The CleanAir System
Long
Range Strategy
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The CleanAir System
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Long
Range Strategy
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Events that Shaped Our Strategy Our 1995 & 1998 financial situation caused us to put great emphasis on short-term financial goals. This was necessary and appropriate. However, it was also important not to lose track of our long-term destination. We must always be able to answer the question "Where are we going?" or "What are we trying to become?" One part of our long term objective has been constant over many years—to become a value-driven organization. Our quest for quality and value began long before Deming. In our 1980's gray corporate brochure our stated goal is "to become the leader in providing quality environmental services." In the late 1980’s CleanAir was in the business of asbestos monitoring. In a the span of less than 5 years we saw this monitoring business go from a high-quality, good profit business to a no quality, price only, commodity business. We decided that we did not want to be in a business where the only way to compete is to cut corners on quality. We stopped selling to this market. In the early 1990’s we feared that the stack testing market appeared to be headed in the same direction—toward being a commodity. At the same time we noticed that some companies were aligning with a different philosophy—a quality philosophy pioneered by W. Edwards Deming. These companies would need quality data to make good management decisions. These companies would want to look at the total value of a project or operation and not sub-optimize by squeezing contractors to their lowest price. They would want to end the practice of rewarding business on price tag alone and establish preferred supplier relationships. They would want to improve constantly and forever their system of production based on our data. They would want to work with companies that understood their culture, vocabulary and were moving in the same direction. All we had to do was adopt this new philosophy, institute training and leadership, drive out fear, break down our internal barriers and align our constancy of purpose with theirs. I though it would take us about a year if we really put out hearts into it. I tend to be a little optimistic.
Where are we now? CleanAir’s Strategic Summary Our aim is to be the highest value provider and our vision is to be the global leader in every market in which we compete. We have identified our present niche as the total value and quality leader in our industry. We have survived a major downturn in the USA environmental business while also becoming the undisputed leader in our market segments. In our 25 years we have used the major environmental business slumps to increase our market share of the air emissions measurement business and are now the leader for both high value and total sales. Our long range strategy is to identify ideal profiles of clients with which we can establish long term relationships and multi-year contracts. We see these as companies that are investing in quality, technology, the environment and having corporate-wide preferred vendor relationship programs. Our short range strategy is to level our market fluctuations and increase utilization factors. Some of these activities include being invited to be a participant on our clients’ environmental planning team, establishing a 12 month rolling schedule for test services, having a defined process for early identification and filling of schedule holes, increasing our percentage of non-regulatory driven work and to constantly increase our percentage of international business to minimize the business disruption caused by the environmental politics and a single country’s economy. Some early results from these strategy are: We were selected by 3M to be one of their preferred vendors for global environmental services. We were selected by American Ref-Fuel to be their sole environmental air measurement provider. The annual air teating is generally in excess of $1,000,000. We have other firms with which we are working toward an exclusive supplier partnership. These firm are the Fortune 100 quality and environmental leaders. We have altered the pattern of losses during winter months. In the distant past we lost money every winter, more recently we have made a profit in many of the winter months. We also believe we are the leader in our industry in applying technology to increase value for our customers. We are partnering with other quality-driven firms to provide unique solutions to customer problems using our prior developments and knowledge base. We are team based and market driven. We will reinvest in teams making true economic contributions to our bottom line. We will downsize teams not making a bottom line contribution using a published procedure. This applies to all teams including overhead functions. We also have aligned our sales and capacity or rightsized in October 1996 to reduce our cost by $1,000,000 per year while maintaining the capacity to duplicate 1996 sales.
Where are we going?
