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 President’s Message Improve Your Opportunity to Prosper: APPMA Introduces New Survey By Charles Miller President, APPMA
What fantasy world is he living in, you must be thinking. Perhaps some of our members are experiencing this sort of world, but no one I have spoken with recently has remotely claimed such a world for their company. Many have said that the pet industry continues to grow and their business is growing. For this we are thankful; however, most of us live in a world of increasing competition and increasing customer expectations. Your Association’s mission statement asserts that “APPMA will …provide its members with the opportunity to prosper globally.” The Pet Owner’s Survey is one of the most visible ways this mission is accomplished. For those of you who use it, The Survey provides multiple insights into consumer behavior and preferences. Your Association is now working on a new tool for you to improve your chances for success: a confidential, industry specific report of pet product manufacturers/importers. The APPMA Benchmarking and State of the Industry Report will benchmark business processes of APPMA members, providing valuable insights into things like productivity, average order processing time, transportation costs and times, average margins, inventory turns and average sales per employee. In addition, it will benchmark training hours, staffing practices, supplier relations, research practices, customer relations and many more. The Report will be conducted for us by Manufacturing Performance Institute. MPI has great experience doing surveys across many different industries. The results will be completely confidential so you can be comfortable participating without fear of giving up proprietary information or of having individual results revealed. Plus, MPI will integrate your data with that of other manufacturers, making the finished product even more useful to you. The tangible results will be seen in a 16-page summary report, a one hour webcast introduction to The Report and an interactive web based tool to assist you in a business performance review. All of this will lead to improved strategic planning and improve “your opportunity to prosper.” |
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