Why Implementation Matters
Strategy is a popular subject in business
schools: it has a certain air of intelligence and sophistication about it. But it’s a term that’s overused without being
well understood. If a poll were to be
conducted, most business school students would probably not be able to give a
proper definition of what “Strategy” is.
And they certainly wouldn’t be able to explain how strategy alone
doesn’t bring about business success.
“Implementation” is another term everyone
thinks they understand, but it has significantly less excitement about it and
so it gets a lot less little attention. While the topic deserves a book rather than a
short article, let’s take a simple look at why business implementation is, in
fact, as important as strategy.
Don’t Bother Me with Details!
Imagine you have a great idea on Monday morning: You decide to spend the upcoming weekend on the Mayan Rivera. Your plan doesn’t have a single flaw and brings benefits from all sides – you can financially afford it, you’ll get a well-deserved rest, spend quality time with your significant other, get a lot of the Vitamin D you’ve been lacking, and best of all, you’ll have the perfect excuse to skip that family gathering you’ve been dreading. So, you get really excited and… do nothing about it all week.
By the time Friday rolls around, it’s too late to put the plan in motion, and on Saturday, instead of listening to the soothing sounds of waves while drinking a frozen daiquiri, you are listening to your uncle’s terrible jokes and eating your sister-in-law’s dry meatloaf.
This is a very simple example of a great
strategy…with no implementation; and it well illustrates why the two are
equally important components of any successful plan.
Simply put, without implementation, a great strategy bears no value.
Let’s Talk About Business
The business world equivalent of this
situation occurs on a regular basis but on a much more complex level. Not
taking anything away from the importance and complexity of determining where a company
needs to be in five or ten years, that vision is useless without these four implementation
steps:
- Putting together a detailed plan of how to get from the current state to the envisioned future state;
- Setting the proverbial wheels in motion;
- Providing feedback and making adjustments to the strategy as its implementation rolls out; and
- Seeing the plan through to successful completion.
These steps are, of course, a very simple
outline, and each needs to be broken down into myriad specific and necessary activities.
But the overall idea remains that taking
these steps means implementing the great strategy your company has developed
and putting your business on the path to success.
Can One Make A Career of
Implementation?
A recent study of CEO LinkedIn profiles revealed that a good number of CEOs held positions related to implementation as their first job, with the most popular one being a consultant. While there is no set path that guarantees career success, and not everyone is cut out to be – or aspires to be – a CEO, being a management consultant in implementation clearly holds promising opportunities.
Trindent Consulting offers stellar opportunities in business implementation consulting, with room for growth and potential to learn the implementation ropes and further develop top consulting skills.
Visit our careers page for more information.
Surrogating Online Analyzers With A Real-Time Arithmetic Prediction
Online analyzers can be an effective instrument in providing real-time information for refineries to monitor their current performance in terms of unit operations, blending, emission, etc. While being very useful in providing valuable information – they can also be expensive, time-consuming to maintain, and inaccurate. These days, a lot of technical solutions are proposed to refining operators to install online analyzers in solving a business challenge, which usually involves a cumbersome, time-consuming process including initiation, feasibility study, approval, installation, testing, and implementation.
When working with refining operators around the world, we often see the misconception that an online analyzer is a must-have solution to enable mature process control – which is not necessarily the case. With the advancement in data analytics and modeling, we have successfully supported our clients to install Online Analyzer Surrogates in the past couple of years – a Real-Time Arithmetic Prediction that does the work just as well as an online analyzer.
To enable
this opportunity, there are several prerequisites that the refinery needs to
achieve before installing this solution:
- Commitment to continually improving their modeling practice in their modeling software such as linear programming and blend optimizers
- Availability of a real-time data analytics platform that can retrieve key information such as lab data, unit temperature parameters, crude information, etc.
- An enthusiastic team willing to learn new knowledge and take ownership of the data analytic solution to ensure long term sustainability
A typical
solution can be installed within 2-3 months without capital expenditures or any
modification to existing refinery infrastructures. Our experience indicates
that such a solution can often achieve a measurement accuracy as good as an
online analyzer.