The CleanAir VISION We will be the world leader in all our businesses. As we use this term, leadership means more revenue, more profit, more innovation that serves customer’s needs, and a more attractive place to work than any other competitor. Our business is helping process industry meet their responsibilities to their stakeholders when air quality management is a component of this responsibility. Achieving this ambitious objective will probably require double digit revenue and profit growth each year. It will surely require that we become good at teaming, less U.S. oriented, more externally focused, and considerably less bureaucratic. We will continue our market leadership for quality and service by constantly raising the bar and posting the results. We will continue our quest for highest value on every task by every employee for every customer using a parrallel paths for both Continuous Improvement & Innovation (CI & I) processes. Since it is imperative that an organization’s vision be shared by all I encourage you and your team to discuss what our vision should be. We need your inspiration, aspiration and wordsmithing, small adjustment or major overhaul.
The CleanAir AIM Or what is our purpose and why is it relevant? Why is striving for higher and higher value good for all our stakeholders?
Our Customers: Once we have a good understanding of our customer’s big picture needs we can make decisions based on fact to increase our value. By targeting opportunities we can deliver financial benefits using their cost metrics. As we continue to exceed customer expectations and select customers that have a preferred vendor program we will, over time, become the supplier of choice. If we can show them that we make them money they will look for ways to grow our relationship. Some customers may not recognize that we need to know a lot about their major problems, operations costs and margins in order to maximize value. We will persist in gathering this data and organizing it in a shared data base. Although this data gathering may seem to belong to the sales function the needs questions must be asked for at ever customer interface. We gather this information as if it were pieces of a large jigsaw puzzles that we continuously work on. Our Employees: When we deliver higher value we will have higher value as a supplier. Our employees will be the best and we will be the best place to work in our industry. Note that highest quality is not the aim. Our Investors: When we consistently deliver higher value we will be the market leader in sales and profit. Our Community and the World: By showing our customer that working with us is not a cost but a true benefit to their bottom line they will want to do more not less for the environment. This is our ultimate purpose and what makes our AIM relevant. Our Suppliers: We help our supplier by having high expectations and rewarding them on the bases of overall value. We teach them just as our customers teach us.
How do we find them, these buyers of high value?
We must quickly start to formalizing this high value identification and delivery process? As soon as you understand it start talking about what your team can do to make it a reality . I know we can do it. Tell me you problems that would be worth fixing. Make sure worth is defined as : (NPV - Cost) = X X of course must be > 1. Before we can ask the tough cost and value metric questions we will need to establish our sincerity and purpose. We will need to build trusting relationships so we can ask these questions. This may take some time but it should not prevent us from planting the seeds that we will need this information and why. We can then ask the how and when questions. The book "Selling Solutions" is an excellent text book on how to identify the $ value of a customer need or problem solution.
How will we be able to do it? We will need team members that can both lead and follow (Geese not Buffalo). Can you fly yet?... or are you part of the herd? Who will want this highest value We have identified some activities, which we think the companies that will make the best partners for CleanAir would participate in. These include committing to do more for the environment that is required by law, winning the Malcomb Baldridge Award, and having a corporate policy for preferred suppliers. The winners are: (Note how many of these past superstars are now big loser)
How are we doing with this partnershipping idea? We have to ration our partnershipping efforts since it requires 3 or more years of concentrated effort before we start getting the necessary returns from a partnership. Meanwhile if we all work together we will have more of these relationships. Presently the best success seems to be if one CleanAir employee acts as the partnership or relationship maestro and if every CleanAir employee in contact with these partners and partner candidates is on the same page. To make this work we all must capture the VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER (VOTC) and get it in a bottle that can be easily accessed and shared. Future Topics Challenges How will we team with them? How will we keep them? Won’t other companies try to copy us? How about our loyal existing customers? What are the keys for staying ahead of the want-a-bees? How will we know if we are the leader? How does this work for Rentals? How does this work for Express? Linking the non-$ targets in and why they were selected. The answers to these questions must guide our daily decision making. How we answer determines how we make capital equipment purchases, who we hire, how we train, who our salesmen talk to, and what products we sell. We must be clear on these points. Updated: January 15, 2010 |
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