27. The How-to-do-list

27.

The How-to-do-list

Doing things step by step and in the right order and in the right time will help you a lot in a transformation. We have gone through the concept of “a year from now you’ll wish that you had started out today”. Then, it’s the importance of timing your own timing. Via the How-to-do list in this chapter we’ll explore the timing and necessity of preparation through 11 crucial steps within the company and together with your customers. It will show how to prepare for the transformation and how you can lead the way.

It’s important to go through this in detailed order, step by step, and by involving everyone around you. The ones you exclude won’t know what’s happening and will most likely work against you in the process. The ones being informed will be the other way around; included members on the road ahead. Make sure that the information delivered is clear and well defined. That the message goes through. It’s important that everyone really understands the process, both the goals and the expectations including the risk to fail if you do NOT transform and go with your customers. Your examples and foresight as a leader on what’s on the other side of a digital transformation compared to what will happen if you do NOT do this is crucial for everyone. Also, be clear on how you will measure the steps and success throughout the process. As the leader standing in front of your team of employees you must deliver your own genuine and trustful story, I hope you’ll get a lot of practical advice from this book and it is important for everyone to feel the conviction in this transformation toward your goal. That you really believe in the future, wanting them to join the

upcoming adventure. It’ll be the most important ride for the company in many years to come. If you, for one reason or another, want someone else to execute this process, you, and only you are still fully responsible for giving this person all of the necessary power of attorney and support. This is vital in every step or decision that must be made, good or bad. You really must believe in your team and in the final goal. So, it’s time to prepare.

1. PREPARATIONS

Like in everything you normally do, be well prepared. And prepare from more than one angle. This book is one way of doing that; if it’s not 100% clear yet, read it again and again, keep it under your pillow and repeat. I hope you can use it also when the “monkeys” start screaming in your head and you feel FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt). It’s normal and part of the process. Prepare yourself through the upcoming steps. Do your homework and consider the whole chain of events. A transformation needs to be done step-by-step. Look at it from your customer’s perspective and examine all the different teams in your own company. Work through the process before it starts. And keep an open line communication with customers and employees.

2. COSTUMERS

□ How many customers do you have? List your customers that repeatedly need and use your service.

□ How much turnover does every customer generate per year? Organize them in the order of their size.

□ How many times do they repeatedly order jobs and use your service? List them per day, week, or month.

□ How long is their run length per order (average) and product today and tomorrow?

□ How many other suppliers do they have today? Any potential products you can offer?

□ Choose your top 10 or “best relation” customers on the list as your VIP’s. This will be your start, one by one!

Open a dialog with your customers based on what, how and where they see themselves today and their development in the next 3 to 5 years. Try to find out how you can be a part of that development. What do they want more of? Where

do they want to move or increase? How can you help out? We know for a fact that there will be a lower number of suppliers per customer (general trend), how can you develop your relation to add more value? Don’t do it by lowering your prices, but maybe by adding more value for the same money. You can broaden your range of products (applications) so that they see a need for and want to buy from you in the quest for dealing with fewer suppliers. Offer online order systems, wider supply-chains, everything from order, print, assembling, distribution, and maybe a total fulfillment. Don’t go to all customers – choose the best ones. That doesn’t always mean the largest ones; but go to 10 of them or if you are bigger a maximum of 20%, we can call them your VIPs. That will give you enough of ideas and confidence to build your own story and trust for the ride toward the new goal. It will build a better future together with your customers.

3. MANAGEMENT TEAM AND/OR OWNERS

□ New market plan, a new SWOT-analysis, cost price-based plan per time unit.

□ Commitment from owner or board for you to execute with a return on investment (ROI) calculator.

□ Executing the new business plan to the whole range of management.

□ Timing, why right now? Set the time frame throughout the implementation step by step.

□ Present the result of your SWOT as a discussion – how to add more value to our customer.

□ Goals and added value, profits, competitions on where to reach after the implementation.

□ The road toward the goal – upsides, downsides, and soreness from all new and hard work.

