Hi there. Well the year is racing along and I thought it was time for a  few updates.

1. Budget update
   1. Irrespective of inflation, in our business rent increases every year 2%, wages are forced up by minimum wage (4% this year) and the cost of living (well you know what’s happening to houses) and freight normally (not this year! that’s the first bit of good news no freight increase) increases relentlessly. Our challenge is to try and maintain increases to between 1-2% against costs increases that exceed this. So I am pleased to report we have achieved another good result for our clients despite these increases which is lower than my last forecast,  Peter will be releasing the APA (annual price adjustment) shortly but it is a great result, the challenge is how to keep beating the market…but we have a plan!
2. Continuous Improvement (CI) this is our most exciting project this year and this is our strategy to keep ahead of the market and ensure our fees remain to offer the most competitive value and lowest total cost of ownership.
   1. It’s a complex project that addresses culture, processes, technology, leadership and a set of tools to drive more value into the business and thus to our customers. It’s a 3-5 year journey to establish base competency across the organisation and we started in earnest a few months ago, already the results are tangible there is a new sense of excitement and a new level of engagement in the business. I’m confident it is a new edge to keep our customers’ service levels at the forefront of the fulfillment industry at the best possible price whilst ensuring staff retention and capability continues to increase.
   2. Jax has developed professional slide shows to educate and ease the business into the journey if you’re interested to learn more drop me a line (brad@supplycs.com) and I’ll arrange for one of our team to run you through the strategy, it’s one of the best things we’ve ever done. CI is largely based on a discipline called Six Sigma. It is complex and involved work to execute this strategy. The more I look into CI and the value it delivers business the more impressed I am.
   3. One of the first cabs off the CI rank has been 5S (Sort, Set, Shine, Standardise, Sustain) there is a lot to this but one key outcome is maintaining a brilliant looking facility (work environment), we have worked relentlessly to  achieved this with periodic (disappointing) failures and a lot of effort to re-establish standards when they drop 5S ensures it stays there and so far so good!
3. Health and Safety is huge, we initially underestimated the amount of work to comply to the new act but keeping out of jail and avoiding the massive fines is a full time job for us now. We are developing a H&S culture (this is key and harder than you’d think) with H&S being discussed daily at all levels of the organisation (incidentally SCS employs 210 staff now).
   1. In our sister company WSAS (www.wsas.co.nz) we are making huge strides forward helping other companies manage compliance, here is a good brochure we use to help companies understand the road to compliance WSAS roadmap to compliance
4. PaT: we are finally at the stage of doing a soft launch next month. PaT is now installed at a number of customer premises in Beta form. I can’t rave enough about the impact of the software for SCS; we can now claim we have the best training in the known universe and the best trained staff in our industry. The task management, training capability and performance management capability is unsurpassed by anything we have seen. In my next blog I’ll personally introduce you to PaT so you can see what all the hoopla has been about. PaT is a Human Capital software solution it is literally the SAP of HR with a Xero like user experience. Here is a quick vid showing you an overview of the main dashboard. PaT orientation video.

Take care, happy trading everyone and speak to you soon I hope

Cheers

Brad