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On a Personal Note
by Joe Weston |
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My wife Terry and I have developed a great affinity for New Orleans over the years. We frequently visit friends there and learn more about the city and its culture each time.
We all know how that culture was damaged and threatened in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Many people wanted to help but knowing what to do, and for whom to do it, was difficult from distant locations.
Students at Wright Charter School
We had planned a Mardi Gras party for 2006 but felt odd about celebrating when so many were suffering there. My sister, an elementary school librarian, suggested that we have the party and ask guests to bring donations for a school library. Our friends helped us select one of the few schools that had reopened and we coordinated the donations with the principal and school librarian.
This year we expanded the fund-raising party concept and collected considerable donations from generous friends that will buy hundreds of badly-needed books for Sophie B. Wright Middle School. A local friend built on the concept and helped raise funds for acquisition of musical instruments for students at Sophie B. by holding "musicthons" at area malls. Music students played all day in the malls and dedicated the money collected to their fellow music students in New Orleans.
The value for us in this project was seeing the kids reading the new books in the school library, and taking pride in the fact that their school could afford new books. Opportunities for service are all around us - you won't have to look hard to find your own Sophie B. Wright Middle School. |
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Gerke & Associates News
June 2008
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Our June Newsletter includes three examples of how we have helped clients improve their businesses. Hopefully these examples will provide you with some business improvement ideas.
As always, we welcome your comments.
Gene Gerke
ggerke@gerke.com
573-875-7125
Our mission is to create client success.
1123 Wilkes Blvd, Suite 320 - Columbia MO 65201 |
BUILDING SUSTAINABLE PROFITS
Measure, Evaluate, Act, Measure
by: Gene Gerke
Much has been reported about how  Wal-Mart drives costs out of business processes. Several years ago we had an opportunity to work with Wal-Mart and a key supplier on reducing inefficiencies in a particular category. While the Wal-Mart people truly are a breed apart in cost-reduction tenacity, you do not need to be a behemoth to realize significant cost reductions AND profit improvement.
We worked for over a decade with a network of small independent distributors to protect and improve
profitability in the face of irreversible gross margin declines. With support of a key supplie.r, we put together a comprehensive, long term program to improve performance by focusing on sales performance and managing operating costs. And the results were stunning.
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BUILDING BRAND POWER
Strength in Numbers
by: Joe Weston
 In an effort to help retail customers differentiate their businesses from "big box" stores, a group of independent consumer products suppliers joined together to produce and market a product line under the UNITED (fictitious) brand name that would stand for excellence in product development and product quality. This was a cultural shift for an industry whose suppliers competed for the same customers and were generally secretive about marketing and product development programs. But it was also recognition that independent retailers needed a competitive edge to prosper in the face of discount store competition. Without a thriving independent retail customer base, the suppliers' existence would be threatened
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BUSINESS PROCESSES:
What You Don't See
is What You Get
by: David Waters
 Day to day business processes serve as arteries to carry the life-blood (data and information) of an organization. Whether these business processes are efficient, inefficient, effective, ineffective, boring or exciting (rarely are they ever exciting), they are the foundation required for all companies to function; yet they are so often ignored.
Business processes are predefined paths that have been created, either intentionally or unintentionally, in order to accomplish various tasks within an organization. It has been our experience that most companies 'think' they know their respective business processes; that is they know how the processes should work, but they are seldom documented.
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