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13/07/2013

Falling from the sky

In the past years, I lifted off a runway about 150 times, which fortunately coincides with the number of successful landings....

In the past years, I lifted off a runway about 150 times, which fortunately coincides with the number of successful landings. Accidents in aviation are becoming less frequent, while they are moving to geographical regions that use outdated equipment for lack of alternatives.

As a supporter of aviation and as a professional pilot (don't worry, I stopped flying aircrafts myself a long time ago) I know well how difficult it is to break a modern jet. Only wilful damage, gross stupidity or abysmal training can achieve that. It's unbelievable that such things still happen, even within global aviation alliances.

Who should one travel with? I am lucky enough to mostly travel with the most secure airlines worldwide, such as Cathay Pacific, Emirates, or Singapore Airlines. But what do statistics tell? Thai Airways uses the most modern A380, Turkish Airlines was recently re-elected best airline company in Europe, and China Airlines actually comes from Taiwan, one of the most modern countries in the world. France has a long tradition in aircraft construction; yet, of all companies, Air France seemingly leaves a lot to desire in regard to its pilot training. And of all companies, it is those companies who scrapped so many tonnes of flight equipment, and who count many more casualties than many other companies. However, is ten years without an accident reason enough to change the companies training culture? Just because there is a new training programme, will the young co-pilot answer back and order a "go-around" when the "seasoned" pilot balks his landing?

Unfortunately, one does not always have a choice. It's not always possible to take the train instead of a domestic Chinese flight, besides being able to analyse whether the pilot has a good or a bad day beforehand, or whether he is overworked. What use does the statistics have when the airline only existed a few months?

Specifically in Asia, there are plenty of brand new aeroplanes, which make Lufthansa's fleet look like scrap metal regarding statistics. However, is an Airbus that was produced in China as good as one produced in Hamburg-Finkenwerder? Of course, says Airbus. If so, then it should be possible to train pilots centrally, as well as monitor crew resource management.

In my opinion, there are way too many questions that cause worry. Even Asiana never had an accident with a Boeing 777 - yet, the current case shows that the cockpit crew made elementary mistakes, only because, exceptionally, the approach didn't match the standard. That's sad.

17/06/2013

When Participating in a Telephone Conference

(Now a text swiped from: SWISSCOM)

Telephone conferences are annoying.

...

(Now a text swiped from: SWISSCOM)

Telephone conferences are annoying.

Sure, we are (among other things) a communications company, and a "telecon" instead of a meeting saves money, but even more, it does not just benefit us, but also our customers and the environment. Nevertheless, there are some points that should be noted:

1. A tight agenda at a teleconference is of no importance. Colleagues can indeed work as usual on other things when they are bored. If they happen to be driving, they have nothing better to do anyway.

2. Even if you have nothing to say, do not mute your apparatus, so that you can always react promptly. The other participants should be used to any background noise, plus they contribute to a more authentic experience.

3. If you're on the go, let the other participants know, although they might hear the telltale train station announcements or passing trains anyway (as the microphone remains on!). It underlines your appreciation of your colleagues and of the cause.

4. If you are currently in the train, do not shy away from discussing internal company matters on the phone. This way you can also contribute to your company's Public Relations.

5. What's more fashionable to discuss than PowerPoint slides via screen sharing in the telecon? The other participants will love it if you explain your text-heavy slides by telephone in every detail.

6. In contrast to a real meeting, it does not interfere in the telecon if you are late or leave early. You can remedy this situation by again welcoming all the participants personally and giving the reasons for your delay in great detail.

7. A summary of what was said or even a protocol is not necessary for a telecon, since we colleagues all have (well, except for those who dialed in by mobile phone) seen the detailed PowerPoint slides, which speak for themselves.

8. Even if the voice quality is sometimes reminiscent of short-wave radio because of tunnels: dialect is still ok!

23/04/2013

Impaired Business because of Customs?

1) Customs and the IT industry should in itself be friends, because there are on most goods simply no duties. A device with a power cable dos not cost any duty....

1) Customs and the IT industry should in itself be friends, because there are on most goods simply no duties. A device with a power cable dos not cost any duty. But if we get 100 units, plus 60 cables for Germany and 60 for England, which we then selectively distribute, then customs says that does not fit together, so duty must be paid for the cable. Annoying, but we are talking peanuts here.

So it came to pass, that a customs inspection over a period of several years not only gave us at headquarters weeks worth of work, but also ended with a tiny subsequent payment - as was expected. It's not that you can just specify at customs what you want: occasionally a customs examination is carried out, and you can rest assured that samples will be taken. The only positive aspect here was that the customs examiner was very friendly and that we even learned a few things along the way.

2) Now it gets even better: even customs can make a mistake and misjudge something. In our case, touch screen monitors believed to be televisions. The negative impact on us: 70,000 euros. Clearly an error, but this can happen, and a refund request should go through easily. This it did, but it has taken more than a year - and all we heard was: you got lucky. And regarding telephone inquiries at customs: please do not call anymore. Written requests? No answer. And that's where the German government is supposedly so well organized.

