Companies establish goals – in all shapes and sizes…

Organically or top-down, sometimes reasonable, sometimes aggressive / stretch goals…Does your organization have the bandwidth to achieve them? Can you assign people to do these projects for a living, or will they pursue them as a hobby – something they might get to, time permitting? Today, most companies just don't have staff with reliable / available bandwidth just sitting around, like many did a generation or more ago. Improved financial and operational performance is the result of prioritized, aggressive-yet-attainable goals and the efforts you need to execute to realize them. That's where Serratus Management Consulting comes in…

Finance – Managing the Expense Side…

Why? Remember the bad, not-so-old days of the Great Recession? All of a sudden, customers became harder to come by, and payments came in more slowly, if they arrived at all. When expenses are known, measured and managed a company becomes more capable of withstanding the punches that business cycles are sure to throw at you. With expenses under control, you are much more resilient, able not only to handle your weekly/monthly financial commitments, but also to have funds for new marketing initiatives or new product / service development projects, when customers demand them or even before. You'll also have the ability to ratchet down production or change product mix in response to customer needs, thus lessening the need for hiring / firing cycles. In short, you'll be better able to survive and thrive regardless of the ups and downs of the external business environment.

Operations – Where the rubber meets the road…

Is your car gripping the road, or careening wildly toward the guardrail? Is your business getting the feedback / information it needs? Are you able to react, adjust and improve? The corporate Operations function always confronts two major questions – is it efficient and is it effective? Efficiency is the domain of Lean Methodologies, and there are numerous tools you can use to first determine how efficient you are, and then figure out what to do about it, and how. Six Sigma answers the questions around effectiveness – do you make your products and deliver your services in a high-quality way that meets or exceeds customer expectations?

With regard to transparency and knowledge (of customers, markets, your own operations, etc.), Serratus Management Consulting can help you get a handle on where you are, where you want to be, and how to get there. We won't just give you a map showing how to get there and say 'there, now you can start…', but can also develop detailed project and resource plans, and if warranted, manage the projects to completion. We can also work hand-in-hand with your staff – teaching, training and helping them to ensure that their effort has every chance to succeed.

The Finance – Operations Link…

Finance not only monitors and manages money – the lifeblood of a company – it also provides knowledge that is a company's 'neural network'. In particular, Finance is able to supply Operations with information regarding its effectiveness. Operations, in turn, provides the results which either help a company make money or cause it to lose money. These two must work together seamlessly, and to do so, there must first be established lines of communication as well as common objectives between them, namely a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Serratus Management Consulting will first gather and analyze your existing financial and operational metrics, and then help you to develop new metrics as needed to address gaps in your management understanding and control. By facilitating communication between Operations and Finance, you can help establish realistic and broadly accepted goals and targets, as opposed to those arrived at in a ͞bubble or some other Ivory Tower.