It’s too soon to announce our operating results for our fourth fiscal quarter, ending March 31. We are still assessing the results. Even I don’t know how we finished.
Regardless, it’s not too early to extend a hearty round of applause for our Operations and Finance team for delivering over-the-top, outstanding, year-end performance. Whatever the final results, we couldn’t have accomplished what we did without their long hours and hard work.
Consider the fact that we released 141 new products in March alone. Beginning the end of February, we went to mandatory nine-hour weekdays plus eight-hours on Saturday—a 53-hour work week. During February and March, the Distribution Center (DC) staff worked 50 of the 59 calendar days. While many of the rest of us took Good Friday off, they worked on the holiday, including Saturday. Thankfully, they did not work Easter Sunday, even though it was the last weekend of the month.
It probably wouldn’t be prudent for me to mention how much they shipped per day, but I can tell you this: They processed 2,075 invoices per day and shipped 7,922 cartons per day. Honestly, I don’t know how they did it. On the last day of the month, they shipped $1.7 million alone!
This was truly a team effort:
- Customer Service had to get the product and customers set up right.
- Credit had to release the orders and monitor our risk on each account.
- Inventory Management had to get the right amount of inventory into the warehouse.
- IT had to keep the system running and operating well.
- Finance had to account for the inventory and drop-shipped sales.
- The DC had to receive the product and then get the orders shipped out the door.
While I am deeply grateful to everyone on the Operations team, nothing significant happens without great leaders at the helm. Thanks to Vance Lawson, Mike Mitchell, Bette Ezzell, George Gower, Rick Proctor, Troy Edens, and Joel Beasley. I’m proud of you!
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Read about your blog in Information Week so came for a peek. Why does your staff have to work a mandatory 53 hour week? Is this a short term emergency effort? I’m in IT and we constantly struggle with work-life balance, along with an awareness that this is sometimes a fact of life. But the more I witness it happening to others, the more I believe it to be a result of someone’s bad planning: unrealistic project deadlines, staffing issues etc.