3) What has really annoyed us was a delivery of cash drawers via the Port of Hamburg last week. An examination of the container was requested. So what normally takes less than an hour, and I have seen it personally once: the container was opened, the officials only just peeked inside, and then they closed the container - 30 seconds tops. It was only harmful to business because for this brief act, whose meaning I do not want to doubt, we suddenly needed ten days lead time. "We have too much to do." Very well, but the economy has to run, right? So couldn't night shift or temporary workers carry this out? Alternatively, how about a 24-hour lead, and if the examiner cannot look at the container in this time frame, it just gets released? How are we to explain to the customer that the goods are just standing around?

My goodness, my dear customs office - get your act together - and please try to keep from hindering the economy as much as possible. Duties should be understood as a service to the economy, protect it from dumping prices, moonlighting, criminal goods and plagiarism - and this at a reasonable speed. It's not nice if everyone goes on a rant about you!

17/04/2013

Our first house search

It really is a bright start to the day when not only the sun shines, but there also is a five-person squad from the criminal investigation department, holding a...

It really is a bright start to the day when not only the sun shines, but there also is a five-person squad from the criminal investigation department, holding a search warrant, is waiting for you at your company in the morning. And our somewhat shocked office manager standing next to them.

It was clear that this case did not concern us - who has ever heard of someone being arrested for offering good service (haha), and the cover girl on our catalogue is neither naked nor underage.

What actually is appalling, however, is the scale of the crime because of which they are investigating at our and five further companies. A longtime employee of one of our vendors actually sold goods worth about a million euros - during a period of three or four years - without his employer knowing. And he sold to distributors who thought they were buying the goods directly. By the way, this is not information from the investigation, but from the deceived company itself, that informed us months ago.

As for us, we placed our orders directly with the vendor via e-mail, while the goods often came from a company that was owned by the fraudster. The pretended reason for this was a lawsuit against a former "exclusive distributor" of the vendor, which required the detour. Accordingly, payments were made to this company.

That did not work out well, because, at some point, we needed to return goods, which we sent to the vendor directly. They, however, wondered about devices with dubious serial numbers and started investigating.

Incidentally, the vendor is owned by an investor, and if I were him, I would have dismissed the CEO, first thing. Fraud is nasty, but falling for it is not that clever either - especially considering the huge sum.

Well, we were able to contribute a fair amount of documentation, that has been seized by the criminal investigators (who were very friendly and constructive) - although all the effort might be for naught, as the accused man has... disappeared.

18/02/2013

Impatience is good!

I continually preach that a quick response is an elementary part of the Jarltech DNA. On the one hand, I am often impressed by how quickly decisions are made here....

I continually preach that a quick response is an elementary part of the Jarltech DNA. On the one hand, I am often impressed by how quickly decisions are made here. On the other hand, it sometimes happens that we receive complaints about our response time.

It is only human to first want to place the blame on someone else -- and the truth is, we often answer customer inquiries too late, because we are waiting on information from suppliers. This affects more than just the movement of goods, since responses from contractors or service providers frequently come too late. Or, sometimes, not at all. This is the best hobby of them all. When it comes to "letting the garbage be washed away" you simply do not answer a question. I am sure that in 30% of the cases no one even notices.

If you look deeper you will realise that you lose a lot of time because of the time needed on the telephone to chase down answers. What is even worse is having to remind your own employees or partners about something that they should have taken care of a long time ago. And impatience with suppliers is particularly justified when they need six weeks and five reminders to prepare a grant statement, but who immediately call the first day when a payment is overdue.

There is no end to the discrepancies: our organizationally-slowest supplier decided one Friday afternoon to publicise a highly complex promotional activity, which should be retroactively effective!!! Plus, the next work day they called, and were very nervous -- where is the order worth millions?! Unbelievable.

In order to improve our service, keep our nerves intact and, above all, save time, we have decided to demand answers quicker and more aggressively. It is one thing to deal with people who cannot make a decision -- but they should at least be able to find someone in their own company who is capapble of making a decision, within a reasonable amount of time. The type of employee who says: "We are a large corporation, whose board only convenes every six weeks. I do not think I should ask them now." is then no longer the right partner for us. If one of our customers is not happy with his representative we are happy if he tells us, instead of quietly turning to the competition.

Regarding what affects me personally, the reader can derive two things from this entry: -- Please do not try to "lull" me into anything. -- And the othe way round: I always answer right away, or not at all. In case I do not answer that means that I simply do not have any interest, so you have to ask more aggressively. :) I gladly allow equal rights for everyone...

22/01/2013

A flattering compliment

Today an email from Holland made me happy. How nice it is to receive messages that do not only mention things which did not run smoothly. :) Here is the email:

...

