Creating a timesheet isn’t overly difficult and can be achieved with Microsoft Excel fairly easily.

Before starting – consider the information you want to record for example

• Employee Name
• What period the work reates to e.g. Week Number/Commence date
• What hours have been worked on which day
o What time rate (e.g. overtime standard)
o Total Hours worked
• Does it require authorization
• Do you need to capture hours not worked?

The timesheet template is divided into four main parts

1/ Titles – what the template is about

2/ Employee details – details such as a name, payroll number

3/ Hours Worked details – The hours worked and the remuneration

4/ Hours worked summary/totals – total of hours worked and a sign off element.

Example Timesheet Excel template video

Check out our video below that takes you through the steps in how to build a excel timesheet template:

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As suggested by it’s name it analyzes six areas:

1/ Competition – is their a lot of competition in the market? Are there dominant players?
2/ New entrants – Is it easy for new entrants to enter the market and compete
3/ Buyers – How easy is it for buyers to affect the price, can they work together – how strong is their position
4/ Suppliers – What is the state of the supply base – is it a monopoly - are there many sellers?
5/ Substitutes – how easy can a product or service be substituted?
6/ Complementors – influence of complimentary products and services on the market.

What is the 6 forces model used for?

The primary use of the six forces model is to enable a detailed analysis of an organizations strategic position within the marketplace and calculate the market’s attractiveness with regard to competition and profitability. This assessment is a key step prior to investing resources and deploying strategy as if the market should prove ultra-competitive it may be more prudent to look at obtaining revenues from alternative markets.

The 6 forces model is not a one off activity, markets continually change and any changes in the model requires a re-assessment. As stated the model should form part of a regular strategic planning process and should be reviewed at least annually.

Differences between the 5 forces model and the 6 forces model.

As with all models - Porters original 5 forces model has been criticised for a number of reasons – primarily that elements of the market such as buyers and competitors do not collude. There have been some changes to the 5 forces model and the six forces model expands on the original by assessing complimentary areas of the market.

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ABC analysis is an important tool as not all inventory or parts require the same management attention. For example does a $500,000 Engine require the same controls as a bolt which costs $1? By conducting the analysis you can determine which parts require most management attention.

ABC analysis is a categorization system and is often seen as a relation to the Pareto tool in that it is utilizes similar principles to categorize. ABC analysis will typically use three categories, with each category utilizing different management controls for the inventory or part numbers within it. A part’s category is usually determined through calculating the annual consumption value which can be achieved through multiplying the amount of product consumed in a given period (often a year) by it’s price. Once each part has a value they are then grouped.

While you may find different industries utilizing varying “rule sets” for grouping parts – typically the bands will follow close to a 70%, 90%, 100% groups.

70% of the value is represented by the A class items

Between 70% and 90% relates to B class items

C class make up the remaining.

Once you’ve carried out your ABC analysis you’ll generally find that the high cost materials will be categorized as A class items, and the lower value (and higher volume and fast moving parts) will be determined as C class.
As stated once your ABC analysis is complete you’ll want to set your procedures and policies up accordingly. For example

A class parts typically require close monitoring and tight control – they tend to be complex expensive parts and while they will amount to a large costs may probably represent a small percentage of your overall inventory volume (which is where the similarities with Pareto occur).

B class whilst lower grade than A class parts still require more control than consumables and will require some management effort.

C class require the least controls, and will typically make up the largest volume of your stock
ABC analysis is a basic stock management principle that when applied can have direct impact on the policies and procedures that govern your inventory. Take a look at your ERP system – ERP’s will typically contain functionality to both carry out an ABC analysis but also store it as a control mechanism within the system itself.

Bear in mind also that ABC analysis is not a one off exercise and should be considered a periodic process in order to ensure that the controls and efficiencies created are maximized.

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Negotiation in a business context

It’s importance in business is that negotiation protects organizational assets – why pay more for something when you don’t have to – have you got the best possible terms of trade? Resources are not a bottomless pit so negotiation has a particularly important part to play as well as protecting an organization commercially.

Why Negotiate

Negotiation is used to bargain, compromise and craft an outcome – it is the general process we use for getting what we want from people who in return want something from us. In the context of a buyer seller relationship – the buyer requires a product and / or services with the seller requiring remunerating. The more complex the purchase (or higher the value) the greater the need for negotiation to protect both organizations financially and commercially.

An appropriate time to negotiate

Businesses negotiate all the time! In purchasing departments where cost down initiatives result in the procurement team |”negotiating better terms” through to staff negotiating periods of absence.

Generally speaking negotiation occurs the most where the stakes justify the time, resources and effort (e.g. financial penalties) to carry it out.

