Building a Better Business Case

Define the Business Mandate
The best way to make a project successful is to start well. Bringing your project in on target is challenging, but certainly possible if you know how to go about it.

If you can learn to communicate your value effectively to project stakeholders, you'll produce more successful projects and advance your career. Your credibility is crucial, and the best way to gain credibility is to show that your projects are well grounded, well executed, and contribute materially to your company's success.

This article follows a series we’ve devoted to getting your projects funded. In this article we’ll explore one of the tools that will put you in a leadership position, make sure your projects meet business goals, increase the support for your work, and, in the end, improve your credibility.

At your meeting with the sponsor, ask why this project was funded. Every company is under tremendous budgetary and time constraints; at the same time, there are about a hundred projects that you could be working on right now. What does the company hope to gain that it's willing to let you do this project?

This is the business mandate. From a business perspective, what is the compelling reason for the project that makes it worth the cost of paying people to do it? You may need to do some digging around the company to get others' input on this question. Talk to marketing or other business people as well.

Sometimes the business mandate is clearly defined ("increase shipments to this or that area by 4 percent"), and all you have to do is ask. More often, though, the business people haven't really put such a fine point on it. It's frequently just that someone has an intuitive idea that this is the right thing to do. While that's great, it isn't specific enough to suffice as a valid reason to undertake a project.

This is a good place for you to step up as a leader. Work with the business people to clearly define what the company hopes to gain from the project, in business terms. Then use that goal, along with the more user-centered design goals, to guide the project's development. At the end, you'll know whether the project is a success, and you'll be able to explain it to business people in terms that they'll respect and understand.

Look Beyond the Rack

“Commodity” Thinking is Short Sighted
“Ordering rack can’t be that complicated, right?’ ‘After all rack is rack!’ ‘I have been in the warehousing business for years; I know what I’m doing.’” A recent customer experience illustrated this attitude. After turning down our invitation to conduct a facility assessment, prior to ordering rack components, a client of ours placed a significant order.

Their good fortune had fueled a need to expand the storage capacity in their distribution facility. After a gentle reminder from our Territory Manager about taking time to assess their needs was turned down, we happily and dutifully took down the rack order from the client. Weeks later the rack components arrived onsite and our installation crew was dispatched to conduct the installation.

As our in-house installation crew was setting up they noticed a set of building columns adjacent to the client’s existing rack. It was to this standing rack the new rack components were to be added. The expansion, beginning from that point would span across several transportation aisles deep into the facility. The client’s error was not factoring in the proper length of beams needed to span those building columns. The rack components ordered had 80+ beams that would not allow for proper placement of rack related to the fork truck aisles. Problem!

A call to the office got the Territory Manager on the phone with our racking partner Interlake Material Handling. Once he was able to gain a production slot, a price for the replacement beams was relayed to the client. Morrison Company was able to get the normal production time of 4-5 weeks shortened so the replacement beams arrived onsite in four weeks.

The Morrison Company installation crew was re-dispatched to complete the work. The client now has beams [the ones he ordered] to use for a future expansion. By the way that warehouse manager has scheduled a facility assessment for later this summer.

Morrison Company provides a dedicated sales and in-house engineering staff that closely works with customers to best layout and design material handling and storage systems. As an integrator and not a large manufacturer of one product line, we offer a more personal and dedicated service to our customers.

Through the use of our expertise in Auto-Cad 2006 and expert knowledge of the products we offer, we best interact with our customers, consultants, installers and factories in such a way as to install complete systems that exceed our customers’ expectations. It is through these installations that we create relationships for life and not “one project orders”.

Due to our in-house capabilities and desire to establish long-term relations with our customers, we are considered one of Interlake’s “Premier” Dealers. This designation is defined as Interlake’s desire to provide systems through Morrison Company and not simply sell components to them for re-sale.

Operations Best Practices

Running a Project for the First Time
On the surface, the role of a project manager should be easy to describe. In fact, from a textbook perspective it probably is. But the challenge to understanding roles and responsibilities is that they are different from company to company. So, although this article will provide an overall perspective of the role, you still need to determine what the role of a project manager is at your company, or in your organization.

