Logistics Management

Any organization needs to know where it is moving and what goals it wants to achieve. If you do not know what you are doing and what methods are relevant for achieving certain goals, you are destined to lose. There are no excuses in the world of business. Without strategic planning you have very few chances to succeed.

There is a rule applicable to any business type – if you stop developing your business will seize to exist someday. Taking into account modern realities, this will happen very soon, as there is a tough competition in all markets.

Organization strategy map is a must for all businesses. This document (in fact this is a scheme) outlines major directions of company development. Sometime it is very difficult take into account everything that a company needs to do to be successful. Different businesses should have different strategy maps that consider peculiar features of a certain business type. But in general, all strategy maps cover 4 major directions in the company development. They concern financial perspective, relations with customers, internal processes and training of personnel.

Organization strategy map helps in finding company's unique way

Use organization strategy map to develop a comprehensive development plan

It needs saying that it is often impossible to reach certain goals without completion of secondary objectives. Thus, everybody seems to be focused on net profits only. But a strategy maps will point out that in order to increase net profit you need to improve a number of key performance indicators. It is not wise to thing that you may have more revenue without improving relations with customers or paying much attention to processes taking place inside your company.

In logistics business strategic planning in a must, since business environment changes very often. Besides, as a rule major logistic companies have thousands of customer customers. Strategy map in logistics would cover financial perspectives such as increased revenue, decreased cost per freight unit. However, these goals are unachievable without paying due attention to relations with customers, losses, average shipment time and other important factors.

Logistics strategy map should be equally focused on different perspectives, otherwise imperfections in work can overweight advantages. To make your strategy map more effective, use of special automated software is highly recommended. A computer program will not only make the entire process more time efficient, but will also help in making choices.

A decent strategy map should cover all business aspects and automated systems will make sure you have considered all key issues.

What do you usually do when you plan to do something important? As a rule, you take a pen or pencil and draw a plan. It does not matter what you are about to do: go to the supermarket or finish your studies at college. With a comprehensive plan or a roadmap it is always easier to achieve goals. By the way, it is impossible to achieve goals if they have not been set.

When we are talking about business (it does not matter what business type) planning is a MUST. Business environment changes and so do strategic goals of a company. But in order to efficiently allocate resources it is imperative to create a company strategy map. What kind of a map is it?

Well, if for what purposes do we use geographic maps? Right! We have a look at directions, or in other words we want to know how to get from pointy A to point B. The same applies to business. Strategy map shows how to improve business and develop/expand it. In business terms, a map shows how to optimize organization performance and earn more money.

Develop company strategy map using special software

Company strategy map will show your directions in development

A strategy map can be complex and contain numerous issues. At the same time a simple comprehensive strategy diagram will be equally helpful. Sometimes, it is difficult to draw a virtual scheme of the company future development. There are many factors that need to be considered and taken into account.

Traditionally, strategy maps tend to cover 4 main aspects in the company performance. These are things that happen inside and outside the company. If a business focuses only on the net profits without giving due attention to relations with customers or training of personnel, it will be difficult to achieve high financial goals.

Strategy maps help focus on al aspects influencing business performance and set relevant goals in all directions. As said above, there are 4 perspectives: financial, customer, internal processes and training. In terms of logistic, a company needs to concentrate both on what is happening inside the company (efficiency of personnel, transfer of cargoes inside the organization) and outside it (relations with customer, improvement of shipment conditions etc).

A strategy map for logistic company should certainly cover such issues as decrease of cost per one shipment, decrease of shipment time and losses, improving relations with all customers.

If top managers use special software to create strategy map, this process will be fast and enjoyable. The program will make suggestions and help in establishing key development directions.

The new version of BSC Designer PRO released, now it is possible to customize formulas used to calculate the performance of the KPI. It is possible now to use not only linear formulas, but actually any dependency, including binary function, where you can specify the value of the performance for certain intervals.

The PRO version also suggests powerful Strategy Maps feature, which allows automatically export data from KPI into nice-looking strategy maps with all necessary diagrams and arrows.

Right now:

• Download fully-functional 30-day trial of BSC Designer
• Check the difference between Standard and Professional versions
• Check screenshots of BSC Designer

If you ever ask, how can you map the strategy performance indicators for delivery and logistics scorecard? It is possible now with BSC Designer, the latest version of this scorecarding software allows to create strategy maps, here is how the strategy map looks like for logistics scorecard: