One of my colleagues in London recommended JustOne to me so I introduced them to Marazzi, a portfolio company who are the leading ceramic tile manufacturer in Italy. JustOne undertook an Order to Cash project and helped us to significantly reduce overdues. But the biggest impact was the reduction in customer payment terms. Initially the sales teams were skeptical and thought that reducing terms would lead to a loss of revenue and that some customers would move to our competitors. JustOne used techniques to change these negative mental models and improved the negotiation skills of the sales teams so they were able to negotiate much lower terms.
What we achieved with Marazzi over this time, with the help of JustOne, was nothing short of amazing. I wish I had known about JustOne before.
Francesco Pascalizi – Portfolio Company Manager
Principal – Milan Office - Permira Private Equity
“JustOne supported Nokia in setting-up two new shared service centres in Budapest and Beijing. They upskilled our former cash application teams to be our new centralized collection teams, and helped with the migration of our collections processes globally. The JustOne lead work to clearly improve our cross-functional communications and cooperation between collectors, credit managers, field finance, customer Logistics and our sales team. Additionally; our JustOne lead provided solid Project Management support, and active engagement in being a critical sounding board who added value to my own strategic and tactical thinking through this material organizational change. Within four months of the completion of the project, the new collection teams were able to maintain our strong historical performance in Asia and MEA, while managing to achieve outstanding reduction in overdues levels within Europe. “
Eric Deighton – Project Sponsor
Head of Credit Management, Finance & Control
JustOne take the time and care to get to know your company culture, and work with that to effect the changes necessary to reduce OWC. They handled a project with Eka that covered not just the complexities of Europe, but also our complete Asian operations. Miracles don’t happen, change is a tough process, but can be made easier when you have the right data, the right training, and the confidence that JustOne brings.
The benefit of having a JustOne consultant is that they can point out where communication breakdowns exist in your company, and not embarrass you with that, but empower you to change that behavior. JustOne uses tools and models that not only challenge mental models, but are geared toward making the changes possible. JustOne provides the legitimacy for making these changes, their experience gives confidence in challenging the existing relationships.
JustOne’s dedication and work ethic make them a very easy company to want to promote to other companies.
Jay Hunsberger
Marketing Manager - Pulp and Paper Europe
“We engaged JustOne and one of the “big six” conventional consultancies to each undertake a diagnostic assignment as a pilot for an operational working capital project. We asked the conventional consultancy to produce a detailed report on Inventory in Russia and JustOne to produce reports on AR. AP and Inventories in Hungary, Holland and Romania.
The conventional consultancy took over two months and used 4 consultants full time to produce their report, which was of limited value as it contained errors, producing targets that were shown to be unrealistic by the local management. In contrast, JustOne used half the number of consultants, produced reports which contained targets that were challenging but met with universal approval from the local management. Although JustOne covered a greater scope in three countries they did it in less than 20% of the time that their competitor took.
As a result of these pilots, and because we wanted the project to be implemented from within, using our own people, we chose JustOne to help us with the global working capital project. We have found their approach to be highly effective. We have already reduced our operational working capital by about 50% and expect more to come. “
Hans Schraa
Project Manager - Cost & Asset Base, Provimi
This statement was made by Pim van den Berghe, Internal Consultant, at the end of the pilot facilitation lead by JustOne in response to a question from a Provimi Board Member asking what he thought of the JustOne approach.
“Our company has over 90 projects running at this time and none of them are being run like this one; and they all should be!”
Pim van den Berghe
Internal Consultant
“Just 1 Consultants are expert project managers, strong facilitators and excellent subject matter experts. They have extensive knowledge in the field of Operating Working Capital and in the nature of human beings and have the talent to facilitate real improvements.”
David Paganoni
BU Manager OWC
“Even during the current challenging economic climate we have maintained the improvements gained from the JustOne OWC project (we have achieved a 15% reduction in Accounts Receivables between 2008 and 2010)”
Eddy van Rhede – (Project Sponsor)
Finance Director Provimi
Generally speaking, I do not like using “listen, list, distill, and drop a Power Point deck” consultants at all! This is because they are seldom able to support the execution of internal action required after the analytical selection of the alternative path to march down is completed. However, JustOne simply do not operate, or behave, like a conventional consultancy. They trained, coached and supported a cross-functional O2C team of selected staff to independently facilitate local sales workshops throughout Europe and Latin America. JustOne not only gave them the capability of making the changes happen, they enthused them to want to do it. Around the very close of our internal change agent workshop, one of the selected sales managers openly said: “This is the best training I have ever had. I cannot wait to get back to Argentina and start using this negotiation techniques”.
Eric Deighton – Project Sponsor
Head of Credit Management, Finance & Control
In 2006 Marie-Paule was trained as an Internal Consultant by JustOne along with six other Bodycote staff. She attended the pilot implementation in Edinburgh lead by JustOne and during the project she facilitated the changes in entities in Europe, the USA, and Asia.
I found that the IC training covered all areas I needed to know before going into the field. We learned interview techniques that helped us to get the information we needed during the Discovery phase.
The change management training by Mick Cope gave us a lot of techniques to use with people who are resistant to change. I have found that these techniques to also be valuable in my daily work.
The negotiation techniques were based on numerous examples that helped me to change negative mental models, especially when working with the sales team. In my opinion, the examples JustOne gave us were the most powerful tool to use when facing resistance to change.
JustOne’s KPIs are easy to use and everybody is able to understand their impact.
I found the pilot implementation very helpful because it demonstrates how to apply the theory we had learned in the training. It was an opportunity for me to practice interviews and get experience in writing a Discovery Report and an Action Plan. The feed-back from Just One was very helpful.
The Training and Pilot gave me the confidence I needed for my first implementation. Of course my self confidence has improved with each implementation. I now feel I have a high level of expertise, not only in working capital, but also project management and change management. I believe this gives me the credibility to encourage local teams to complete the actions needed to close the project and follow up to make sure that people are not slipping into old habits.
The big benefit for the company is of course that the Working Capital knowledge is now inside the organization I share experiences with other ICs and we use our different strengths in different situations to help each other.
Marie-Paule Dupuy-Roudel
Bodycote
“JustOne undertook a successful pilot in our Expancel businesses in 2009 and in 2010 which convinced us to engage them on an OWC project covering the whole of Asia and Europe. Their unique approach is working very well. JustOne are particularly effective in helping our sales teams believe that it is possible to reduce terms with existing customers. They have techniques that help to change the negative mindset of the sales people which have prevented progress in this area in the past.
I have just returned from a visit Asia and our people there have been enthused by the project and are committed to achieving the targets”