How long will it take to implement the changes?

This is a very open-ended question that relies on a number of factors to be taken into consideration and is generally the first or second question that comes up.

Firstly, the goals and objectives needs to be assessed. What is your end goal at the end of this change process? What objectives are you looking to achieve out of the proposed change? Once a final goal has been determined, the solution can be arranged by examining your current situation.

Whatever your goal is, it should always be theintention that cost reduction be a naturally attained by-product of the change process, not the primary goal or objective. Why? Cost is always going to be a factor in any business operation however there should be a better reason for the change to exist.

For example: streamlining a manual process can have the ability of reducing time spent on a task and improving safety, which in turns increases production output resulting in additional units being made available for sale each day to your customers. Cost per unit lowered, safety improved and daily profit margin increased without cost being the primary goal.

In the example above, the objective was obtained without putting cost reduction at the forefront. It is that type of mentality that we should approach our business issues. By now, in business circles, we have all heard the saying, “You have to spend money to make money”. Whilst that is true in almost all cases (and sounds rather cliché), we believe the following is a better saying and is also true:

The time it takes to complete a consultancy project is totally dependent on what the requirements are. To begin the analysis and understanding what your operational moving parts are can take a week or two at the very least (depending on the size of your operation) followed by time to research the scope requirements of your change requests. If you’re looking for some simple fixes they may be presented to you not longer afterwards followed by the implementation and review phases. However, if you’re after a top-down analysis of your business operations and willing to accept a whole smorgasbord of process changes then the smaller initial changes can generally begin within a month or so followed not long after by the long-term changes that would really get that that productivity scale driving upwards.

Let us be honest, we do things a little different here at Thunderbird. Maybe a little too different to some others because our mentality is that anyone can use well-known acronyms (SWOT, SVOR or SOAR) to get anything done however, at the end of the day, it’s how it actually works in your organisation that matters most. A shiny piece of paper with a bunch of to-do dot points is not going to implement a single action, it takes the action of dedicated people.

We don’t do a dump and run, we stay to see the fruit grow. We want you to succeed because we invest ourselves into your business also. We will investigate and research what we believe to be the best possible solutions for your particular working environment because all businesses are unique in their own way.