Fri, 2008 Oct 03
Wait...
Why the hallibut is the DOW down?!
Fri, 2007 Nov 30
Worst. Invoices. Ever.
One of the companies I work for buys a lot of materials from CSC (in the interests of not getting in trouble, I won’t tell which CSC it is). As best I can tell their customer support is good, delivery time and materials available are fine, etc. In short, they do well with their central product. They’re not an accounting company, nor a print design group, so I don’t expect their invoices to be, well, great. But they fail to even manage “sucks utterly”. To the extent that if I was an owner instead of an employee, I’d refuse to order anything from CSC until they fix their bloody invoices. Well, probably not, but it sounds nice.
So what’s wrong with their invoices. Let’s start with the obvious. Five pages for 24 dollars. How that happens illustrates several of the other problems:
- Four lines per item. Now, this isn’t inherently bad. I’d be okay if they were four lines with a purpose. Alas, they’re a grouping of odd letters (more on item descriptions later). And they’re four big lines, so that there’s only room for about five items per page. These are not big-ticket items.
- Back-ordered items. All the items back-ordered on an order are listed on the invoice. This again is not necessarily bad, but for a combination of two reasons: the aforementioned amount of space taken by item descriptions, and that most of those back ordered items were shipped the same f—ing day.
- Massive header and footer space.
- They feel the need to use fixed-width fonts. Apparently, the invoice format was originally created for typewriters, and they’ve tried to stick as close to that as possible.
Now, then, jumping back to the description. They’re totally cryptic. Sometimes I can parse them. More often they feel like trying to read the comments on icanhas, except I don’t even have the vague hope of finding something funny. And, yet, they need four lines of text to tell me…nothing. I can’t begin to understand the reason for this. Yes, include a cryptic part number for your reference, but computers are quite capable of storing novels; readable descriptions are certainly within their grasp. And if they switched to a reasonable font, better descriptions need not eat up any more space.
Finally, what really annoys me, as I touched on earlier, is the sheer number of invoices. As best I can tell, CSC sends an invoice for every box shipped (They also send a packing slip with every box). It does not matter if they were all sent on the same day. So, combined with their listing of all back-ordered items, some days we’ve received five or more invoices, sometimes all for the same order, with the first listing every item on the order, even if it invoices the shipment of only a single item.
Anyway, just whining. No point, except to say that this would be an ideal situation for outsourcing. Let somebody else design the invoicing process, cos, CSC, what you’re doing…sucks.
Fri, 2007 Oct 26
Failure
In less than a week, a business enterprise will come, more or less, to fruition. It is a project that I have spent a lot of time on over the last eight or so months, and it may well continue to be very profitable for years to come. But this week is the week that it turns from a “I hope this works” to a clear success. In fact, by every rational measurement I can think of, financially it is by far the most successful project I have ever embarked on. And yet I feel, more often than not, as though it has been a total failure.
I am certain that some of this feeling is attributable to emotional reactions to unrelated circumstances: including, importantly, the understanding that another business has become a clear financial failure and the frustration with not knowing how to either correct that or exit.
However, I have another culprit that I think is the principle reason for this feeling, and it’s something I want to understand, because I think it probably holds some essential lessons for me if I am to be successful in business. Here’s the background of this business: We produce a product and sell it to a retailer which resells the product. It is unique to each end customer so our direct customer takes the orders, gives them to us, and we fill them. Our direct customer then sends out those orders. This has worked tolerably for the past several years, less profitable and more time-consuming than I liked, but I didn’t feel like it was a failure, anyway.
Two months ago we launched an updated version of the product, due to new legal requirements. The prices were higher and the choices less. But we were ready to serve the end customers. I think, honestly, I did a very good job of meeting, at a reasonable price, the requirements of my direct customer. Indeed, most of their customers have been happy with the product. We provide several things that our competitors don’t, including a better turn-around time. But there have been complaints. Two, actually. The first is price, which is something I expected, and not a major problem since they generally end up buying. They don’t have much choice. The second, given by two of the end customers, has to do with the format. This is two out of hundreds.
