Management can be stressful. Guidance from a trusted advisor can help to increase your comfort in making the complex and important decisions you face each day. CDM's management consultants are ready to help you tackle the issues that keep you up at night.
Meet our consultants as they answer some of the questions on the minds of today's managers. These men and women share a deep commitment to client service and a passion to help CDM's clients build sustainable, high-performance organizations. Topics addressed include:
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Revenue Generation
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Green Procurement
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Technology Choices
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Succession Planning
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Strategy Implementation
Q. How can we generate revenues needed to support our capital improvement program?
Q. How can I integrate sustainability considerations into our procurement process?
Q. How can I address future work force shortages?
Q. How do I know which information technology investments my organization needs?
Q. How can I improve my organization's performance?
Q. What is asset management and how can it help my organization?
Q. How can I ensure that my performance improvement is sustainable?
How can we generate revenues needed to support our capital improvement program?
As organizations continue to encounter ever-increasing financial needs and pressures, they must seek avenues for operational efficiency, as well as develop long-term financial plans. A long-term
financial plan provides a guideline for regular revenue adjustments and potential debt issuance to support financially successful capital improvement programs. There are three main steps to developing a plan:
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Determine your near-term and long-term operating and capital costs.
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Develop a sound financial plan based on historical and projected revenue requirements.
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Outline and implement a cohesive financing strategy that helps you achieve your goals.
After your plan is developed, involve your board and ratepayers to explain the rationale for your plan. Once your plan is approved, be sure to employ cost-of-service principles to adjust rates and charges to achieve equity between customer classes and new and existing customers.
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How can I integrate sustainability considerations into our procurement process?
Product procurement practices have a significant influence on the environmental footprint of an organization. Sustainable, or "green," purchasing coupled with efforts to "reduce, reuse, and recycle" can yield economic and environmental benefits. Green purchasing programs, also referred to as environmentally preferable procurement and sustainable procurement programs, provide the framework, processes, and tools to facilitate the greening of products purchased. An appropriately designed program facilitates the acquisition of environmentally preferable products when price, quality, performance, and delivery time are comparable, or better than, less environmentally friendly products. Key steps in developing a green procurement program include:
- Form an inter-disciplinary green procurement team to build awareness.
- Implement an environmentally preferable product assessment process.
- Align process with existing processes and databases.
- Establish green procurement goals and targets.
- Communicate the progress in terms of environmental footprint
reduction and cost savings.
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How can I address future work force shortages?
As a large portion of the work force reaches retirement age, organizations are facing an impending labor shortage and the subsequent loss of knowledge that goes with it. Succession management—a set of human resources development strategies—can facilitate a smooth and positive transition into the future. Although the changing work environment is very complex and varies among organizations, a sound succession management plan generally requires an integrated staff resource strategy that includes the following components:
- Staff demographic and attrition analysis.
- Job category and role review.
- Skill requirements/gap analysis.
- Staff resource strategy.
- Succession development/knowledge transfer plan.
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How do I know which information technology investments my organization needs?
The ideal starting point is clearly defining your goals and constraints, followed by outlining your operations to identify areas of opportunity. Needs assessments provide insight into how to target the most appropriate solution and navigate the wide array of available software options. While innovative technology can add significant value to an organization, new software alone will not provide a silver bullet solution unless addressed in the context of your business. What is often viewed as a software problem may originate elsewhere. Key steps to address IT needs include:
- Establish a core team of stakeholders to oversee IT investments and strategy.
- Assess your organization's goals and needs to determine where IT improvements can add the most value.
- Identify your priorities and constraints in terms of budget, staffing, and related resource requirements.
- Make buy-or-build and other procurement decisions.
- Develop an implementation plan that accounts for your priorities and constraints, as well as focuses on business and staff development needs.
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How can I improve my organization's performance?
Today's successful managers must continually demonstrate performance improvements to senior executives and board members. Even in those organizations with clearly defined values, vision, and strategic plans, managers face challenges in translating these to operational terms that drive employee behavior daily. Implementing a "balanced scorecard" has allowed numerous organizations to focus on achieving strategic objectives and improving performance. Key steps in developing a balanced scorecard include:
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Define strategic objectives within four perspectives:
- Financial
- Customer
- Internal processes
- Learning and growth
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Establish measures and targets.
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Prioritize initiatives.
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Monitor, communicate, and report.
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What is asset management and how can it help my organization?
Asset management is a business philosophy and collection of work practices that help an organization meet and sustain its service- or product-delivery goals over the long term. A comprehensive asset management program ensures that infrastructure assets deliver optimal service and that human assets (employees) are properly focused and supported to meet your organization's objectives. We encourage a six-step asset management planning process:
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Establish asset management objectives specific to your organization.
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Develop an inventory of the infrastructure assets you control.
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Determine the condition of your assets relative to performance or level of service criteria.
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Calculate the replacement cost of your assets.
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Determine revenue requirements to ensure long-term asset performance.
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Ensure alignment of the maintenance, operations, engineering, finance, information, and human resources functions for continual improvement to asset performance.
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How can I ensure that my performance improvement is sustainable?
As sustainable considerations become part of the business landscape, organizations must not only focus on their core activities, but also comply with complex regulatory requirements, reduce their environmental footprint, and demonstrate positive contributions to society. Sustainability performance improvement is a way to define, communicate, and achieve balance in economic growth, social responsibility, and environmental stewardship, through everyday decision making. Initial steps toward this goal include:
- Develop a sustainability policy or vision suited to your organization.
- Conduct an assessment to identify opportunities and engage stakeholders.
- Establish objectives, metrics, and targets for prioritizing and measuring performance using standards, best practices, and benchmarks.
- Implement initiatives and practices to improve performance.
- Monitor and report on progress.