How thorough are your trailer inspections?

A proper trailer inspection can mean the difference between a product arriving safely to its destination, or not.

Whether you are loading or unloading trailer, there are a few things that should be inspected to protect the integrity of the products going into the trailer, as well as those in the warehouse where the pallets are being unloaded.

1. Check for odor. This is likely the first thing someone will notice when opening a trailer for inspection. If the smell is off, there is probably an issue that needs to be investigated further.
2. Clean Floor. If the trailer is being loaded with product, the floors should be clean and free of debris. A flashlight should be used to check the corners for cleanliness.
3. Walls and door. Take a walk through the trailer and make sure there are no holes or jagged edges in the walls. It’s also important to check that the truck door holds a tight seal. Sometimes debris from the previous shipment can get lodged in the truck walls or under the door. That should be cleared before loading new product in.
4. No insects. Especially when it comes to food-grade products, it is imperative to do a thorough inspection for any signs of insects when loading and unloading a trailer.
5. Clean & sturdy pallets. When removing product from trailer, make sure pallets are clean before unloading them into the warehouse to avoid contaminating other products. They should also be in good, sturdy condition, so they can be safely moved.
6. Temperature control. When inspecting a refrigerated trailer, you should make sure the temperature is within the guidelines for the product you are transporting.

The best way to prevent product contamination while in transport is to have properly trained employees doing inspections. Taking the time to make sure each person has mastered what to look for will make all the difference. 

Web Analytics Offer Snapshot of Site Performance

Your company is pouring money into its website and SEO, but how often are you doing a checkup on the site’s performance? It’s simple to sign up for Google Analytics and start accumulating statistics on your site’s traffic, but what are the stats that are most meaningful?

What exactly do the numbers even represent? It only takes a few minutes within Google Analytics for eyes to glaze over at the vast amounts of data available. While you can dive as deep as you want into the analytics pool, below are few key numbers from the shallow end that you should be tracking.

Session – As you would expect, this is the number of visits to your website. Once a baseline average is established, the number becomes more meaningful, allowing you to compare it to set time periods (previous day, month, year, etc.). Tracking it enables you to see any drop-offs (or spikes) in visits, and course correct.

Pageviews – This category shows the number of views each page of your site received and can be listed as a percent of the total pages viewed. It is meaningful to determine if visitors are hitting the pages you want them to. If they aren’t, it’s time to make some changes to better feature important content.

Time on Page – Simply, how long visitors view each page. Again, this can reflect the quality of the page content as well as a visitor’s engagement with it.

Bounce Rate – This important figure is the number of visitors who view only a single page and leave the site. It’s a reflection of relevance of content and page design. Numbers can vary by industry, but generally, if your website has a bounce rate under 50 percent, you are doing pretty well. However, like all statistics, this once can be misleading. For instance, if the page is answering a specific question, the visitor got exactly what they needed and there was no reason to drill further into the site.

Six Steps to Keeping your CRM Data Clean

The customer relationship management (CRM) system is an invaluable tool in organizing customer contacts, tracking sales, and managing leads. This tool, however, is only as good as the quality of the information in it. Your CRM can quickly become a mess of outdated phone numbers and invalid emails if not managed properly.

This can seem daunting – especially considering many salespeople have hundreds, or even thousands of individual contacts to manage. But if you take small steps every day to keep the information clean, you will have a much more valuable tool.

1. Perform an audit. Twice a year, randomly draw 10 contacts for each salesperson, and reach out to each one to verify the accuracy of the information in your CRM. This is a great way to gauge how clean the data is in the system as a whole.
2. Check for missing information. Every quarter, salespeople should run a report of all their contacts in the system to check for ones that have important information missing (i.e. title, email, phone number, and address). Then, they can create a hit list of people to reach out to and fill in the blanks.
3. Track updates. Have your CRM administrator add a field to track the last time a contact’s information was verified. If the salesperson pulls up a contact and sees it’s been two years since they last confirmed the contact numbers, etc., it’s probably time for an update.
4. Send a mass email. Most CRM’s give users the ability to send out mass emails. Create a list of people whose information is likely out-of-date, and send an email asking them to verify key contact details. Then, you can update the database as their responses come in.
5. Customer visits. When sales staff makes their regular customer visits, they should print out a list of every contact they have for that customer. When they arrive for their meeting, the salesperson should hand that list to the receptionist to verify and edit.
6. Email signatures. This one is simple. Every time you receive an email from a contact, verify their email signature against the information in your database. 

A CRM system is a great tool, but you need to regularly put in work managing the quality of the data to make sure it continues to provide value to your company.

Benchmarking Warehouse Performance Starts With Data

Data is the cornerstone of getting a true snapshot of not only how well your distribution center is operating, but also the impression your company is leaving with customers.

However, in order to build toward the answers companies seek, they must start by laying that cornerstone and begin collecting data. Doing so brings a host of questions, including: What data is meaningful and what is just data? How often should we collect the information? What are acceptable numbers and what numbers are indicators of problems in need corrective actions? What do I do with this data to improve processes? All are important questions to ask and the answers may vary by company.

Below are a few important key performance indicators (KPIs) that can help companies get an idea of how their distribution centers are operating.

