Strategic Planning for Factory Objectives Case Study

Client Information

Middle Size Factory Company in Modular Containers Market.

There is a market of making containers into offices, warehouses, country homes, among other uses. This market has been going up since 2012 because of for some companies to build or to have a mobile office is a better budget fit. Also, the possibility to move their products in their warehouses reduces their operative costs and expenses.

The EC company adapts the containers to make them in 40 feet or 20 feet construction offices, construction tool warehouses, marketing & advertising offices for malls, country houses made off containers and kitchen containers.

The company product portfolio contains the most soliciting products by the market, classified as follow:

• Rentals: Rental Office, Kitchens, dry and/ or cool warehouse.
• Made to order: Offices, Kitchens, dry and/ or cool warehouse, Modular country house, pools.
• Construction Development for private or government.

The market is always leading by:

• Agriculture sector as: palm oil factories, sugar mills.
• The extraction of oil and gold companies.
• Marketing and Publicity in malls.
• Government development.
• Private development (country houses).

Business Challenges

EC company sales was growing two digits since 2014, but in 2016 lost several customers, the RPF success indicator (request of proposals) decrease on 20%, the RFQ success indicator (request for quote) decrease 15%. The owners thought they were not competitive enough, but they thought it was because the prices EC company was offering.

Although, one of the owners has a Marketing bachelor’s degree, he had no time to sit down and to begin with a Strategy Planning Study. He thought, at that time, with a Strategy Planning Study, EC company could focus again and met the market.

EC company was also growing on labor, and the general manager, one of the owners, thought the designer team and the customer service team were making a lot of mistakes. The financial reports looked very good, the margin profit was increasing, not like previously years, but the company was a strong company on financial terms.

Business Solutions

After an exploration meeting with the owners (General Manager and VP of Operations) we decided to make a Complete Strategic Planning Study that contains:

1. External Analysis
   1. Market Value during the 2 last years (2015, 2016).
   1. Market Share during the 2 last years (2015, 2016).
   1. Customer & No Customer survey.
   1. Mystery Shopper study (Price, Attention times, customer service).
2. Internal Analysis
   1. Core business process mapping.
   1. Sales & Customer service effectiveness.
   1. Design process effectiveness & efficiency.
   1. Operational Factory Efficiency and Factory Effectiveness.
3. Strategy meetings with the employees; in every meeting was given a training session:
   1. CANVAS
   1. SWOT (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats).
   1. Mission reviewed and adjusted.
   1. Strategy Objectives defined.
   1. Defined KPI for the Strategy Objectives (SMART methodology)
   1. Plan of Activities to implement:
      1. To Increase Market share through better understanding of the client needs
      1. To train the sales team, the designer team and customer service team on behavioral customer to increase the speech effectiveness.
      1. To reduce the attention time.
      1. To adjust the tariffs and prices.
      1. To implement cost and expenses timetable for every project,
   1. To document the Strategy Plan process, so EC company could repeat every 5 years and update it every year.

The External Analysis was made by the consultant team, because of the nature of the studies, especially in Mystery Shopper, where we asked for every company, included EC company, information from several products, so we could compare and made different kind of analysis, like customer service attention, offered tariffs, brochures, time of respond on the whole sales process, the designer speech to convince the customer to buy, etc.

In the Internal Analysis, we involved the factory supervisor to make the effectiveness and efficiency studies, so he could repeat every time he wanted. He became a consultant for one week, where we trained him to watch the processes as the consultant eyes.

During the collaboration phase, we gave the middle managers the information, so they could study. Then, EC Company collaborators went for a Strategy Planning weekend, far away from the city and the company headquarters. With this time, we could focus all the managerial team to rethink and to obtain the new mission, vision, strategic objectives, the operational plans, the short, middle and long-term plans as a company, process and department.

We made multifunctional and multi department teams, for example: every team had to be made by one person from accounting, one person from sales/customer service/ designer, one person from manufacturing and one person from the board of directors.

We asked every team, four in total, to answer and to present the following questions:

1. Company Mission proposed with CATFOE methodology (Client, Actor, Transformation, Focus, Opportunities and Environment)
2. Short, Middle and Long-term Objectives,
3. Plan and Schedule to comply the short, middle and long-term objectives,
4. Value added for EC Company clients
5. EC Company CANVAS
6. Defined KPI to comply the company objectives

Before every team had begun to work in the assignment, we had to train them in every tool they had to use.

After every team presented their proposal and findings, as a whole group and company, we made a list of challenges, where every department had to work to improve or to achieve the company objectives.

The time to make all this Strategic Planning Process was for 8 weeks.

Results

The short-term results were (at the end of the process):

1. Company Mission,
   1. Strategy Objectives,
   1. Strategy Objectives KPI,
   1. Defined the market attributes for the most sales products,
   1. New Value Added according to the market requirements,

The middle-term results (2 months after the end of the process) were:

1. Scheduled a sales & customer service training on how to categorize the behavioral client purchasing,
2. Redefined the RFP & RFQ procedures to make them leaner,
3. The factory labor went down on 5%
4. The RFP time decreased 22% and increased its effectiveness on 13%
5. The RFQ time decreased 3% and increased its effectiveness on 7% The long-term results (9 months to 14 months) were:
6. At the beginning of the year, EC company had the 30% of the market. At the end of the year, EC company increased to 38%, as a company.
7. At the beginning of the year, EC company was the 4^th company in the sector. At the end of the year, EC company went up to 2^nd place, as a company.

The middle and long-term period were doing by the EC employees. During the 8 weeks project, they had to be trained on:

1. Strategic Planning tools (described previously),
2. Confrontation techniques,
3. KPI design techniques,
4. Report techniques,

The most important impact on doing a Strategy planning for EC Customer was to focus its efforts to increase their sales effectiveness to increase its market share. Meanwhile, in the internal processes, their efficiency increased to be more competitive and to improve their profits.