Category: Human Development


Commit

Filed Under: Business Development, Human Development, Personal Development
Sep.11, 2011

“Rise, rise again, until lambs become lions.”

It was one of those mornings. I was curled up in my undersized bed, head and feet stretching the mosquito net, eyes closed, freezing. The temperature dropped over night and all I had was my tropical sleeping bag. “Why did they have to run the trains so early?” I asked myself, after being woken up by the horns from the train yard one street over.

Right then, my alarm goes off… 5:15am. Patting all over the bed beside me I find it and quickly switch it off. “Man, I really don’t want to get up” are the first words I utter to begin the day. I switch on my headlamp and look up at the net above me brightly illuminated against the faint shine of the metal roof.

The last few weeks can be summed up with one word: “challenging”. After a real, detailed profit and loss analysis was done and the picture at my partner organization looked very grim.

Coming in at the beginning of the project, I knew margins were very tight, and that costs for transportation and the cost to store 50 kg bags of poultry feed were high. There are many brands of poultry feed to choose from and pricing is extremely competitive. The price of raw materials for poultry feed also seemed to be on the increase.

To increase growth of the business my initial assumption was to grow the capacity of the business by implementing systems, improving processes and training their staff how to use tools readily available to them on computers. Even if profit margins were small, increasing management capacity could allow opening more outlets, improve profit, increase employment, and better support poultry farmers. It seemed to be working. The accounting wasn’t yet clamped down but it seemed that increasing volume of sales would be effective and new locations were being sited for future expansion.

Then we crunched the numbers and it was clear that the underlying assumption of my strategy did not survive the latest price increases and drop in sales.

I began to question, could I have prevented this? What was in my circle of influence, my circle of control? Now, many of these people I’ve worked with are at risk of losing their jobs unless we find a way to bring things out of loss.

To know that the job is to make it all work against all these forces can make staying in and sleeping for the week seem really attractive. Then I think of my colleagues who face the same challenges day-to-day. What’s that we all believe in? “Courageously commit”… right…time to get out of bed.

Tags: , , ,
read more

Time to Text

Filed Under: Business Development, Human Development
Jul.20, 2011

The air was dry and the sun was racing upward. Chips of chicken could be heard through the greetings between farmers stepping off the bus. Stretching my legs felt great after the long drive to Chingola. Forgetting my sunglasses, I squinted through the crowd looking for familiar faces. I stretched out my hand to greet the poultry consultant we hired for the workshop we were providing that day for free, thanks to a local NGO grant provided for agricultural training. “Ahh…the turnout is not so good.” He told me. “What happened?”, “[The mobile provider] failed to send out the text messages to the farmers. Many did not know of this event.”

The host farmer welcoming other poultry farmers to the workshop on poultry management.

It was sad really. The farmers who arrived were learning the intricacies of poultry farming. How to maintain your flock, diagnose problems, and properly manage production. Some of these farmers were very young, fresh out of school, taking the first steps to generating their own income. Many others could have benefited as much as them, for free, if they’d only knew where to go.

I returned to the office the next day. Everyone was busy at their desks getting an understanding of the day-to-day business. “What are your sales for today?” asked one staff member over the phone, “How much feed do you have left?” asked another. All of this talk took time and all of that time cost the company a lot of money. The monthly bill for one of their phone lines was 3 times my monthly rent.

The main office phone and link between shops and the depot

The Problems

The main communications infrastructure of this business needed to be improved. They, unfruitfully, relied on others to inform customers of any new developments. They also relied on lengthy voice communications to get day-to-day numbers that they use to understand the current state of the business.

Cost
 Talking costs money. They were paying a fortune for the amount of time that was being spent on the phone.

Time

The time consumed multiplied fast. It took time from head office, it took time from the shop managers, it took their time away from helping farmers, who now had to wait longer to be served.

Response Time

Some days would require rapid changes in strategy. Day-old-chicks are sold every Friday and they are predetermined to hatch 21 days earlier. The business has to ensure that all the baby chickens have a home, and all customers who prepaid will receive what they paid for. Shop managers in different areas need to rapidly coordinate their sales to ensure that the business as a whole will meet (and not exceed) that number. Calling shops one-by-one made it difficult to coordinate those sales from the main depot since it could take up to 2 hours to contact all the outlets.