In general, the project manager is responsible for the overall success of the project. In some companies, this person might be called a Project Coordinator, or a Team Leader, however, the key aspect is that the person is responsible for ensuring the success of the project. Many times individuals are selected for their competence in mastering technical and process aspects of their organization. Many times project managers fail because their have not learned how to relate to people.

In addition to process skills, a project manager must have good people management skills. This includes:

• Having the discipline and general management skills to make sure that people follow the standard processes and procedures.
  
  
• Establishing leadership skills to get the team to willingly follow your direction. Leadership is about communicating a vision and getting the team to accept it and strive to get there with you.
  
  
• Setting reasonable, challenging and clear expectations for people, and holding them accountable for meeting the expectations. This includes providing good performance feedback to team members.
  
  
• Team building skills so that the people work together well, and feel motivated to work hard for the sake of the project and their other team members. The larger your team and the longer the project, the more important it is to have good team-building skills.
  
  
• Proactive verbal and written communicator skills, including good, active listening skills.
  
  

As a first-time project manager this can be cause for frustration. One way to deal with this is to define roles and responsibilities as a part of the Project Definition. This can help set and manage expectations. For most project managers, the frustration level is not caused so much by a lack of power as much as it is caused by ambiguity. If the project manager does not have the authority, it is important to know who does, and what process is needed to gain action.

Tenant Representation in the Commercial Real Estate Industry

Avoid Pitfalls and Uncover Opportunities
Although Morrison Company does not offer site selection services, we do partner with industrial real estate firms who locate new sites or industrial properties for their client’s warehousing or manufacturing needs. Later in this article you’ll discover how Morrison Company’s material handling systems equipment expertise can help identify the best industrial space for your relocating business.

Many of our partnering industrial real estate firms are members of The SOCIETY OF INDUSTRIAL AND OFFICE REALTORS®. The following is an excerpt of a publication describing the duties of a tenant representative.

Selecting the best space for your organization and successfully negotiating a lease you can live with are complex, time-consuming tasks, full of potential pitfalls. The pitfalls only multiply if you undertake the process on your own – without the benefit of an experienced commercial real estate professional serving as your tenant representative.

Hiring a tenant representative who acts on your behalf can eliminate many of the hassles in site selection and negotiation. It can prevent potentially disastrous missteps. And it can cut much of your real estate expense. More importantly, aligning yourself with an experienced tenant rep can turn up real economic opportunities and help turn your space into a strategic asset.

Many commercial real estate professionals exclusively represent tenants. Such exclusive tenant reps never work on behalf of owners and developers. Other real estate professionals divide their practice between both tenant and landlord representation.

The SOCIETY OF INDUSTRIAL AND OFFICE REALTORS® reports that more than half of those who have earned SIOR’s coveted professional designation – “Specialist, Industrial and Office Real Estate” – have practices that include tenant representation.

Tenant reps have made a name for themselves during the past 10 to 15 years, since real estate agency laws required real estate brokers to disclose that they are working on behalf of the landlord, not the tenant. Your goal in working with a tenant rep is to obtain true economic savings and secure space on terms that best serve your needs over the life of your lease. While working on your behalf, a good tenant representative should generate savings and benefits that far exceed the cost of his or her professional compensation.

From Needs Analysis to Exit Strategy

You can expect a proactive tenant representative to:

• Analyze your space needs.
  
  
• Investigate all available properties and determine which are the most appropriate for your needs.
  
  
• Create a bidding war among several landlords for your business.
  
  
• Protect you during lease negotiations so that you come away with terms that meet your present and potential future needs.
  
  
• Serve as a buffer between you and the landlord.
  
  
• Identify lease provisions that could cost or save you money during the lease term.
  
  
• Handle the paperwork and other details of the lease negotiation.
  
  
• Settle disputes that arise even after the lease is signed.
  
  
• Ensure you get the most value in any improvement allowances.
  
  
• Safeguard you against signing onto any provisions that run against your economic interest.
  
  
• Win concessions that anticipate your actual needs.
  
  

Making effective use of a real estate professional will generate cost savings and give you space and terms you can live with during your entire lease. A complete copy of this article can be found at http://www.sior.com/data/files/TenantRep.doc.