COVER STORY
5 STEP WASTE
NOW
REDUCTION PROCESS
Profit is the lifeblood of any organisation. Without profit and cashflow you won’t be able to guarantee your long term survival. Profit generates the capital that you need to grow your business. Without it you cannot reinvest for the future. Waste removal in any organisation is the easiest opportunity to increase profits. Studies have found that waste in a company can be as much as 30% of the operating costs. This leaves a lot of room for improvement in all businesses. To eliminate waste it is therefore important to fully understand exactly what waste is and where it can be found. We need to identify the most prominent areas where waste occurs in organizations and what tools and processes are available to help us with this task. Taking a strategic approach to managing waste reduction can bring a range of key benefits to your business
COMPETITOR
ANALYSIS We a spend a lot of time working on our own business – but do we take the time to look at what our competitors are doing? Why do we need a Competitor Analysis? Your competitors are your best friends. They test the market for you. They leave gaps in the market for you. They make mistakes that advantage you. By first analysing and then monitoring your competitors you can significantly improve your own business – even if it is just by learning from their mistakes. Most of your customers will have dealt with your competitors. They will know who is the most expensive in the market, who has the better quality and the better service. They base their purchase decisions on this information. You also need to know this information as it is the cues that they respond to. A formal competitor analysis will allow you to discover any gaps in the competitive advantage of your rivals and to develop specific plans to overcome them.
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B2B M AGA ZINE
CUSTOMER
LIFETIME VALUE Estimating Customer Lifetime Value will help you make decisions about how to allocate your marketing and business development resources. How? It will provide you with an estimate of the value to your business of each customer over the expected lifetime of your business relationship. You can then make informed decisions about what resources you should invest in and then building that relationship. It will also help you answer questions like where should you apply your marketing focus and how much should you spend on existing customers versus new ones. When you know what each customer is worth then marketing is an investment in the future of your business, not an expense.