Less Time for Customers

With the majority of time of the main lines used in lengthy internal conversations. This did not leave a lot of time on our lines for staff to call our customer farmers and talk to them about their flock or remind them of upcoming training events.

Point-of-Sale Equipment

None of the shops currently have computers on hand, nor internet. Power is also unreliable. However, all shops have access to cell phones and cellular service. (Many were provided with company phones)

Deploying Change

To reduce cost, increase response time and potentially increase our connection to our poultry farmer customers, we deployed a text message based system to communicate between the main depot and the various shops. One computer acts as the central hub of text message communication. It, currently, allows messaging of various groups of contacts and keeps records of any responses.

Initial benefits

  • The messaging rate is about 20sec/message. This allows us to reach 9-10 shops in under 4 minutes.
  • Cost to communicate with all shops is significantly reduced.
  • All incoming information is stored on a central computer in digital form rather than on lose sheets of paper.
  • Incoming information can be easily copied from text messages into spreadsheets already in use.
  • Shop managers can respond when they have down time, rather than being interrupted for many minutes at any point during the day.

“Anthony, this is really good. Soooo much easier”, Charles said, sitting beside me staring at his computer screen. “Look Anthony, almost all the shops have already sent in their sales numbers”. Later he was calling those who did not respond to his text messages trying to explain to them that sales needs to be texted in to the new number that we’re using as our “server”. I was excited to see that he was already reinforcing the new process without my involvement.

Stack of record sheets where staff used to record numbers that they were told over the phone

This initial step, though rudimentary, is important. We eliminate the big problems in one cost effective move, and set up a system that staff are already working to grow and reinforce, increasing the chance that this system will be sustained in the future. We were successful despite having no training for shop managers indicating that it is appropriate to the skill level of staff. The system launched with this one simple text message: “To all shops, you will now be sending in your sales to this number. We will no longer be calling for them.”

With this infrastructure in place, and the capabilities the system has, we’ll have the ability to grow towards cellphone based digital forms that shop managers can fill out and submit into the depot, have automated responses for farmers requesting the latest prices by text, inform our customers of upcoming poultry management training events we’re hosting and the list goes on.

Simply switching from voice to text opens the doors to many of these possibilities.

Implementing a system to improve communication and awareness of the state of the business… just one more item off the list of key deliverables.

Tags: , , , , ,
read more

Balancing Assets

Filed Under: Business Development, Human Development
Jul.08, 2011

“Anthony…. there is a problem” I barely heard on my phone over the echoes of conversation and people working in the depot. But I knew it was one of the stock controllers out in the field. “What’s the problem?” “The old stock count form is reporting an over of 3,000 kwacha. When I tried the same numbers in your new program, it’s calculating a short of over 4,000,000 kwacha.” All of the commotion in the warehouse immediately disappeared from my conscious.

“Did I miss a formula? Did I remember to update his database with the latest forms? Is there a typo somewhere? I swear I checked the formulas that calculate the cash totals hundreds of times….” I questioned myself. It took a few seconds of looking at all the angles. Could it be a functional error? I doubted it. Could it be the interface? He didn’t mention anything…

“Hey, when you entered the TOTAL cash received from the shop…”
“Yeah?”
“Did you enter ALL the cash you received or did you just enter the part that’s for veterinary and feed sales?”
“Just the cash for vet and feed.”
“Ok, you’re now supposed to enter all the cash, for vet, feed as well as the pre-payments for day-old-chicks.”
“Ah, that must be it.”

The problem wasn’t functional, it wasn’t the code, or the program, or the stock controller. It was a small change in the stock controller process that I wanted to make. A change I forgot to mention to the stock controllers themselves.

A stock controller and shop manager reviewing counts and cash due

If we are going to expand this business, serve more farmers, and employ more staff, the capacity of management first needs to be able to handle the additional business. Giving the company confidence that they can manage their assets by giving stock controllers the ability to effectively manage more shops with less effort was the underlying goal with deploying a new stock control and reporting system.

