shave seconds off the production line. When they decided to place one fewer stickers on each computer, they shaved another two seconds off the production time.
Dell's constant and continuous striving for improved productivity has reduced its labor costs per computer to roughly $10, or 2 percent of the overall cost of a PC.
Time is money. Leverage your time and make more money.
Five years ago it took two workers fourteen minutes to build a PC. Today it takes a single worker five minutes to do the same.
Distributors – Get your Life Back!
Are you spending hours managing your distribution business? Does it take days and weeks to process invoices and accounts receivable? Do you know if your customers are properly served? Do you know where your inventory is?
Si Route Accounting is a proven system for the serious distributor in the food service, general merchandise, beverage, automotive, and other mobile industries. It is a fully unified, integrated, and proven product suite.
Distributors throughout North America are appreciating the time savings and efficiency improvements from this system.
Your mobile sales force is equipped with handheld devices containing the updated customer, inventory, and pricing information needed to invoice and settle on location. Invoices, customer orders, received on account, and inventory transactions are all managed on-the-road and seamlessly integrated with Solid Innovation's accounting system. Si Route Accounting enables you to streamline your business processes so you can focus on the most important element of business... serving your customers!
When compared to manual systems, our clients have seen:
- Move route sales people through customer sites up to twice as fast because customer orders are now created in minutes.
- Reduce administration costs by up to 50% because invoicing and pricing errors virtually disappear.
- Businesses become much more profitable. For example, accounts receivable times reduced to as low as 7 days! Accurate inventory control becomes possible in a mobile environment.
In many cases, our clients have seen a full return on investment (ROI) in 3 months and monthly thereafter. Have a look at our ROI calculator to help consider the benefits you can achieve in your company.
Upcoming Events
The ASD/AMD Trade Show is an important meeting point for many of our
distributor / clients. See us in the Sands Expo Center,
at Booth S339, February 27, 2005 to March 3, 2005.
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