If you are looking for a cost-effective solution that can be installed within a short period of time to monitor your refinery’s performance on a real-time basis – this approach may just be the right answer for you.
The author of this blog Kai Y. Wan is an Engagement Manager at Trindent Consulting.
ESG in Oil & Gas & The Road Ahead
In the previous blogs in this series, we discussed how environmental issues are a key consideration when investors and lenders evaluate the performance of energy companies in ESG. The leading environmental issue facing the O&G sector today is greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which are generated at every step in the production, processing, delivery, refining, and consumption of fossil fuels.
Environmental issues are a key consideration when investors and lenders evaluate the performance of energy companies in ESG. The leading environmental issue facing the O&G sector today is greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which are generated at pretty much every step in the production, processing, delivery, refining, and consumption of fossil fuels. In the view of the ESG authorities, if you care about sustainability, you must measure and track your carbon emissions before attempting to reduce your carbon footprint. But you have to look across your entire business, and emissions scopes—often colloquially referred to as “scope emissions” or scope 1, 2, and 3 to help bucket or break down the emissions sources and behaviors.
- Scope 1, which are GHGs directly caused by the facilities and equipment that a company owns or controls;
- Scope 2, which are “indirect” GHGs from the generation of electricity the company buys from others (such as the local utility) to power company operations; and
- Scope 3, which are all other indirect GHG emissions that occur in the company’s entire value chain.
GHG Emissions In Production Plants
Producers and refiners can do very little to reduce GHG emissions from the consumption of their products unless they curtail production. Thus, they are concentrating their efforts on reducing emissions from their operations and the power sources they depend on. Refiners have another option too: investing in facilities that produce renewable fuels, such as renewable diesel, a lower-carbon alternative to one of the refining’s main products, conventional diesel.
Refiners, face the hard, undeniable reality that their facilities consume a lot of energy and the consumption of their products is one of the main generators of carbon dioxide (CO2), the primary GHG. In general, refiners have been taking a multipronged approach to improving their environmental performance and ESG ratings, with a focus on the production of renewable diesel.
Unlike upstream and midstream companies, the refining sector benefits from laws and regulations which provide financial incentives to decarbonize their products. Refiners already have a strong economic incentive to invest in the assets and programs to reduce GHG emissions. Clear economic incentives are fundamental to influence the extent and speed at which transition fuels are developed.
The Road Ahead
Given the worldwide focus on reducing emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHGs), is clear that those involved in producing, transporting, processing, and refining hydrocarbons need to stay informed of ESG developments.
In the future, we need to explore other aspects of ESG issues and how Low Carbon Fuels Policies are affecting fuel usage in the transportation sector. There is much to discuss, given the increasing number of laws and regulations being implemented in the U.S., Canada, and other parts of the world, aimed at decarbonizing the transportation sector. ESG-related laws and regulations are already changing how our refiner clients do business and are expected to continue significantly impacting the O&G sector going forward.
Click here to learn more about how we can help your organization address the leading environmental issues faced in the O&G sector.
Why Is Accurate Reporting And Data Crucial For Call Centers?
Call centers have access to large volumes of information including customer data, workforce management, and performance metrics. Among the various metrics or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that one can track in a call center, KPIs such as login time, received calls, hold time, after-call wait time, scheduled breaks, sales performance, transfer rate, and operational cost can provide valuable insight into customer behaviour.
Call center managers have a key role in enabling their team to successfully track these KPIs, record data, and generate reports. But, with numerous reports and systems mixed-up together, getting accurate and consistent reporting becomes an enormous problem for the call center managers. Managers often lose sight of what’s important amidst all their priorities and the sheer volume of this data can blindside them.
Too Many or Too Few KPIs:
Even though time-consuming, managing and tracking KPIs is a crucial exercise. Prioritizing the right KPIs enables monitoring results and drives specific behaviors that lead to the desired outcomes. Furthermore, narrowing priorities enables managers to focus their team's energy on specific work that will improve the company’s overall performance and drive results.
The key to understanding how to identify and prioritize the team’s efforts in the right direction is in understanding the fundamentals of productivity. The big rock theory by Dr. Stephen R. Covey explains this well.