Phases of Negotiation

Negotiation is typified by four phases

• Preparation – understand who you will negotiate with, what you want, the market position and other attributes that will assist in the discussions
• What do they want? – understand the likely “trade” points of the other side – what are the buttons to push to get what you want
• Proposal – what can you trade/concede
• Bargain/Trade – the real negotiation!

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Maintaining the appropriate skill levels within the company is therefore a key task. This is often achieved through developing and deploying a skills matrix coupled with a training matrix. The skills matrix will typically cover job roles and the associated skills. The training matrix will then provide a mechanism for analyzing the staff against the skill requirement and then tracking their training plan to achieve full competency.

Purpose of a training matrix

The main purpose of a training matrix is to plan the alignment of staff skills against the job requirements – producing a template for a training matrix isn’t complicated (check out the video below) there are a few basic steps and principles to follow (also you don’t need any special software Microsoft Excel will do fine!).

Producing a training matrix template

A training matrix template can be produced easily using Microsoft Excel –

1/ Gather a list of the employees that you’ll track (note you could choose to do this grouped by department or trade)

2/ List the requirements against the roles

3/ use the matrix to annotate against the individuals where skill levels are adequate or where training is required

4/ Establish a training plan to “fill in the gaps”.

5/ Review regularly to keep the matrix up-to-date regarding training undertaken and staff changes.

Watch the video

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The promotional mix refers to the communication methods used to provide information to your customers and the market. Communication to your customers is vital if you want them to know about you. A failure to communicate about your product could result in low sales and an underperforming organization.

Difference between the promotional mix and the marketing mix.

While similar these two business terms relate to different aspects of marketing. The marketing mix takes a holistic view of your marketing opportunities and methods. The Promotional mix looks at what one of those elements in detail – promotion. Similar to the marketing mix the elements of the Promotions mix can all be used in various degrees.

Like the marketing mix the promotional mix is made up of a number of parts:

Advertising
Personal Selling
Promotions
Public Relations

Advertising

There is a vast array of advertising opportunities from online, newspaper, TV and radio to name but a few. While advertising has become more of an art form over the last 50 years its premise is still the same using a medium to get your message across. Your message could be the launch of a new product, brand awareness, special offers – the key is your communicating about your organization to the market.

Personal Selling

This is direct selling to potential buyers. Examples of personal selling include cold calling or door to door selling through to the example of a cosmetics counter in a department store. All involve building a relationship up with the customer (usually a short one!) and making the sale.

Promotions

As we discussed in our article on Pricing strategies for business promotions can be a vital sales tool – and can in particular be extremely useful in highly competitive markets where price is a determining factor. These promotions could include such things as two for one offers, cost discounts or introductory offers.

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In this article we’ll look at 5 common problems with benchmarking with other organizations.

1 – Comparing like for like

One of the major problems for benchmarking across multiple organizations is ensuring that you compare like for like. It’s important that you remove any subjectivity and look to compare processes and metrics that are easily measurable and with quantifiable data and results at both ends.

2 – Open book review

Unsurprisingly benchmarking organizations within your own business sector can be complex due to the unwillingness to share data for fear of impacting competitiveness. This is a very real issue and can often lead to benchmarking activities underperforming as there is an unwillingness to share best practice. This is one of the prime reasons why many organizations opt to either utilize industry organizations/associations or benchmark outside of the industry.

3 – How best practice is best practice

Remembering the primary reason for benchmarking is to facilitate the movement of best practice into your organization it goes without saying that you need to be really sure that best practice is best practice – a smaller sample group, incorrect measures, an inability to capture the process enabler can all result in a failure to either incorrectly establish best practice

4 – Single Business or industrial sector Benchmarking

Too many companies fail to establish the correct organization to benchmark with – remember it’s all about best practice – selecting any old company simply wont do – one consideration is whether to benchmarking against a single business or an industrial association or group. The latter may offer a better approach as they are more likely to provide an industry sector understanding of best practice and most likely have established benchmarking initiatives.

5 – Finding the “best practice driver”

Finding the activity that results in best practice can be difficult – from initially establishing - through use of metrics - better performance the next step is to find out (through a process/system etc) what is causing it. This can be more difficult than it sounds and can require thorough analysis of the process – getting it wrong can lead to two specific problems – the cause of the best practice is incorrectly established and secondly if transferred into the organization will fail to deliver the expected improvements.

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Pricing Strategies

Pricing strategies usually fall into two camps –

Firstly New Product Pricing strategies exist to support the introduction of products into the marketplace – these strategies usually support marketing from a market awareness perspective and also to get a foothold with consumers - examples of these pricing strategies include introductory discounts or where the product offers some unique qualities which can exert a premium – the price may be set to represent this.

