What are you currently doing to improve your bottom line? 1

Increase sales – how? Decrease expenses – how? Better use of technology – how? Increase staff or asset utilization – how? 2

For a moment, forget about increasing sales, cutting expenses, or merging or acquiring other entities … how do you make more using what you already have? 3

List your ideas 4

What is that? Do you measure what is important? 5

Does your planning – goal setting – evaluation process incorporate measuring what is important to what is being done? 6

Use of Dashboards to measure, evaluate and reinforce behaviors. 7

Proper inventory control and management can add 1% gross margin to your operations … do you believe this? Inventory Control & Management 8

What’s stopping you from increasing gross margins through inventory control? 9

What are you doing? What is holding you back? Perpetual Inventory Systems and Inventory Monitoring 10

Just-in-time Turnover ratios Allocation of limited resources Inventory Management 11

What is your true cost of a product? How do you know what your gross margin really is? 12

Selling at the right price Efficiently producing the product Generating sufficient margins Basic cost accounting calculations can help you achieve better margin results … if you do not know your costs to produce … how do you know if you are: 13

How do we measure? What can we do? What if every department manager could take care of all administrative and operational directives? What are the roadblocks? Staff Optimization and Utilization 14

Train – Delegate – Train – Delegate – Train – Delegate How can we do this? 15

 Efficiencies  Opportunities  Faster issue resolution  Better morale  Properly recognize achievement Delegating and assigning responsibilities to the proper level within your organization can create/provide: 16

Measuring Employee Productivity – what are you currently doing? 17

Miles per gallon delivered Gallons per driver Gallons per hour worked Bulk Drivers 18

Hours charged to hours worked Shop 19

Sales per hour Sales per square foot Sales per shift Sales per shift – by employee Convenience Stores 20

Application acres Acres per hour worked Tons delivered Quantities divided by hours or wages Agronomy 21

Quantities manufactured Feed 22

Most organizations find that they have the people, tools and technology available to increase margins and productivity. What is holding you back? How can you meet this challenge? Summary 23

Thank you! Jeff Brandenburg, CPA, CFE 8215 Greenway Blvd., Suite 600 Middleton, WI