Finding Your Big Rock:
The Big Rock Theory is a productivity concept popularized by author Dr. Stephen R. Covey. In his book First things First. simply put, the Big Rock is your priorities - the things that really matter and are critical to your organization. You can identify your big rocks by using the SMART Goals (Simple, Meaningful, Actionable, Realistic, and Trackable) framework to help provide clarity and set expectations to get the desired results.
To find the big rock and identify priorities or KPIs, here’s a few questions that managers need to ask themselves:
- Is the KPI relevant to the team, client, or business goals?
- Do the employees have any control over the performance metrics?
- Is the KPI easy to measure?
- Does the KPI establish a specific and easy-to-understand performance goal?
- Can the set goals using this KPI be met in a reasonable amount of time?
- Is the KPI necessary for regulatory compliance standards?
Trindent works with financial services clients in identifying relevant KPIs that align with the organization’s goals. In Addition, we design systems and dashboards to track these KPIs by providing a holistic overview across an organization’s various programs and keeping the managers and staff informed and accountable for achieving results. Learn more about our results.
The author of this blog Falastine Kilani is a Senior Consultant at Trindent Consulting.
7 Steps to Making Your Meetings More Effective
All too often, our schedules become completely booked with back to back meetings and leave us questioning at the end of the day whether our time was spent effectively. The truth is, meetings are one of the most expensive time wasters in business. According to a study performed by Altassian, the average employee attends 62 meetings per month. If we assume the average meeting is 1 hour and the average American worker is paid $24.57 per hour according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average monthly cost of meetings is $1,523 per employee. The cost of meetings continues to grow exponentially depending on the number of team members and their seniority.
However, when executed effectively, meetings can be the necessary instrument for a team to drive improvement and deliver results. Keywords, when executed effectively!
Here are 7 steps to making your meetings more effective:
- Clearly Outline the Goal/Objectives of the Meeting
First off, ask the question, do we need a meeting to meet this objective. If not, then go with the alternative and do not hold the meeting. Once there is an objective, communicate this to all attendees so they can be engaged and understand the reason they are devoting their time.
- Distribute Agenda and Materials Prior to the Meeting
All effective meetings have an agenda and more importantly, they follow the agenda. The agenda should be distributed prior to the meeting to allow participants to prepare useful contributions. Other materials that will be reviewed or referenced should also be distributed whether this be performance dashboards, budgets, or schedules.
- Ensure Attendees Come Prepared to Contribute
Although distributing the agenda and materials before the meeting will allow for participant engagement, this is not all that’s needed. It’s also important to establish the expectation with your attendees that everyone will be consulted/called to contribute.
- Keep to the Time Contract
37% of meetings start late and an even larger percentage run over time. To ensure meetings are no longer than intended, start and end the meeting as per the agenda. It can also help to designate one participant as the timekeeper to prevent the meeting from running over.
- Table Discussions that don’t Align with the Objective or Agenda
A certain degree of discussion is obviously needed during a meeting. However, when this discussion does not follow the agenda or is not driving towards the goal, the meeting facilitator should step in and reschedule the separate the discussion.
- Assign Actions to Owners with Due Dates
For a meeting to be effective, there must be follow up actions. Effective meetings do a good job capturing these actions and assigning them to a sole owner with a due date. To close the meeting, it’s always good to review the decisions, action items, accountable owners and due dates.
- Follow up on actions assigned prior to the next meeting
Effective meetings are only 20% meeting, 80% of the work associated is with effective follow-up and preparation. Without effective follow up on the actions assigned the meeting becomes a waste of time.
Following these steps will ensure your meetings are not an unnecessary cost to your organization and instead a tool used to achieve results. It is important to remember that good meetings do not just happen, they are managed events!
Cycle Stock and Its Role in Inventory Management
In today’s marketplace, deciding how much inventory to carry is by no means a simple task. With the growth of eCommerce and a competitive international trading scene, inventory managers are finding it harder to make accurate projections to stock their inventories. In such a scenario, we are seeing more project managers depending on safety stock instead of maintaining a steady supply of cycle stock. While this seems like an easier choice, industry experts believe that relying less on safety stock is critical to free up cash and reduce imminent customer service risks.