(Sorry, I know the anonymization (sp?) probably makes this near impossible to muddle through)
I think the primary reason I feel like this business has been a failure is my direct customer’s reaction to those complaints. Those complaints seem to be far more important to them than the success. And yes, I do expect that, that’s normal. What I hope is not normal is that they routinely act as though they will lose the majority of their customers because of these issues, and they expect me to alter my business because of their fear that they will lose these customers; never mind that altering my business may very well guarantee that fear, whereas currently we are gaining customers.
And there is the crux of my emotions, the trapped feeling. The way to please my customer is by hurting their business and mine. By responding, as they seem to desire, to every complaint, we will deplete our profit margins and destroy the simplicity of the system of production. If each customer can ultimately receive a completely custom product, we will have to raise prices. If we lower prices, we will have to give up the profit and/or lower the quality. I think that the people I work with from my direct customer believe that the ultimate goal of a business is to never lose a customer, regardless of profit or customers gained. The goal of my business is profitability (yes, to fulfill other. more important, goals, but for the business itself, profit).
So, how do I respond? For other reasons, I can’t tell my direct customer to shove it. I can close down the business, but this seems foolish. I can stay where I am, continuing to produce the product as I have, successfully as I have, and just try to ignore what my customer says. I can try to respond to these complaints the way my customer seems to want, but in that case, I’m tempted to rather close the business.
And how to I avoid making other people (including an employee concentrated on this project) from feeling such senses of failure?
Two things that need to be reconciled:
- Definitions of success: by the profitability definition (or increased customers), this business is a success both for me and my direct customer. By whatever measuring stick my customer is using (any complaint == failure ?) the business is at least on the verge of failure.
- Measurements of success: Whatever the definitions, we–including me, personally–have not defined any measurements for success. Well, actually, I did define one and by that have been exceptionally successfully, but I can’t seem to make myself see that right now.
And that’s the trouble.
Sat, 2006 Apr 22
Money, honey
Mead? Gross. Seriously. But that’s not the honey I’m here to talk about. Actually, I’m not here to talk about honey. It just rhymed. Gee whiz.
Preparations for the wedding photo-video business are picking up. I actually called somebody back about a car website. I’m reading more of Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing. And, well, there’s the Speedy Pin deal.
So, money’s on the mind. But, the more I learn and try, the more I realize that we need a more concrete financial plan. You know, one beyond cut up your credit cards. But that would involve work, and of course more money to consult with professionals.
I understand why most people don’t want to bother trying to become rich. It’s not easy, and we’re just getting onto that road. It’s also discouraging, not to know people who have gone through it.
How do we learn what we need to know? How do we build businesses? I don’t know. But we’re learning. And that’s the reminder to self. It’s a thousand miles away, but it’s closer.
Thu, 2006 Jan 12
Financial Peace
I’m reading Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace, whilst Mel and I are reading Robert Kiyosaki’s Cashflow Quadrant. The latter is the second in the Rich Dad series we have read, after Rich Kid, Smart Kid. For reasons that ought to make a later article, I really like Kiyosaki’s books, and have learned a lot from them.
I’m reading Ramsey’s classic: 1) as a contrast to the Rich Dad series; and 2) because many people I respect have said good things about it.
I didn’t come into it expecting to like because I have liked Kiyosaki’s books and had enough background knowledge to know this would be different, and because it seems that people who like Dave Ramsey are into flipping homes, while I’ve yet to hear of anyone making money that way.
Ramsey, naturally, has some good things to say. Having 3-6 months in savings makes a lot of sense to me (Kiyosaki recommends 1 year), and getting out of personal debt also seems wise. And there it ends.
Dave Ramsey says all debt is bad and that savings is the best investment. Now here’s my way bid red flag: He uses a minimum of 6% return on savings to prove his point. I don’t get that. I don’t know where anybody would get that. He proposes that just by saving you can make lots of money. My saving won’t beat cost-of-living increases.
The second is he sounds like a bitter old man. Kiyosaki seems to be full of fun and life. Ramsey seems to be head for the hills and bitter about his life. That makes me…disinclined to take his advice. More to come, maybe. Certainly, I should elaborate and give examples. For the moment, I just wanted to write. Apologies to anyone looking for a useful review.
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