OC Reilly Blog: Information Good, Action Better

By Vicki White, Executive Director, Business Operations, OC Reilly Inc.

As supply chain management consultants, we know that information provides the lifeblood of our service to clients.  It’s what customers expect us to discover and illuminate for them.

Terms of contracts, parameters and expectations, income and expenses – unearthing and assembling this sort of vital data provides the platform for subsequent decision making that, as our clients regularly discover, can result in meaningful improvements in cost efficiencies and stronger margins.

Yet, gathering and interpreting this data can only lead so far.  Determining what tangible moves to make based on that data completes the equation.  Information is great.  Action is better.

An article in the September/October 2014 issue of Supply Chain Management Review magazine, titled “Make Data One Part of a Strategy,” reiterated this fact of business life.  The story, in part, reads: “Access to real-time demand and inventory data gives a more accurate picture of customer needs.  But for real operational improvements, data is only one part of a strategy.  Process should be part of the focus, too.”

At OC Reilly, our client engagements routinely cover both sides of the same coin.  Using the expertise and perspective gained by years working from the client’s perspective, members of our team understand where and how to gather the most relevant information.  And then, using that same first-hand knowledge, our professionals counsel OC Reilly clients on ideas to change their processes – putting the information they’ve learned to practical, cost-saving use on the client’s behalf.

You can read a book all day about how to play golf.  But until you tee up a ball, grab a club, and take a swing – before you put that information into practical application, in other words – you can’t actually play golf.

That is why the OC Reilly approach to client service has proven to be so effective and valued.  We get the information required to make high-impact actions possible.