Existing product pricing strategies – Pricing strategies for existing products will typically mitigate market conditions – this could include tracking the market rate for a given product (e.g. suppliers of fuel for example follow the market) – price reductions to secure market share.

Once a strategy is established – a business may deploy short term tactics to react to the market – this could be in the form of promotional offers (buy one get one free) to discounts.

Introduction to Business pricing

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Part of the problem is that many simply don’t know what to expect and what tasks are required of them. This is especially true of smaller companies which may lack formal training and support for promoted individuals. In this article we’ll take a look at the common themes associated with Management.

There are some common tasks associated with management:

1/ Setting goals and objectives

Goal setting refers to setting objectives that are to be met by either and individual or team (or company)– through carrying out their companies processes. These can be both short term and long term objectives. For example – in a manufacturing environment a line manager may set his team an objective of producing a certain volume of widgets per day – there may be certain longer term efficiency targets that are to be met (for example over a given month) there may also be strategic targets that are met over the course of a year – sales targets for example.

Goal setting can be both formal and informal – formal goal setting might take the guise of an appraisal or assessment where structured objectives are laid out usually over a period of 12 months with periodic reviews. Informal goals may be certain tasks that are delegated out during the course of a given period.

2/ Resource management

Where a line manager has functional responsibility for a team they will need to co-ordinate resources to ensure the right mix of skills and resources are available to carry out the task at hand. Commonly this will be managing vacation requests or staff coverage for sickness. There maybe formal processes to follow within the company and it is incumbent on the line manager to execute them appropriately.

They might also be called upon to support recruitment activity and attend candidate interviews – they may be asked to produce skills profiles and review CV’s as part of the recruitment task.

3/ Discipline

One of the less well liked processes associated with line management is the discipline of staff. This can take a number of forms

a) Informal/Ad hoc – where staff performance is below what is required line managers are expected to communicate this to staff and

b) Formal – companies often have processes and procedures to cater for formal disciplinary issues. Formal problems can take a variety of forms – from prolonged periods of under-performance – bullying in the work place – theft etc.

Staff discipline can be a complex and stressful part of management – it requires delicate but assured action and the first time manager may need appropriate and close support from his peers.

4 Communication

Team leaders and managers act as a conduit for information to be passed around the organization. Commonly this could be in the form of regular team meetings, company briefs or one to one communication. This activity should not be underestimated – it’s a vital tool in ensuring that the workforce are aware of the goals and objectives and that senior management are aware of issues or risks affecting the business.

Managers should consider both the periodicity and mechanism for communicating to their teams and act appropriately. Also remember that communication is a two way street and that you should welcome and encourage feedback from your own team.

5 Management Information and reporting

Another common duty for managers is the reporting of departmental or organizational performance. Typically this will be in the guise of a standard and regular report (often a monthly report) which will be in a standard template throughout the company. This will usually include departmental performance, performance against company goals, issues and activities and business risks. You’ll likely need some data analysis to help report on performance and it’s vital that you understand where the numbers come from and what they mean.

New managers need to seek the appropriate training and support to enable them to carry out their new role to the best of their ability – if your going into management - above all don’t be daunted – management brings responsibility and a fair bit of stress but it can also be exceedingly enjoyable and rewarding at the same time.

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Luckily you don’t need any special tools or software to produce a SWOT and the simple 4 box template is easy to setup in MS Word.

Due to the nature of a SWOT analysis capturing pieces of information that often require follow up actions we like to pair our SWOT with a simple action list which you can build in Excel – this takes the items captured within your SWOT and turns them into a simple plan with owners and review dates. Why do this? Well all too often you’ll construct a SWOT analysis and use it in a presentation or report but there is a tendency to forget all about it and move on to the next business issue – this simple action plan allows you to record those issues you need to follow up on in a simple straightforward way.

The SWOT

SWOTS can be easily constructed using MS Word – go for a 4 box (one for each element) or as we like to do a 3 x 3 this enables you to articulate which elements are internal/external and which are positive/negative attributes – this may not mean much to you but if your going to be communicating your SWOT to anyone unfamiliar with the tool it can be really helpful. The other thing to remember is when you add your inputs into the SWOT remember to number them so that you can refer to the numbers in your action tracker.

The Action Plan

We like to couple our SWOT tool with a simple action plan tracker that captures the inputs from the SWOT and turns them into a list that can be used to track activity and attribute owners. We’ve chosen to do this in Excel (but you could easily create a list in MS Word to do it).

Example SWOT video

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