GAINSystems Approach

The GAINS Method is a strategic profit and revenue driver for the executive teams that are using it. Through an executive dashboard and real-time KPIs, executives manage the tactical and strategic actions of their operational teams to ensure that the profit optimal customer service levels, inventory policies, replenishment plans, and distribution network flow result in the increased profit, operational efficiencies, asset utilization, and market share growth that was dynamically determined by GAINS.

To provide executives, who have not been exposed to the GAINS Method, with an understanding of the potential profit and operational improvements the GAINS Method will provide them, GAINSystems holds this initial familiarization meeting, usually with the CFO. During this 40 minute meeting, we discuss your corporate objectives and collect several operational metrics. Based on what is learned during the Site Survey, GAINSystems creates an Opportunity and Benchmark Report which benchmarks your company’s operational and financial performance against correlative companies that are already optimized. The report then becomes the basis of discussion during Step Two, the Opportunity and Benchmark Report delivery.

The Opportunity and Benchmark Report meeting includes both a presentation of the Opportunity and Benchmark Report and a discussion of how the incremental financial benefits, detailed in the Report, relate to each area of executive responsibility in your business. The meeting provides an understanding of why these incremental benefits are obtainable and clarifies why the company’s current best efforts have not been able to achieve them. The meeting helps to build a focused strategic and financial case for inviting additional Executives to the Executive Seminar, the next step in the Executive Evaluation Process. It also provides focused tools so that one can internally share the strategic value of the Executive Seminar with the other members of the executive team. Based on the discussion of the potential financial benefits and strategic issues in the company, we will also build an operational issues and questions list to discuss further with the other members of the executive team during the Executive Seminar. When we complete the Opportunity and Benchmark Report meeting, not only will we have an understanding of the financial opportunity that the GAINS Method will provide the company, but we will have agreed to an attendee list, agenda, and date for the executive team to get together for the Executive Seminar.

Having an intellectual understanding of the financial benefits and operational improvements your company can obtain through applying the GAINS Method, does not mean you understand why these benefits are possible. The Executive Seminar is designed to help each member of the executive team to understand why the benefits shown in the Opportunity and Benchmark Report are possible in the company and for their area of responsibility.

The Executive Seminar is an executive level presentation focused on why the GAINS method delivers the results it does. The Seminar is given by a former corporate executive who has walked in your shoes and understands the daily and strategic issues you face in working to grow stockholder value. The Seminar provides the executive team with a candid opportunity to discuss the strategic and tactical capabilities of GAINS so that the team can make a focused decision as to the company’s readiness to go forward with optimizing profits and return on assets. The Seminar also provides the forum for agreeing to the operational and strategic issues that the executive team would like GAINSystems to discuss and demonstrate with your department leadersduring the Workshop, the next step in the EEP.

The Workshop is a “deep dive” into the workings of GAINS that is designed to provide your operational department leaders with a complete understanding of how the technology deals with the daily, real-time issues their departments are facing. Through the use of actual data, taken from a related GAINS user, your department leaders will get a full understanding of how effectively they can achieve targeted department goals and objectives. They will be able to validate the dynamic, real-time capabilities of GAINS and see how easy the technology is to operate and deploy

Now that the executive team and the operational department leaders have a comprehensive understanding of the power of the GAINS Method, it is time to confirm that this technology can actually function in your business environment and that it will produce the financial and operational benefits we have detailed during the EEP. As industry analysts such as Gartner Group have indicated, the only way to validate the capabilities of a technology like GAINS is to actually have your people run it with your actual data. The sixth step in the EEP, the IIPSE Inventory Investment Profit and Service Evaluation does just that. The Executive Review is set up for the executive team to work with a GAINSystems consultant to design the strategic focus and issues scope of the IIPSE. This comprehensive study is an enterprise wide simulation of your business, using your data. It is a 6-8 week project that consumes a minimal amount of your employees’ time. It gives your department leaders the opportunity to actually use GAINS, in your environment, solving your real-world issues. During the Executive Review, we will agree on the IIPSE scope, start date, and participants.

The IIPSE is a comprehensive study that uses GAINS technology to simulate, using a complete download of your live data, how the GAINS Method will dynamically deliver the operational improvements and financial benefits we have discussed during the EEP. The IIPSE analysis is based on 3 years of actual customer orders and shipments, 1 year of supply history, the master bill of materials, and other current and relevant data that is easily extracted from your ERP or other operational systems. GAINSystems has developed highly efficient templates that enable us to extract the required data from your ERP systems with minimal IT resources. During the IIPSE:

1. Your departmental leaders will go through “a day in the life of a planner” and actually be able to manage their departmental objectives, with GAINS, using actual data.
2. GAINS will dynamically document the profit optimized inventory policies and replenishment plans that will ensure all customer orders are achieved at targeted customer service levels with no expediting. You will validate the profit position you would have had last year had you used GAINS and its potential for next year.
3. The executive team will not only document incremental financial improvements, but will see how easy it is to manage and control material flows (the supply chain), supplier relationships, asset utilization, and customer service levels that lead to revenue growth and expanded market share.