Let us understand what cycle stock is and what it means for inventory planning and management.
Cycle stock explained
According to business dictionary online, Cycle stock is defined as the inventory that you plan to sell based on demand forecasts. It is the amount of inventory that is projected to be used during any given period. In simple words, it is the inventory needed to meet the regular customer demand in a given period of time. The period is often defined as the time between orders (for raw materials), or the time between production cycles (for work in process and finished goods).
Challenges in maintaining inventory
Industry experts understand that inventory management is usually a rather complex task that involves collaboration between multiple parties including SKUs, suppliers, producers and any such stakeholders involved. As observed by a senior consultant at Trindent consulting during one of the engagements at a major U.S. medical device management company, inventory management was usually driven by factors which were beyond the control of planning or purchasing departments. It is therefore essential to understand the factors that can help to plan and purchase the inventory with better accuracy.
Planning for inventory accuracy
The first important factor in planning for inventory accuracy is to collaborate with all the parties involved in the production, sales and distribution process. Take variables like demographics, seasonality, annual sales and discounts, the cost per unit, storage costs, supplier availability and any such historic figures that may be relevant to the stock planning and purchase process. Getting to know all these factors is half the battle won in terms of being able to make accurate predictions about the forthcoming demand.
The next step is the use an accurate measurement to plan the cycle stock. This can either be done by using the cycle stock calculation formula, or simply through a reliable inventory management software. Accurate planning will reduce dependence on safety stock and hence ensure an increased cash flow and better risk management figures for the business.
Deciding how much inventory to carry is by no means a simple task; however, a more collaborative planning process along with more accurate estimations is the first stop towards improvement and will result in sustainable benefits.
Measures to Implement a Sustainability Strategy
In every engagement, sustainability is a crucial factor that decides the fate of a project’s success. Installing a comprehensive Sustainability Plan ensures a smooth transition to the client and makes sure that there is no lost knowledge during the period. The significance of having a solid sustainability plan becomes evident towards the later phase of a project when the client starts to take over the responsibilities and accountabilities for project activities.
In a typical Oil & Gas engagement for gasoline
blending optimization, a project team consists of members from the refinery that
have a unified commitment to continuously improve blending strategies to reduce
quality gasoline giveaway. Each department tackles inefficiencies that come
down to improving blend scheduling and prediction accuracy, blend execution
accuracy, and analyzer measurement and testing accuracy. All the installed
processes, systems and behavioral changes will revolve around these
workstreams. With multiple stakeholders involved, there are measures one should
take towards the final phases of the engagement to ease the transition process
for the client once the engagement is complete. This includes putting together
a comprehensive framework for clients to follow as well as install tools to aid
the review process.
Implementing a Sustainability Review Process:
It is crucial to have a recurring review process in place to ensure all the installed changes are sustained and improved by the client when necessary. Referred to as a sustainability meeting, this crucial step acts as a platform to review the current performance of the refinery with respect to the established KPIs to revisit baseline and targets to establish new goals as part of continuous improvement, and to develop action items for initiatives that can further help achieve project goals.
Design and Implementation of the following tools can further
aid the sustainment of project activities and improve client engagement during
discussions:
- Performance Monitoring Dashboard: To highlight the weekly and seasonal trends for overall KPIs.
- Financial Evaluation: To track the project benefits/savings with respect to the baseline on a cumulative and annualized basis and determine a project’s overall success.
- KPI Grid: To provide a high-level overview of the KPIs and compare them to the current performance to baseline and targets.
- Action Log to capture action items discussed during the meetings with clear responsibilities and due dates set for each action.
Post-engagement Sustainability Monitoring:
Once an engagement is complete and the client team takes ownership of all the project activities, they can follow the framework provided in the sustainability plan to ensure a continuous flow of activities. This includes the continuation of the sustainability meeting where all stakeholders involved would engage on a frequent basis and maintaining a Sustainability Scorecard to guide the meeting and provide a checklist for the client team to review and discuss all installed changes. Continued use of the Action Log to discuss action items can promote a culture of continuous improvement in the client environment. In addition, it is essential to have frequent recurring touchpoints with the client to ensure all activities and improvements are well sustained.
