The Delignes case study

Résumé du document

Delignes, a major telephonic equipment installation company, operates in a telephonic sector which has gone through enormous changes. Delignes has 40 agencies dealing with companies. Delignes acts as a distributor and installer. The agencies are managed by the Agency Director, who is supported by Heads of Sales and Technical Director.

Its products range from telephone handsets to switchboards and Automatic Call distributors. The company needs to carefully lead its activities in order not to burden the accounts.

However, in an ever changing environment, driving without ‘tableau de bord' becomes more risky.

A ‘tableau de bord' is a management system (not only a measurement system) that enables organizations to clarify their vision and strategy and translate them into action. It would be suitable for Delignes to implement such a tool to pilot its business.

We will see how to make right decisions based on relevant information. According to Delignes' activity, we will first build three adapted ‘tableau de bord', for the Agency Director, the Head of Sales and the Technical Director. Then it will be necessary to explain the role of this new tool and the way to introduce it in the Delignes management system

Extraits

[...] Agency technical directors supervise the realisation of installations and the adjunction. They also ensure performances linked to maintenance contracts. They have a huge role in calculating estimates. The success of a project depends on the capability of an agency to understand customer needs and on quickly installing what they have been sold. Hence, there is a real co- responsibility between technical director staff and head of sales staff. A technical director has two objectives: customer satisfaction and working within estimates and schedules. [...]

[...] The ‘tableau de bord' and its components shall become the framework used by the management team to structure and organize the strategic management process and address key strategic issues. II. Managing individuals by using tableau de bord More than a control tool When fully deployed, the tableau de bord transforms strategic planning from an academic exercise into the nerve centre of an enterprise. The Tableau de bord is structured to help the management team build its strategic management system. It will enable the agencies to maintain focus on business strategy. First of all, the ‘tableau de bord' must give dynamic information that makes sense. [...]

[...] As for the second indicator, it allows the agency to define its priorities for progress through relevant questions in the survey which is generally distributed after the customer used the product for several months. BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CLIENTS' ACCOUNTS: - Ability to negotiate correct customer payment schedules: o Rate of payment terms negotiated. This rate is very important in controlling the WNC since bad payment terms negotiations can burden the agency's receivable accounts. - Respecting deadlines: o Number of days / delay in payments. This indicator is also important in controlling the WNC as late or overdue payments will burden the agency's receivable accounts too. [...]

[...] Indeed, they are linked all together in order to be coherent and to allow the top management to follow what is going on in the subordinates. It becomes a real management system as soon as it is well and truly introduced to the whole staff, understood by everyone and used through action plans. Those ‘tableau de bord' are supposed to be flexible: whenever the indicators are not ‘efficient' enough - it means they are not representing the activity properly; therefore, the ‘tableau de bord' should be reviewed. [...]

[...] This indicator should tend to 100%. - Controlling the product mix: o Number of maintenance contracts / Number of installations realized We will come back to this objective later in the next section. MAXIMIZE THE CONTRIBUTION: Before finding indicators related to the action variables defined earlier, there are two indicators of results: o The agency's contribution in Euros o The agency's contribution rate: agency contribution/Agency revenue In the same way, we have defined indicators in relation with the action variables: - Working within estimates/schedules: o Difference between predicted amounts on the projects and amounts spent on the projects o Number of working days on projects / Number of working days estimated When an estimate is accepted by a client, it becomes a contract for the agency. [...]