If you’re the owner of the company, or an external MD on payroll from the owner or group of owners – it’s same, same but different. If you’re the owner and/or MD you are responsible both in front of your employees, yourself, and the company. Do you feel the pressure? Do you already feel a heavy burden on your shoulders? It will stay heavy if you don’t go through this preparation face. The pressure will slowly disappear as you start transforming on facts and together with both your customers and team of employees. The pressure will

turn into a powerful feeling, a great sense of freshness. It comes with the notion of new opportunities and new profitable business based on adding value instead of lowering prices. As you start your preparation with selected customers you also have to start with the team leaders. Set the goal (not negotiable) and set the time frame for this to happen. Explain what you have found from your dialog with the selected customers and what they expect from you and your service in the next 3 to 5 years. Explain how the company must develop (change) within this period. Be sure to also present both the upside and downside if you DON’T do this. The upside with all the opportunities you see from the dialog with your customers. The downside where you paint a picture of the company’s development from the last 3 to 5 years, with shorter job-length per order, shorter delivery time, lower prices per order and product, etcetera (see earlier chapters). Paint this information as a graph and add a trend-line for the next upcoming 3 to 5 years. You’ll find out, and show, how your business will develop if you don’t change to a new digital business model. And that is important! This is a change of business models and not only adding a digital press.

If you are an external MD, you’ll have to prepare this even more and in writing. You will need a well-documented plan and hard facts from the market, the customer, a SWOT-analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats), a business plan, investment plan and ROI (Return On Investment). You will have to establish what’s in this for the owners. Depending on your relationship with the owner or group of owners you can do this in steps (together with the owner) or in a bigger presentation at a board meeting. If you can present new, good value propositions coming from your own existing customers with higher margin products, less workload needed with digital for the same value, etc., you will for sure have the owner’s attention.

It’s the same if you own your company; don’t miss out on drawing the graph on your company’s volumes, orders, job-lengths and profit developments. And include a trend-line for the next 3 to 5 years (now in the upcoming loweconomy). Show them the future.

4. FINANCE TEAM

□ A new business plan is crucial here, based on both technologies as one product to the market.

□ P&L analysis where analog increases first, digital offloads for more analog jobs, before digital really kicks in.

□ A cash and liquidity management plan through the whole investment period.

□ ROI, return on investment, breakeven based on the same period.

□ Finance period of this type of investment is around 7 years depending on your ROI needs.

Either you have a CFO in the company, or in a smaller company someone responsible for your admin working together with the MD and the auditor. If you have your own CFO, they’ll want to see the same documentation as the owner plus the cash flow during the investment period. Therefore, all costs and profits must be made monthly (see our Smartplanner calculator) including existing machines, all capital costs, etc. Calculate this per business model, not one old analog machine compared to a new digital one. Compare both financial models based on up-to-date machines, running cost and need of workload with your customer’s needs and demands. Then you’ll see. Yes, if you have a new and old car it will affect you, but both cars can still drive between point A and B. If you don’t have a CFO level of controller it can be of value to involve the auditor in this project. My recommendation when it comes to financing is to use our Smartplanner cost calculator when you value the best financing models. How to finance the investment can be a later decision. But remember that going digital is also going high tech and that also changes over time much faster than the old analog side, therefore flexibility is a key factor when it comes to the possibility of growing with your customer in the long-term perspective. When the process enters the executing face, you can make the best final decision on how to finance it. With thorough preparation and clear communication, that decision will be easier and more obvious than you might think today.

5. PROJECT LEADING TEAM

□ Nominate this key team as soon as you can, the ones that need to have the passion to build the new road.

This is probably the most influential team of them all. They can lead and develop your business AND (maybe even more importantly) your customer’s business. They are the ones that must understand their own chain value as well as from a shopper level finding new and more effective ways to maximize the value for each and every customer. To make this right you must pick the ones that see this opportunity. If they don’t want to change and see problems instead of opportunities this is not for them. This team will run customer-projects based on customer values and have to transform from the old way of thinking. They will have to leave their old mindset of how to fit existing production with the lowest price per piece.

This project leading team will have to think outside of the box and truly accept putting customer-value and flexibility first on a day-to-day basis. They must see that the road ahead is filled with openings and opportunities.

6. MARKETING & COMMUNICATION TEAM

□ Set up a market-training program well ahead of time, before the machine arrives on site.

□ Set up a train-the-trainer program for those who will then train the sales team.

For the marketing team this is a whole new and exciting toolbox. To use this power properly, education and training becomes very important. When you emphasize value instead of cost price per product/order it becomes a whole new way of thinking, you need to change your mindset. This is the first team to take over your dialog with the selected number of customers that wants you to develop your business together with them. Therefore, train these teams well! Get them the proper education and instructions. Be certain that everyone is on the same page. They should be able to train not only your customer but also your whole company, from market value to communication (dialog) with all your customers. It’s a grand opportunity that the right team will embrace.

