Last year I did a couple of articles on Cost of Sales. The series was a little dry and theoretical and I wanted to follow it up with some practical points about how to monitor and manage your cost of sales so that you achieve as much gross profit as possible and this is something that all of us are interested in. Im not sure why its called Gross Profit, in my mind profit is awesome, not gross?
How many jobs have you had in your life? Lets re-phrase that question, how often do you change jobs? Are you a serial job hunter or are you a faithful hound, still working in the same job you have been for the past 25 years?
I was listening to Cape Talk / 702 this morning and the topic of unemployment was being discussed. On one hand you had employers calling in to say that they could not find young people with the right qualifications, experience or attitude and on the other hand you had job seekers of all ages calling in to say that either they were very qualified and willing to work but did not have the required experience (if they were young) or that if they were a little older they had years of experience but their age was perhaps working against them.
Paul Waldeck will be delivering a talk on Spa Benchmarking at this years Les Nouvelle spa conference.
Spa consultant and Business Intelligence analyst Paul has helped a multitude of companies in the wellness industry achieve greater turnover growth and profit, by analysing their systems data and benchmark trends and translating it onto useable information and strategies.
Paul has applied his skills in the wellness industry for over 3 years, with a corporate background in management and marketing (Bcom, MScIB).
To find out more about ESP Business Intelligence please contact ESP at sales@esponline.info or Paul at paul@esponline.co.za
In my previous article I looked at the idea of benchmarking and how you can benchmark against yourself (previous performances), your competitors (those that are near you) and the industry as a whole.
All of this is in context of the South African Spa Benchmark report and how it can be put to practical use for you as an owner of either one or many spas.
The benefit of benchmarking against yourself is fairly evident, ie when you compare your current performance is it better or worse than previous performances.
Salon and Spa owners have often joked with me over the years about me giving them their competitor’s data. This is usually said with a big smile and a laugh afterwards, but I often wonder what they would do if I said, okay, I’ll get it for you… I think that they would actually take it!
On the other hand I have had many owners threaten about the consequences of their data being shared with anyone else as if it contained secrets that if revealed could lead to the end of the world as we know it.
If you were offered an opportunity to franchise your salon tomorrow would you be ready for it?
Over the years ESP has worked with more and more salons that either have multiple salons and want to consolidate information and processes or that plan to open more than one salon and require integration of data and processes.
It has been very interesting to observe those for whom it has been easy and those for whom it has not. One thing we have learned is that structure and standards are a non-negotiable when opening more than one salon.
Many salon owners are not confronted with the extent of how problematic a lack of standards and structure is until they consider integrating their data and processes across multiple salons.
As a software company that is tasked with solving the problems faced by running a salon much of what we do involves identifying, mapping and streamlining the various business processes that occur in a salon. In order to write software to accommodate these processes there needs to be some level of standardization in place that we can write the programs around.
In this month’s article I thought I would comment on some of the salon business processes that we often encounter and that present challenges to salon owners. The goal will be to provide some insights that hopefully result in less frustration being experienced by salon staff and better results for owners.
When talking to owners who are researching software for their salons we are often quite surprised to find that they will be also be considering software that is not specific to their industry, ie accounting software, general retail software and even software designed for hospitality like restaurants. In my experience there is almost a 100% failure rate of these types of systems to satisfy the needs of salon owners and they end up writing off the money initially spent on these systems and purchasing a system that is designed for them.
When it comes to the wellness industry which includes beauty salons, nail salons, day spas, hotel spas (amongst other types of spas) and even will cross over in to the hair industry and medical aesthetics there are core businesses requirements and processes that are common to all. These include things like detailed Client Record keeping, Appointment Scheduling, the Sale of Retail and Services, Gift Vouchers, Loyalty Schemes, Commission Calculations, Stock Control for both Retail and Professional Stock and Communication with clients via Email and SMS (amongst other things).
I’m sitting at a restaurant in the new Cape Quarter, where I usually go to write my articles. While I am there my attention is grabbed by a customer who is visibly upset with the service that he has received and he is waving his hands around and raising his voice to a lady who informs him that she is the owner of the restaurant.
He is trying to communicate to her how unhappy he is and why he is so unhappy and she is trying to communicate to him the care she takes to train her staff to do their jobs properly. This situation was obviously not a great situation for the owner because there is an unhappy customer who is making a bit of a scene in front of other patrons. On the other hand at least she is presented with an opportunity to remedy the situation.
I remember working as a waiter while I was a student and reading an article written by the owner of the restaurant who was also the chairman of the restaurant board in the Western Cape at the time. In the article he was going on about how in South Africa patrons complain with their feet rather than with their mouths. What he meant was that people would rather not cause a stir at the restaurant if they were unhappy but they would just stop going to that restaurant in future, thereby complaining with their feet.
We have all experienced the feeling of annoyance after typing a long SMS or Email and just before sending you inadvertently push a wrong button only to find that your entire message is lost forever and you have to start all over again. If you have ever had a cell phone stolen then you will be familiar with the exercise whenever you receive an SMS of kindly notifying the sender that your cell phone was stolen and all your contacts lost and can they please identify themselves so that you can add them back to your contact list.
Most of us will also have experienced the cold sweat induced upon learning that your computer has crashed and no data could be recovered or that it has been stolen and there were no backups. If it was your personal computer then the extent of your loss will include things like important documents, emails and your beloved photographs. If it was your business computer then you may have been reduced to tears upon learning that your sales, clients, bookings and other important data have been lost.
If you own and work with one or more computers then you will experience data loss in some form or another and in most cases more than once. There are a number of ways in which this can occur from hard drives crashing, to theft, to fire, to being struck by lightning and even human error.