The author of this blog - Ajay Ramanujam is a senior consultant at Trindent Consulting.
Blog post photo courtesy of tableatny via Flikr
Refinery Maintenance Best Practices
Two common expense reduction
strategies that companies in any industry often pursue are abandoning long-term
projects and cutting corners, but both are a mistake.
In refineries, one of these mistakes is often made by reducing one of the largest operating expenses – preventative maintenance costs. Refinery maintenance costs are broken-down into preventative and reactive. Preventative maintenance costs are costs associated with activities to prevent equipment failures, and reactive maintenance costs are the costs incurred after a failure has occurred.
When preventative maintenance costs are cut, even though these cuts may be well intentioned, their impact can have long-term negative consequences. Reactive maintenance is commonly found to be three to ten times more expensive than proactive maintenance, and results in unplanned outages and overtime. For a refinery, this translates into higher than needed operating expenses, a culture of distrust towards planning activities, and a feeling of being overwhelmed. Cutting costs associated with proactive maintenance ultimately increases equipment failures and overall maintenance costs.
At Trindent Consulting we suggest a more targeted approach. We focus on actions that reduce reactive maintenance and increase Overall Equipment Effectiveness. We assist companies to establish well-defined Asset Performance Management programs that typically include:
- Defect Elimination – Defining the guiding principles for investigation selection and approach for identifying the root causes of failures to prevent reoccurrence.
- Work Management – Establishing Standard Operating Procedures for prioritizing preventative and reactive work orders and managing the work order backlog.
- Refining Preventative Maintenance Strategies – Optimizing existing Preventative Maintenance Programs to the proper activities, frequency, and detail required for effective work order completion.
- Inventory Management – Balancing an inventory to ensure that it is lean and manageable but preventing the need for rushed orders.
To
identify if your organization may be suffering from over-reliance on reactive
maintenance, consider the following questions:
- How much production was
lost in the last year due to unplanned outages? - How many safety
incidents occurred in the last year due to equipment failures? - In the last year, what
proportion of maintenance work was planned versus unplanned? - How many weeks behind is
the work backlog? - How many overtime hours
were there in the last year?
If
any of these questions are unanswerable, or the answer to any of these
questions makes you feel uncomfortable, then it is a good time for an objective
third-party review. Trindent offers
in-depth assessments of a company’s status quo and identifies behavioural,
process, and systematic challenges within an organization.
To learn more about how Trindent can Make it Happen in your company, reach out to our team on LinkedIn or through our Contact Us page.
This blog is authored by James Greey, a Senior Consultant at Trindent Consulting.
Forward to Basics
The expression “back to basics”
suggests there is an advantage to focusing on simple, fundamental ideas before getting
wrapped up in new, overly complicated ones.
In today’s business world, there’s no shortage of new, refined, or re-purposed methods, practices, principles, tools, and techniques in every industry. However, when communicating and making business decisions, it’s important not to lose touch with what’s tried-and-true.
Often, in pursuit of innovation, businesses will over-complicate
solutions or get distracted by new and trendy approaches with all their
accompanying promises, bells and whistles.
So, when an organization finds itself struggling to address a problem,
or getting lost in a complicated approach, it’s a good idea to come back to
basics – or perhaps more appropriately, forward
to basics.
To Use the Basics, Remember the 5 Ws and H
No matter the size or nature of a task, when defining its requirements
and determining its roadmap, it pays to start with the 5Ws and H. This is the best way to ensure that
the context of the task is understood, and all its relevant requirements captured,
and subsequently communicated effectively.
What are the basics?
- Why – defines the needs, issues or opportunities being contemplated.
- What – identifies the functionalities, inputs, outputs, and
deliverables. - Who – establishes the key stakeholders, including RACI parties; who
is responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed. - When – sets the timelines for the outcome, including milestones,
activities, and follow-ups. - Where – deals with the geographic and/or logistical aspects of the process.
- How – deals with the deployment of methods, practices, tools and
techniques... and comes after the 5 Ws have been answered.
The Basics in
Action: Why, What by Who, When, Where
and How
To demonstrate forward to basics in action,
let’s look at how managers can use the 5Ws and H to give their teams clear and
unambiguous parameters around a certain task.