There were a lot of things that were already in place that made developing a new database for stock control worthwhile:

  • Staff was mobile, reducing the feasibility for an off-line system
  • Staff are already being trained to use computers and “staff computer training” is on my list of deliverables
  • All staff involved in the stock control process have access to their own computers
  • The current process already had a computer program component at its core
  • Many of the frequent decisions and calculations surrounding stock control are simple and can be automated
  • Management was keen evolve their internal processes
  • Staff “upstream” desired a reduction in the number of forms they receive
  • I was confident we’d be able to develop something within the first few weeks of my placement

Simplified previous-state map of the stock count process

A simplified current-state map of the stock count process

I remember doing one of our initial tests of the new system in Ndola. “You are over by 3,500 kwacha.” “Well, just let me have it then if it’s over” the shop manager said to us. I was still typing in the data in my new database and was wondering where the overage could come. I punched in all the information on all the products including pre-payments for items that weren’t captured before. After hitting enter on the final item, I saw 0, and the box calculating the difference went bright green thanks to some conditional formatting.

“You’re balanced” I said “the extra cash actually belonged to the pre-payments”. “Oh, okay. I’m balanced? I’m getting my free bag of millie meal!” He was excited to be closer to that free bag of pounded maize flower that the shop managers decided they wanted to win if they balanced all their books for the entire month. I congratulated him, said thanks and shook his hand over being balanced without problems and walked out back to the truck.

Being able to better manage and calculate all of the stock, cash and pre-paid vouchers moving in and out of the organization would allow them to reach farther, without increasing overhead. After testing, these databases are now in the hands of stock controllers and they’ve moved completely to the new system.

Time will tell how this impacts their business.

Tags: , , , ,
read more

Visibility

Filed Under: Business Development, Human Development
Jun.29, 2011

“Lose sight, lose the fight” – Speed and Angels

“Anthony, one of our stock controllers was able to visit and count inventory in three shops the other day. That used to be impossible.” I was told when I arrived back at work after being away at a retreat for a week. Inventory counts used to take a lot of hours.  Quickly, I remembered the initiative that began a few weeks earlier that led to today.

My arms and hands were covered in dust and I was trying not to breathe in too deeply. Beside me was a shelf full of veterinary products that I was in the process of organizing. Piles of other veterinary products were on the floor. In front of me were three staff who came into the store room to see what all the commotion was. They stood there nodding slightly at what they saw. “You know… you should probably use this other shelf to store the veterinary products since we have so many of them and they won’t fit on the shelf you’re using” said one. Another picked up the list of products I printed out and began to help me organize everything.

This was one of the many small initiatives I’ve began to “have a place for everything and have everything in its place”. A simple concept that could help overcome many of the challenges of day-to-day operations they were having. The vast majority of these challenges can be grouped under the problem of visibility.

What stock do we have on hand? What do farmers want and need? Where do they want it and when? Does our cash equal what our receipts say? These are just a few questions that typically required a lot of digging and investigation to figure out. The answers are all key pieces of information that are buried in the knowledge of different staff, books and files.

This shop had shortages and missing stock fairly often. I was pretty sure why.

While visiting shops and shadowing workers at headquarters, I saw mistakes that would occur, mistakes that could require minutes or hours to rectify. This wouldn’t just result in lost time, but it would result in reduced pay or financial penalties for employees and managers if their accounts didn’t balance, and money went missing.  Nobody in this business wants to have money go missing. It hurts everyone, managers, employees, farmers and suppliers.

This was something I thought we could tackle quickly and show value to my partner organization early.

I remember speaking to senior management one day, “You should be able to assess where we are and what’s happening in seconds. One way to move toward that level is make everything visually available.” Later, I was in a room with all of their shop managers and we went through a few ideas on how we were going to organize and standardize our shops: How to make things more visible for themselves, for the stock controllers and more importantly, for farmers. They all decided to organize their vet products alphabetically and in containers so nothing would be misplaced. Also, each container would clearly show the product and price to help our farmers know what the real prices were and protect them from being taken advantage of.

A shop that organized itself after the meeting I ran. Time to count these products seen here takes 1/3 of the time it used to take.

This is one small chip out of the block of challenges that prevent the business from expanding, supporting more farmers and hiring more people. By reducing the headaches and time required to manage their internal cash flow and stock, the hope is that there will be more time for management to focus on expanding, hiring more staff, training and supporting more farmers.

Tags:
read more
Powered by WordPress. Theme: Motion by 85ideas.