In last few months I came across three different business cases that proves what we keep on asking every businessmen. Do they really know what is going on in their business?
In one of the cases, a manufacturing company was making aggressive plans to launch a new product in the market. While they were actively focusing on marketing & distributor meetings and appointing new distributors one of their key employee- the head or in charge of the same product resigned. It was a shock and the company had to defer it’s launch plan by at least few months till they identify a suitable replacement. A clear case of lack of talent management and key position succession planning.
In the second case, a manufacturer had to suffer huge losses and face cash crunch because the main machine he was manufacturing his products suddenly developed a snag and stopped working. The inquiry revealed that Not only regular maintenance was not done by the machine has passed it’s useful life and should have been replaced long back. As the machine was pretty old parts weren’t available on time and the 3 weeks downtime pushed his business where it was 6 months back.
The last case was about a process flow. In of the commercial Solar Panel installations company, there was no process of obtaining a sign-off from the client when the installation & commissioning was done. The reason was the moment work is done, the concerned engineer was rushed to another site. Later when the finance person chased for balance payment, there would be some or other complaint by the client that delayed the payments. This was identified only when the investigation for working capital shortage was done.
All of these are peculiar cases of what we call as “unseen gaps”. These are hidden time bombs in the business that can go off any moment. And in most of the cases they mostly impact at wrong time.
Over a period of time every businesses develops certain gaps due to changes in the internal working, implementing new systems or joining of new people. No matter how much attentive the business leaders are, some gaps remain unnoticed or get ignored due to other priorities. Some of these gaps slowly start creating impact on the business. The reason these gaps are not found because normally a business leader work on symptoms. E.g. In the working capital shortage case, the leader kept increasing the working capital limit but never ever investigated the root cause of the problem.
Now if the gaps are unseen what can a business leader do about it? The answer is periodic business health check-up. A company wide comprehensive audit and assessment of the business.
In-Unison has developed a unique 360 degree Business Health Assessment Model. The model covers comprehensive business assessment through one to one meetings with business leaders and heads, collect & review MIS & other Data across 10 crucial business dimensions, Conducting detailed financial review and risk assessment.
The assessment has been conducted across many IT, Manufacturing & trading companies with astonishing results. Many companies discovered hidden gaps and also identified the growth barriers which was holding their business from growing.
If you don’t want to risk your business and avoid similar issues & challenges or would like to know what is really hampering your growth; get in touch with us to discuss how we can plan the assessment for your business and how your business would benefit from it.