Shipping accuracy. Arguably one of the most important KPIs, shipping accuracy tracks that the shipment arrives at the destination exactly the way it was released, with the correct item and the correct quantity

Total damage compared to on-hand inventory. Simply, the amount of damage caused in the distribution center compared to the total on-hand inventory.

Inventory accuracy. How accurately is inventory managed? This KPI will review each inventory unit and check that it is in the correct location, has the correct count, and is the correct item compared to information in the warehouse management system.

On-time shipments. This is defined by each shipment leaving the distribution center at or before the scheduled appointment time.

Safety. Many operations will hold a standard of OSHA recordable injuries in a calendar year. While the goal of this KPI always will be zero, each company will set a standard based on past history.

Remember, while these are internal KPIs, each has an impact on how customers view your company.

How effective is your goal setting strategy?

Setting goals is the propelling force behind a company’s growth. Unfortunately, many companies don’t follow an organized process in creating them, or place too much emphasis on the future.

A better approach is to focus on making current operations more efficient. Each year, companies should identify 5 to 11 major goals that define their focus. These goals should be broken down into the following categories, where 80 percent of the efforts are focused on present issues:

                3-5 Current operational problems

                1-3 Marketing improvements for current products

                1-3 Future products and services

The goals created should be a culmination of ideas from a variety of sources and departments throughout the company, and an organized process should be followed to generate those ideas.

• Gathering and organizing potential goals. Executive staff members should each be tasked with creating a list of potential goals using the formula above.

• Aggregate the information. Create a master list of all the goals created by the executive staff and distribute it back to them with instructions to agree or disagree on the ideas of their counterparts.

• Creating the big picture. Schedule an uninterrupted day at an offsite location to conduct a brainstorming session with your executive staff.

• Finalizing selection process. At this stage, the CEO should review the company goals in private and create a final list, which sets the stage to begin planning for each goal.

• Planning business strategies. Re-create a template with company and corresponding departmental goals.

• Creating the master list. Consolidate the above information into a master list of goals, and publish it for the entire company to see. Creating organization-wide visibility ensures all employees are on the same page.

Goal creation, and communication of those goals, is critical to establishing an efficient working environment. With clear objectives, each staff member and department will have an understanding of what their role is within the bigger picture.

Time for a visit from the supply chain doctor?

Here’s a revelation: your company has supply chain inefficiencies. And guess what? Correcting some of these inefficiencies could bring substantial savings, while improving logistics performance. The problem is how to uncover these issues and prioritize which ones to address.

Think of it like visiting a doctor. You can wait until you have an ache or pain, or in this case “pains” such as costly overtime or increased transportation costs. A more proactive approach, however, entails visiting the doctor’s office for regular health checkups. Your doctor can highlight areas to work on to improve overall health, but most importantly, head off major issues later on.

This is the role a supply chain consultant can perform for your company. Their “health check” will focus on key decision-making levels – strategic, tactical, and operational.

Strategic can look at things like:

• Network optimization
• Facility Layout
• Space utilization
• Pick/pack strategy 

Tactical includes:

• Ship-to alignment
• Safety stock analysis
• Mode conversion
• Racking configurations

Operational touches on:

• Carrier and mode selection
• Transit time analysis
• Metrics and reporting
• SOP creation

What companies will receive following a consultant’s visit is a roadmap to improving the health of their supply chain. The best logistics consultants will not only identify areas of improvement, but prioritize them and provide an ROI calculation. Companies then can enlist the services of a supply chain professional to swiftly correct high-priority inefficiencies.

It’s a simple fact that you can’t fix what you can’t measure. Enlisting the help of a supply chain consultant will not only help identify problems and corrective actions, but they also can assist with developing metrics to measure performance moving forward. The end result is a healthier supply chain.

Your customers buy value. Why are you selling features?

Your company is great at developing new products and services, but is it equally adept at positioning value? Are sales and marketing in synch on articulating that value? Quite often the answer to these questions is no. The simple exercise of creating value propositions many times is ignored. The result is a fragmented approach to selling, one that removes value from the discussion.

Without value, companies are reduced to selling features, which doesn’t differentiate the company or its products and services from all others in the space.

Selling your value is a four-step process that begins with understanding your customers’ needs and problems. The first question to ask is: what is the need my customers have for the product or service my company markets? This answer is likely a simple sentence or two.

Next, ask what are the problems clients face in meeting this need. This will be a bit longer list. Answers may include a lack of: expertise, time, costs, systems, tools, space, etc.

The third step is detailing your company’s solution that helps customers overcome these problems to meet the need. Here’s where you list those features and benefits to begin building your case.

Finally, and most important, list your company’s differentiation points. How does your company, product/service differ from all others in the marketplace? Points may include expert staff, warranty, quality, advanced systems, better ingredients, production process, facilities, longevity, and certifications, anything that enables you to carve out a unique space in the industry. This is the section that helps companies elevate beyond just selling their features.

Work, however, is not done once the value proposition document is completed and vetted past subject matter experts. It must become a cornerstone piece, meaning sales and all customer-facing departments should be trained on it. Marketing must use it as a guide for all advertising, campaigns, collateral, sales tools, website messaging, and content marketing initiatives.

Designing a strategy around value propositions unites all players in the business and ensures everyone is speaking from the same script. While tactics may vary, the messaging remains consistent. Companies that solve customers’ problems and sell their value are far better positioned than those simply pushing a product or service.