Differential specialises in digital transformation for medium and large companies and organisations. The Chief Executive, Chris Thomas has had many years experience in this area. including eight years with the Toyota Corporation in a senior business transformation role. Much of this work focused on the physical supply chain and the retail (dealer) end of the business.
Chris has experienced first hand the transformation power and sustainable continuous improvement that can be achieved through the core principles embodied in the ‘Toyota Way’ and ‘Lean Thinking’. Key to implementing continuous improvement is having the right key performance indicators on which to focus. This can be extremely difficult where the supply chain is complex and involves different companies, for example independent dealers, freight forwarders and trucking companies. Developing the correct business approach and KPI’s is a key part of Differential’s core skills. Invariably this leads to initiatives to acquire the correct data, process this into KPI’s and make it available to ALL key stakeholders. This provides the foundation benchmarks and base for implementing continuous improvement programs.
If the information processes transcend organisational boundaries it becomes possible to build key performance indicators (KPI’s) that cover the full value chain. For the first time organisations can break down this information to KPI’s for all aspects of the business to drive and sustain true improvement. This approach overcomes the situation where, for example the component manufacturing department gets its unit cost down (ie achieves a KPI), by overproducing but drives up warehousing and write off costs in other parts of the enterprise.
The other but related area of Differential’s services is the strategic re-positioning of companies for long term competitive advantage including the development of new business models and the transformation required for those new business models to be executed. This leverages the rapid changes in ‘what is possible’ as a result of developments in cloud technology, web services, the Internet of Things and smart phones.