Today an email from Holland made me happy. How nice it is to receive messages that do not only mention things which did not run smoothly. :) Here is the email:

--------------------------------- Hello Ulrich,

We don't know each other yet - but I came across your company via a particular route:

- 16-Jan-13, Epson meets a Dutch POS-specialist in New York and recommends Sweebr to him; - 18-Jan-13, 13:59 Epson calls us, explains about a new Epson printer product, well suited for web applications; - 18-Jan-13, 12:42 I order a sample of the product and set a date to meet Epson on 23-Jan-13, 15:00 - 18-Jan-13, 14:43 your company is introduced (Chris Bruls), CoC# etc. mailed - 18-Jan-13, 15:50 email received "Welcome to Jarltech" - 18-Jan-13, 16:34 email received "Order confirmation" - 18-Jan-13, 18:28 email received "Your products are shipped" - 18-Jan-13, 18:28 email received "Your invoice"

(inserted by myself: - 21-Jan-13, 13:35 products delivered by DPD) In less than 4.5 hours lead time, from introduction to shipped products. Must say congratulations!

Kind regards,

Bart Jaspers Chief Happy Customer Officer

---------------------------------

Ok, I must mention that there is something more to the story, than just the above-mentioned excerpts. For example, the customer's internal credit application was also being processed.

Speed is a part of the Jarltech DNA, and our Dutch sales team did a great job here, along with our logistics group. We also cannot forget that our IT played a key role here:

Our ERP software is an entire product of its own, on which five programmers work every day. And every day there are now, on average, two recommendations for improvement from our global team. While our favorite competitor is busy trying to sue an ERP software house for millions, we are happy every day with our own software. This is not meant as an argument against standard software - it is just that we have been used to utilizing our own product for more than 20 years. Surely, this is more expensive than a standard solution, but at Jarltech, this is not even worth considering.

Thank you again Bart, you made my day. :)

05/01/2013

Figures 2012

Well, here now is our first, enjoyable ballpark report on our results in 2012....

Well, here now is our first, enjoyable ballpark report on our results in 2012. The Group's consolidated turnover amounts to about 105 to 110 million euros (or 137 to 143 million US dollars), which represents at least a 30% increase. The calculation now also includes the turnover of Jarltech France SAS and, for a part of the year, of our new company in China. More detailed data will follow with the release of our corporate balance, expected in the beginning of April.

I wish everyone a successful year 2013!

06/12/2012

Teamwork on the Cookbook

A Jarltech cookbook with 36 dishes from all of our sales areas...cooked and photographed by Jarltech employees, and printed in each employee's language, as well as in...

A Jarltech cookbook with 36 dishes from all of our sales areas...cooked and photographed by Jarltech employees, and printed in each employee's language, as well as in English. This was the idea we had in June, and it was a Herculean task for our marketing department.

I am proud of my team, that we were able to have this small, yet very unique, present for our customers ready in time for December 1st. Every beginning is hard, and after a few small stumbles ("I cannot cook" - "I do not have any ideas" - "No time") it could have been twice as thick as it is now.

Here I also wish to say a special "thank you" for financial support from Datalogic, Honeywell, Epson, Citizen, HP and Panasonic. Perhaps next year we will let our suppliers do the cooking for the next volume! :)

If you have not yet received your copy, please call your sales representative.

11/10/2012

Dreams During Company Appraisals

Our entire industry is in motion: While we have already purchased two companies this year, some other competitors seem to develop differently....

Our entire industry is in motion: While we have already purchased two companies this year, some other competitors seem to develop differently. Already two "multi-nationals" may soon fall again into their formerly separate parts. Another, however, our "favorite competitor" reports falling sales figures in the last quarterly report. From our perspective: no surprise.

Right now I have more or less five concrete offers on the table for acquisition opportunities. Some of the companies have become too small for the market, have problems with the banks, or no longer fit well into the vendors' channel strategy. That would be a nice opportunity to increase our growth even further, were it not for the unpleasant question about the corporate assessment of potential candidates.

I often do not know if I should laugh or cry. Here is a selection of misguided assumptions from company owners ... I declare that I have heard all these phrases in at least five languages:

- "My company makes 15% margin in distribution, and will always remain so. No, there is no trend towards declining margins. In my country XXX it is quite unlike anywhere else."

- "It does not matter what the company is worth! The purchase price must be high enough so that I can comfortably retire!"

- The escalation: If there is more than one owner, then the purchase price must also be higher, because they all want to retire comfortably.

- "No, I cannot give any guarantees for amounts outstanding or the stock value, of course. Assume that everything is 100% recoverable."

- "Actually, the company would have earned much more, but I'm paid such a high salary." (because of course the company does not need Management anymore after the acquisition)

- "We only make losses, because we want to save on taxes."

Not even our American competitors fall for something like this. :)

In most cases once a vendor makes the decision to terminate the contract with the distributor, the company's value suddenly drops to zero or below.

My dear people, we live in 2012. There was a financial crisis, and acquisitions always have to be cash-positive. This is possible, and can also be good for both sides. But without a more realistic view of things, it does not work. As you know, one can not bake equity.

Anyway, I will tirelessly continue to negotiate (I am, after all, paid to do so), and go and find a creative solution. But in case of doubt, we prefer to grow "organically" rather than pay a lot of money for others to retire on.