A company that improves its profitability also improves its cash flow and therefore its short, medium and long-term financing. It federates its teams better and each employee quickly feels much more involved in the company... and the working atmosphere only improves!
In any case, this is the challenge that the world-famous company, Bic, intends to face over the next few years: to put in place a different organisation based on its fundamentals and its existing teams in order to improve its profitability and its long-term financing.
Open your eyes: the world is moving!
There are more opportunities around us than you might think. Take the case of Bic for example...
Last December, the group announced that it was embarking on an organisational review designed to improve its operational efficiency and sustain its profitable growth over the long term.
The aim? To respond to the continuous evolution of consumer needs while relying on the historical values that characterise the company.
On the one hand, it will be a matter of preserving a model based on mass production, the capital of the Bic brand and international influence. But also, on the other hand, to move towards more innovation and an entrepreneurial approach.
But for what results? More flexibility, more leadership and more growth. Bic, thanks to its fundamental values and its teams, is reviewing its operations to improve its short, medium and long-term prospects.
The group has also chosen to dedicate a team specifically to reorganising the company and to thinking about a concrete action plan. In this way, Bic intends to meet the major challenges facing the group tomorrow!
In any case, this is what its General Manager, Gonzalve Bich, has said, promising the announcement of the first results during the first quarter of 2019: "In order to face the challenges and opportunities of today and tomorrow, we must reinvent BIC. Ensuring the Group's long-term growth, profitability and cash generation requires us to continue to be agile, integrated and innovative in the short term. I am fully confident in the ability and commitment of our teams to deliver on these fundamental principles.
How can you identify, implement and succeed in your transformation?
It all starts with a strategy... it certainly belongs to the managers, but it must be consistent with the internal situation on the one hand and the market on the other.
And because it is not so easy to ask yourself the right questions and to launch a new organisation while getting your teams to adhere to it, you need to be able to project yourself over the long term and offer a vision for your company.
Whether you are growing, stagnating or even regressing: this is your starting point, this is where profitability begins.
And because you can't succeed without people, it's a good idea to ask yourself the question of management. The manager has his head in the sand and any change is frightening.
His objective, in order to succeed and make his organisation succeed, will therefore be to maintain strong leadership in order to train his team and improve his profitability. With appropriate management, he will be able to involve and measure the decisions taken.
But how? Give visibility! Not all managers have the necessary management tools at their disposal to make the right decisions. Your success, like that of Bic, depends on listening to, building together, trusting and involving your employees.
Each of them manages his or her tasks in his or her own way and at his or her own level, and shares them with the rest of the team by means of management charts and coherent, shared management.
"They didn't know it was impossible so they did it" (Mark Twain)
Are you not or not sufficiently satisfied with your profitability? Is your cash flow not comfortable enough? Change the way you look at your organisation and do things differently!
Your teams must recognise themselves in your strategy and see their work taken into account and valued. They are co-actors in the success of your company.
And it is above all from there that you will inevitably improve and strengthen your profitability and your cash flow!