Sigma Pi Consulting

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Management Consulting - Soft & Hard

Management consulting can be divided into to types - Soft and Hard. Soft consulting concentrates on the human side of an organization. Hard consulting concentrates on the processes, business structures, and in the end the "numbers".

On the "soft" side, Sigma Pi creates organizational structures where every task is assigned to a specific person who is fully trained to execute it with a reporting structure that prevents things from falling in the cracks.

This is backed up by job descriptions and employee handbooks that document the process.

Finally, Sigma Pi provides executive coaching to assist both owners and staff to work as a team.

The soft consulting is backed by the "hard" side of management consulting. Here Sigma Pi provides custom developed tools to track performance which provides the accountability structures that enables "management by exception".

Through an in depth analysis of the company, Sigma Pi identifies the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for the company. It determines how to measure each KPI and creates benchmark performance targets. Then the only time that the owner needs to get personally involved is when the performance levels fall below those defined for a task.

While finances represent a major area of concern, they are by no means the most important. KPI's must address every area of a business from sale to production to delivery to customer support.

When all of the KPI's are displayed in a single weekly report to the CEO, you have a Balanced Scorecard. This report has been jokingly called a Tahiti Report because, properly designed, it permits the owner to run his business from Tahiti.

Additional Services

In addition to a balanced scorecard, Sigma Pi provides other services such as job costing with overhead allocation that guarantees that each job delivers a minimum engineered profit. This first requires identifying the overhead factor for a company.

Here Sigma Pi will work with the owner to create a flexible budget. A flexible budget is significant improvement over static budgets because it enables the owner to make good spending decisions even when sales do not meet their targets - up or down. It shows him where to cut when sales fall short and provides guidance that he doesn't over spend when sales exceed the estimate.

Depending on the business, there are a number of other tools that Sigma Pi can implement. Each of which provides the controls on the business that gives the employee the ability to do their job within the limits of his responsibility and authority yet still provides the accountability to management and ultimately to the owner.

These include open to buy for a retail operation, "Over-Under" for contractors, menu costing and inventory control in restaurants, and job tracking and shop floor scheduling in a manufacturing environment. In the accounting department, cash flow forecasting provides critical controls to ensure that payroll gets met without excessive strain.

Finally, by creating the structures to capture performance and real costs, Sigma Pi can design incentive plans that rewards staff for superior performance based on increased profit. That is, when the staff's efforts results in profits that exceed the target for a job or task, a part of the increased profit is given to the employees responsible for the increased profit.

Sigma Pi Consulting - Adding to your profit & your life.