Lean Management may be a practice that assesses the expenditure of resources related to any organizational process. If a step within a process doesn’t advance the explanation for creating value for the organization, it becomes a target for elimination. Most folks are cognizant of the principles of lean manufacturing and lean thinking. As a results of the Toyota Product System introduced within the 1980’s and therefore the lean concepts, tools, and techniques that it embodied, manufacturing was forever changed during this country. Since the first days of lean processes, the general rise in quality in most products and therefore the commensurate fall within the general cost of producing these products is documented . Globalization of labor has contributed to lower costs over the past few decades also . Hence, the mixture of worldwide sourcing of labor and therefore the commonly accepted principles of lean thinking have produced a worldwide manufacturing environment that today delivers unprecedented levels of top quality products at relatively low cost.

This evolution in lean thinking has also extended into the availability chain. Today, it’s normal practice for manufacturers to tightly integrate design, business processes, and technology with key suppliers.

But what about the distribution side of the enterprise? How has lean thinking impacted the sales and repair functions in indirect sales channels? How have manufacturers who believe independently owned and operated dealers, VARs, distributors and franchisees applied lean thinking?

It’s been our experience that lean thinking has not yet been deployed to profit the sales channels because it has in supply channels and within the manufacturing function itself.

One of the essential tenets of lean thinking is to start out by identifying who your customer is. In an indirect sales channel model, there are literally two customers. the primary customer is that the user of a product. it is the farmer who buys the tractor, or the fleet manager who buys the forklift and now has got to deploy and maintain that fleet. The second customer is that the dealer who sells and services those products for these user customers.

The perception of quality is defined differently by both of those customers also. the top customer tends to define quality supported the merchandise itself – he/she relies thereon product to perform a function and it becomes the idea for a way satisfied they’re with the merchandise . However, quality is defined by dealers very differently. Sure, the merchandise you’re asking them to sell must be a top quality product. However, quality is defined more by how easy it’s to sell and repair that product. This “ease of doing business” dimension is what manufacturers got to specialise in when defining quality for his or her dealer networks.

4Core: The Four Core Components of Effective Channel Partner Support

Companies that have the best financial gains from their dealer networks have found there to be four key components of support that has got to exist to properly support the extended sales enterprise:

Marketing and Communication – Supporting dealers by keeping them well informed is mission critical. Getting the proper message to the proper person, at the proper time and without overwhelming them, is that the key challenge here. Dealers get bombarded with random inconsistent messaging. this is often particularly challenging in “non-captive” dealer networks, where dealers sell quite one competing brand. Get this one right together with your dealers, and you’ll gain mindshare.

Training and Certification – Providing certification programs and processes that are efficient, timely, and effective is additionally mission critical. Today’s products are highly complex. Think computerized forklifts, fly-by-wire construction vehicles, emissions-friendly trucks, etc. This rising complexity of products has driven the necessity to help dealer salespeople in communicating value propositions effectively to finish buyers. it’s made it tougher to supply service technicians with the talents to repair and maintain these complex products. Training and certification is that the standard by which a manufacturer knows that the salesperson and repair technician representing their brand knows what they’re doing. Get this one right and you’ll raise the engagement level together with your dealers, and customer satisfaction numbers will soar.

Collaboration – Technology has evolved such collaboration at scale is now possible. The proliferation of the web , boosted by society’s rapid and global acceptance of social networking tools, has enabled a capability for manufacturers to facilitate global collaboration. There are three sorts of collaboration during a dealer environment that are essential today: between experts at the manufacturer and practitioners at the dealerships; between practitioners across dealerships (crosstalk); and between the dealer or manufacturer and therefore the end customer. If this 360-degree collaboration environment is installed, knowledge transfer and learning will permeate the extended enterprise. Dealer Management System

Measurement and Incentives – having the ability to accurately measure things that matter means having a capability to form better decisions. for instance , knowing the typical time to build up a replacement salesperson is important to reducing that point by cutting waste (a lean principal). Correlating separate measurements within dashboards and other monitoring tools allows correlations to be made for studying cause and effect. for instance , having the ability to correlate a rise in sales within a dealership to reduced build up time of latest sales people provides invaluable feedback to management. If we will measure this stuff accurately, then we will reward those that exceed the quality . Incentives play a key role in driving results, especially in an indirect dealer network environment. Incentives without measurement are simply a waste of resources.
Integration and balance is vital , unfortunately disjointed delivery of dealer support is usually the norm

All manufacturers conduct these four activities in how , shape or form. Today, the norm in manufacturing often seems like this:

Marketing and communications – The marketing function handles marketing and communication, pumping out volumes of messaging, promotions, and other collateral to the dealer network.

Training and certification – The training team conducts training events, participates within the annual sales meeting, develops certifications, deploys learning management technology, etc., all with the earnest belief that more training is best .

Collaboration – Collaboration, compared to the opposite three essential elements, may be a relatively new phenomenon. The explosion of consumer-based social networking tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, et al. have created an expectation among people that add dealerships to use these tools in doing their jobs. In fact, whether manufacturers love it or not, anyone can create a collaboration forum a few product, or a sales or service forum, using consumer-based tools. The result for manufacturers only too often, is to depend upon these consumer based tools. Typically, the marketing department is that the lead user of those tools, using them as how to nurture the marketplace to create demand for products.

Measurement and incentives – The IT function deploys business intelligence systems, sales/lead management systems, warranty, ordering, and other systems, etc. all is important . However, they’re often disjointed and have different user interfaces, all require separate logins. Each system typically does an honest job on its intended task in isolation. Each system produces reports, but it’s up to management to match the info points and assess cause and effect. Some manufacturers deploy a business intelligence (BI) system to integrate the info into dashboards. Incentives are usually a separate function, managed by sales or marketing. They often involve an outsourced incentives company or capability, and very often aren’t linked to specific measurements that really should be rewarded (upstream inputs that cause optimal outputs). very often , they’re supported who sold the foremost (solely on outputs).
Most manufacturers do these four things. However, the activities performed in each area are “owned” by several stakeholders at the manufacturer. These efforts are quite commonly disjointed though

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