Charles Baldwin, of Cabela’s, changed the game at this year’s RILA Conference. The key to the transformation is to orchestrate collaboration between all the groups within the company, which is more easily said than done. However, it appears that Cabela’s has achieved at least the framework.
Why is it so difficult to have collaboration across the enterprise? Each functional area of the company has been silo’d due to function, responsibility, and systems, whether purchasing, transportation, distribution, finance, operations. All have specialized systems allowing them to function effectively to meet their business requirements. Each system generates mountains of data. Few of these systems ‘talk to each other.’ Hence the need for huge data warehouses as a repository. The problem with that is that each system uses its data differently than the other systems. How do you overcome that? Collaboration.
Collaboration is especially important when different functional areas are also ‘manufacturing data’ to meet specific needs for their side of the business. Collaboration allows all of the functional groups to use the same solution, look at the same data, and use the system for analytics for their specific needs, OR collaborate across functional areas with the same data and solution.
Working together, across functional areas, quickly allows each department to get a handle on product failures, excessive damage, shipment errors or failures, missing product in stores, inventory lapses, waste control, etc. The opportunities uncovered through this form of partnership renders tens of thousands of dollars of loss avoidance, recovered sales, improved customer service, and elevation in product freshness and integrity.
How many sales are lost because one hand didn’t know what the other hand was doing? A marketing program that actually LOST MONEY. A product being shipped to stores was in fact, the wrong product or an inferior product. The ultimate goal is to minimize effort and maximize results. A way to immediately see where opportunities exist and engage the right manager at the right location, with the guidelines to effectively resolve the situation.
A few companies have accomplished this feat. These are companies that have hundreds of users from across the company’s functional areas all working to identify sales and total loss and opportunities…..SUCCESSFULLY!
Collaboration across the enterprise can be best positioned by becoming the company’s profit hub.
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