Solutions Overview
There are two paths to helping your business: Pressure Testing & Growth. With an understanding of those I will then have some questions to help you figure out if and where I can be most effective.
Pressure Testing
If your company has declining revenues, reduced margins, negative cash flows, reduced profits to losses, where financial and operational challenges have significantly impacted your company, it's time to call in the experienced restructuring team at JTB Logistics. With three decades of experience working with companies that have evolved into this challenging state, we know what it takes to reorganize and improve operational execution.
We will work with you to apply our proven three phase management model and implement the required changes for your company to gain larger market share and return to profitable growth.
Whether you need to make a complete "U-Turn" or have simply outgrown your original business model, the experts at JTB Logistics can help you restructure your company and get back on the road to profitable sustainable growth.
With decades of restructuring experience, capable guidance, and strong strategic leadership, we have enabled many companies to evolve from unprofitable decline or complacency, returning to profitable sustainable growth. We welcome the opportunity to do the same for you.
Growth
Not all business is good business. One of the hardest things for an entrepreneur to do is say “NO”. Having your strategy for growth mapped out is crucial for success. Ask yourself and you’re team the following questions:
- What are we really good at? Understanding your strengths and weaknesses will help you craft a successful growth strategy.
- Services that you're not good at or structured to handle well are important to understand so that you don’t accept work that negatively impacts other lanes of service or the team.
- What is my true cost? If you don’t understand your true cost, you’ll restrict the amount of business you bring on.
- What is my minimum level of margin or profitability to accept business? You must understand what the market and your competition will allow for.
- Do we have the proper infrastructure to support growth and to what level? Rapid growth can put an organization out of business.
- Can we financially support (cash flow) growth and to what level? The number one reason businesses go out of business is not being properly funded.
- Stick to the plan, don’t let a particular opportunity cause you to deviate to hit a topline number, if the bottomline will suffer or cause unplanned stress on the organization. Your phone rings with opportunity because you do what you say you will. Compromising your plan can cause stress on the whole of the organization.
Let JTB work with you and your team to ensure that your growth is planned, sustainable and profitable growth.
How I can help
Strategic Planning
Most entrepreneurs and consequently most businesses spend very little time working “ON” the business as almost all of their time is spent working “IN” their business. That’s where the saying “The important always gives way to the urgent”, that means simply most executives deprioritize strategic planning for lots of little “important” business needs (operational anomalies, customer concerns, system failures, employee issues; etc.) that happen often every single day. Thus, executives rarely make time to plan for tomorrow and often react to necessary needs of an organization rather than preplanning for those needs ahead of time.
Allow JTB Logistics to pressure test all aspects of your business to affirm your infrastructure, processes and teams are all in sync. Simultaneously we will offer possible mitigation solutions to address any opportunities that present themselves.
Every company big or small needs a long term, high level strategy for success. Somethings I specialize in and want potential clients to consider is:
- Do you have a proven out strategy for leadership changes? How deep is your leadership bench, who can sit in your seat and who can backfill any key team members of your team if something was to happen or change?
- How are teams set up in your company? How do they communicate with one another (weekly meetings; memo; via phone / email; etc.). Are your teams effective communicators?
- How does your company support Team/Managerial/Leadership Training? If these topics are not being formally addressed regularly at your company then you will want to understand how that can potentially impact your company.
- Does your company have an exit strategy, in the event you want to exit your business?
- No matter if you ever intend to sell your business, it’s wise to prepare it and run it as if you are planning to exit it. It can take up to 24 months or more to get your business in proper order to maximize what you would receive in an offer to sell, or to maximize how much cash your business throws off in the event you are not looking to exit.
- How do your recruit and retain talent for your organization? How many people does your company lose a year and why? Without the right people sitting in the right seats your business will not meet its full potential.
- Does your company have Job Descriptions; Standard Operating Procedures and a Company Handbook in place, so every team member understands what’s expected of them?
- If you answered yes to any of the questions above, do you have the plan written down and communicated to the entire team? How often does this material get reviewed?
If you answered no to any of these questions, then “Hope” is your strategy by default and that in my experience rarely works. I have failed many times at all the points above, but over the years have learned what works and doesn’t work in business. We will work together to form long lasting effective strategies.
Organizational Risk Assessment
JTB Logistics can help guide you and your team through an overall risk assessment to identify any opportunities and potential solutions. Ideally, we will affirm your current policies and practices are optimal and should be continued.
Sales & Marketing
The heartbeat of any organization is “Sales”. How do you get sales? You market your business via social media, word of mouth, email, snail mail, etc. Does your organization have a formal Sales & Marketing Plan? Does your team understand, measure, and report results against that plan to the broader team? JTB Logistics can help you put together a comprehensive Sales & Marketing Plan that will guide you towards your goals.
Operational Assessments
Does your organization depend on people for successful outcomes and experiences? Or does your organization have processes and policies that all of your team support to achieve successful outcomes and experiences? JTB Logistics would welcome a chance to evaluate how you leverage your resources (Fleet, Route & Facility Management, etc.) to achieve optimal results. Too often businesses do not regularly review their processes unless they bring on new work or shed existing work to measure efficiency.
JTB Logistics is experienced in ringing dimes out of dollars, so you're sure money that is spent is necessary. Let us help validate that your organization's Operations are hitting on all eight cylinders.
Financial Assessments
Does your organization have good transparency into your financials that are shared with those managers that impact expenses they control. Financial statements are not usually finalized and available for review until a month and a half after the activity occurs. So managing your business off of very old data is much less than ideal. The team member that prepares your financials should also be producing daily and weekly reports on key metrics such as Budgets; COGS, Cash Flow, AR & AP, DOS, etc. Creating a dashboard that provides you and your team the numbers daily means that you’ll already know what’s on the P&L well before receiving it, as you have seen all of the numbers that roll up into the P&L. Creating a budget and measuring your budgeted numbers against your actual numbers and adjusting for any variance is key to hitting your numbers.
Allow JTB Logistics to evaluate and provide options on systems and controls as well as automation and dashboards that allow you to manage by exception.
Technology Assessments
When someone asks what your company does, I’m sure the standard answer is we deliver things. However, if you look closer you’ll see that what you truly do is manage your customers data.
In today's day and age all businesses must view Technology as the cornerstone of their organization. Your internal & external customers all depend on full transparency as a matter of course in today's business world. From Operations to Finance to Sales, everyone should be able to see what’s being handled at a granular level or risk becoming irrelevant. Technology will help you and your team to manage by exception and show you where you can best spend your time.
Allow JTB Logistics to evaluate your systems and controls and work to automate your processes systems to work as one for you and your customer’s best experience.
Give me a call
If you are interested in learning more, or have a question about your specific business let me know