Active managers recognize the importance of clear communication in
delegating tasks and maximizing team productivity. Keeping the basics in mind when managing
teams can make an immeasurable difference to how well a team can function. It’s a straightforward way to ensure everyone
understands what is expected of them and alleviates the need to interpret
unclear instructions that inevitably leads to re-work or follow up.
In
our sample scenario, a manager is asked to track their team’s hours. Putting the basics into action, the manager
can easily and clearly communicate “why, what by who, when, where, and how”:
- Manager
is required to report to their Senior Manager the hours billed to a project by
individual team members daily so that the Senior Manager can stay up to date on
costs (why tasks are being done). - Manager
creates a report to track daily hours by individual team members, ensures team
members submits their hours, generates and submits the report; team members
submit their hours; Senior Manager receives the report and uses the information
to stay up to date (what are the tasks) - Manager,
team members, Senior Manager (who is involved) - Individual
hours are submitted by end of day; the report is compiled and submitted by noon
next day (when do tasks occur) - All
tasks are completed online (where do tasks occur) - Individual
hours are input into a company intranet site, which also generates the
report. The report is submitted via
email (how tasks are to be done)
The
example clearly illustrates how the basics in action create a straightforward
and easy to understand path to the completion of a necessary task, without any
ambiguity that can lead to guessing and waste.
Use the
Basics to Move Forward in Consulting
The 5Ws
and H approach is simple, effective, and proven – and should be an essential tool
in every consultant’s toolbox. Using it
as guide for engagements tasks and incorporating it into
your communication with your team and
your clients will make you more effective as a consultant.
Consultants
have any number of new, sophisticated, and intricate tools and methodologies at
their disposal, but this tried and true one will always keep you moving
forward.
Value Stream Mapping Your Way Out of Waste
No one likes waste, but the question is,
what the best way to get rid of it? The
answer is Lean, whose fundamental objective is to create maximum value through
the elimination of waste. In essence,
finding processes to get things done with less effort, less time, and fewer
resources.
Originally conceived in post-war Japan by a Toyota engineer to reduce waste in operations while exceeding quality, the concept eventually became the Lean methodology as we know it. Today, Lean is not only synonymous with manufacturing but across all industries, including management consulting. Lean concepts are valued in management consulting, as their goals are identical – identifying and reducing waste while exceeding quality within their clients’ operations.
Principles of Lean
With continuous improvement in mind, Lean
is broken into five principles.
- Define value – from the viewpoint of the customer or client, meeting their needs at specified price and time
- Map the value stream – create a map of current state, categorizing any waste and listing future states
- Create flow – after removing waste, make the remaining steps flow
- Establish pull – reacting to customer or client demand
- Pursuit of perfection – there is always room for continuous improvement when it comes to reducing time, cost, and effort.
Lean is a cyclic process. In seeking continuous improvement (the 5th principle) you are brought back to the beginning of the process of defining value. As processes evolve, new forms of waste can be identified, and the cycle continues infinitely.
There are numerous tools that can be used to support the Lean cycle, including 5S organization Kaizen, Kanban, FOCUS PDCA, and Value Stream Mapping.
Value Stream Mapping
While
some Lean tools are more appropriate for one industry over another, Value
Stream Mapping is commonly used across all industries as it directly relates to
specific principles of Lean to map the value stream and create flow.
To give context to how Lean process improvement principles are used within the lifecycle of a process improvement engagement, we can look at how Value Stream Mapping is used during Trindent’s approach.
Starting
with an opportunity assessment, Value Stream Mapping allows a consulting team
to create a detailed visualization of all the steps in the client’s work
process, showing areas where the process can be improved by visualizing both
its value adding and non-value adding (wasteful) steps. By mapping the value stream, the engagement team
is able to visualize the entire process, see the challenges, and develop a
clear action plan with a path to meet improvement targets. During an engagement, Value Stream Mapping
provides the foundation to remove waste and to create flows that achieve
business improvement objectives.
Learn more about how Trindent uses Value Stream Mapping and other Lean process improvement tools, paired with our industry specific expertise as a proven path to successfully tackle the challenge of waste.