7. SALES TEAM

□ Set up a training program (from train-the-trainer program) on how to sell value, not digital.

□ Set up a training program about pricing – added value market price before cost based price.

Don’t let this team start to just “sell digital”. That is too easy and very wrong. Digital is only a tool that can offer more flexibility like shorter run-length, fasterdelivery time, wider range of media, no setup time, easy SKU change, variations etc. For the customer, that is the first most important thing – not the printing technology itself.

A much better approach is to use a full-adopted digital business model that includes both technologies with both their values utilized where best fitted. It must be the production manager’s responsibility to fill both technologies equally in the smartest way depending on utilization, implementation and type of job and size. That is not the sale team’s job. Let the marketing team train and get educated (if you don’t have that possibility let Visutech support through Visutech Digital Academy). The worst scenario is to sell products only because you have digital. Why? Well, the customer reflects still today over digital as something cheaper? And you will stay there with two different products instead of one that looks and feels the same whether it comes from digital or analog.

8. PRE-PRODUCTION TEAM

□ Plan the training of the prepress team on workflow to be done at arrival of the machine.

Prepress also have an important role to play in the process. They need new tools that will open up many new possibilities but also implement several new automatic routines for many more jobs and customers in the future. The greater flow of jobs that can run without a manual touch, the more jobs can go through the system without increasing the number in the team.

The number of jobs will no longer be the bottleneck in your business – this flexibility makes the difference. An analog business today maybe run 5-10 jobs per press and day, with digital this factor can and will increase maybe to 100 and with web2print maybe X000 jobs per day. The prepress team need their special digital tools and training for this.

9. PRODUCTION TEAM

□ Nominate operators with passion for new challenges and focus on production as their driver.

What kind of profile shall we have behind the digital press? Which person is the best fit? Again, the most important base to stand on in this decision is that these persons must see the opportunities. They must have a passion for doing this. An offset printer can work; we have seen good ones coming from the analog side transforming their way of work. However, we have also met the opposite – the ones seeing problems before opportunities. That won’t work! With the correct and honest presentation of the tasks ahead this kind of person will appear. It will be pretty obvious. When you sell the view of how you and everyone in the company will reach your goal, the right kind of staff will choose to join (or not accept to join) already from the beginning. Interview people, describe the vision about the road ahead, and they will know if this is for them or not. The ones that don’t accept it should start planning for another job and will be your first savings. As I described earlier in this book, you will not need as big workforce when adding digital in your production to achieve the same volumes as before. Therefore, pick the ones with the right persona and the ones wanting to join this change before the ones that don’t. This will be a crossroad for some people and get the right ones on-board, both for their sake and for yours.

10. POST-PRODUCTION TEAM

□ Here, training is more about adding new and more automatic finishing equipment.

□ Strategy training on how to finish 100 or 1,000 jobs per day instead of 10, same amount of media.

Here is where the risk of a bottleneck occurs in the beginning. Too often, and in too many cases, we see how this department underestimates the planning for flexibility, automation (maybe it’s time to start thinking about implementing robots) and sufficient throughput in capacity. Generally, the number of jobs will increase x100. This post-production team should think “leaning and even more leaning” to fit your customer’s new possibilities with more flexible jobs that digital adds to the equation.

11. SUPPLY CHAIN TEAM

□ Train the level of dynamics, from very small and simple jobs to large unique and complex ones.

□ Strategy training on how to assemble 100 or maybe 1,000 jobs per day instead of 10, still with the same amount of ton media.

As a printer or converter, this part with a supply chain team can today be an unusual service to offer the brand owners. However, this rapidly becomes more and more a natural fulfillment support that has a high added value factor and really connect your company with your customer. It’s a good fit and will turn into good business.

To transform or build this department from scratch will include going from many small jobs to a lower number of jobs, also including really large jobs and the strategy ahead will stretch this department in both ends, short to long. To build the perfect supply chain team, each team member needs to know his or her role and responsibility. The size of the team off course comes down to your customer base, but whether you start out big or small it will play an important role in the full transformation ahead.

HP GRAPHICS SOLUTIONS BUSINESS - 1 MILLION UNIQUE CHOCOLATE PACKAGES, EACH PACKAGE FOLDED TO AN ORIGAMI COW MODEL.