{"id":221,"date":"2020-01-23T07:37:23","date_gmt":"2020-01-23T14:37:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/articles.thescpgroup.ca\/?p=221"},"modified":"2020-09-07T08:25:33","modified_gmt":"2020-09-07T14:25:33","slug":"alarm-company-call-tuesday-night-1100pm-your-building-is-on-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scpg.ca\/worthreading\/2020\/01\/23\/alarm-company-call-tuesday-night-1100pm-your-building-is-on-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"Alarm Company Call Tuesday Night 11:00pm: \u201cYour building is on FIRE!\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3><strong>How \u201cScenario Planning\u201d saved the day.<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Several years ago, one\nof the dealership groups that I lead was a five store Construction Equipment\noperation in the province of Alberta.&nbsp;\nThis was a very strong group of stores with great customer loyalty and carrying\ntier one market share brands.&nbsp; Our operations\nran six days a week with two shifts a day in most stores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As part of our yearly\nbudgeting process we always did a Scenario Planning exercise to stress test our\nbudgets and balance sheets.&nbsp; One year we\nchallenged ourselves to try and identify the one scenario that would be\ncatastrophic to our business and have a serious negative impact on our very loyal\ncustomers.&nbsp; This first year it was\nidentified as a \u201cFire\u201d in one of our dealerships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Exploring this, I challenged\nthe team to come up with a plan that would ensure we could still provide\nservices to our customers within twenty-four hours of a serious fire.&nbsp; One of our key operations leaders agreed to lead\nthe team and think through all the details that we would need readily available\nto swiftly recover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When one explores this\nscenario, you start to see the number of critical things and details that are\nneeded to respond.&nbsp; Here are some\nexamples:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Where do\nyou find new service bay space?<\/li><li>What about\nnew tools?<\/li><li>What about\ngetting access to parts?<\/li><li>What would\nbe a critical parts list for a quick restock<\/li><li>What are\nthe afterhours numbers and contact names for the phone company?<\/li><li>What are\nthe names and contact numbers for local media outlets?<\/li><li>How\nquickly can we get wiring and computers up and running?<\/li><li>What about\ncredit card machines?<\/li><li>What about\ntemporary office space for Service Writes, Sales Team, etc.?<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The list went on and\non and was circulated several times to every member of the dealership team to\nmake sure we had it all covered from every angle.&nbsp; Thanks to the exceptional work of our\nOperations Leaders and employees we now had an action plan in place.&nbsp; Each manager had a hard copy at home and\nelectronic copies on their computers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fast forward a year\nand a half later the Alarm Company call came in at 11:00pm.&nbsp; \u201cYour dealership is on FIRE!\u201d&nbsp; Our team jumps into action digging out their\nScenario Plan Binders and head to the dealership.&nbsp; We were fortunate that the fire was in the\nfront of the building and the fire wall between the front and the shop stopped\nthe fire from taking the whole building.&nbsp;\nHowever, we lost our showroom, parts department, sales offices,\nadministration offices, service managers office and rental department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After a short meeting\non what we needed to do the calls started going out to get us back in action\nthe next day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Temporary\noffices for Sales, Service, Rentals and Administration were on site the next\nmorning by 8:00am. Afterhours contact names in the binder payed off nicely.<\/li><li>Temporary\nwashrooms were brought in<\/li><li>Spare\ncomputers and a new printer from other stores were shipped in and operational\nthat day.<\/li><li>Telephone\ncompany had us up and running same day<\/li><li>We used\none of the bays in the shop to set up a temporary parts department.&nbsp; Our other stores filled our critical parts\nlist and they were at the dealership and on the shelfs by end of day<\/li><li>A media\nrelease was sent to local outlets to advise that we were still open for\nbusiness<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>There is a big long list\nof things that happened to get us back in business that next day.&nbsp; The \u201cScenario Plan Binder\u201d was absolutely the\nbest investment we ever made, and our team was extremely proud of the work that\nwent into it and how well it helped us recover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The biggest compliment\nwe got was from the local Fire Chief.&nbsp; He\nsaid, \u201cI have never seen a business respond as quickly and as organized as we\ndid.&nbsp; Most business owners he sees just feel\nlost and don\u2019t know what to do\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As a result of testing\nthe plan and learning from this fire we improved the Scenario Plan in several\nways.&nbsp; The \u201cFire Response Plan Template\u201d\nwas then made available to all seventy of our dealerships so they could\nlocalize the critical information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is another great\nexample of how adding \u201cScenario Planning\u201d to your regular business practices\nand discipline can ensure the long-term health of your organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How would you react if\nyou got the call that your business was on \u201cFIRE\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size\"><em>If you\u2019d like to discuss how we can assist you and your business, get in touch with John Higgins, the author of this article, at jhiggins@scpg.ca<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How \u201cScenario Planning\u201d saved the day. Several years ago, one of the dealership groups that I lead was a five store Construction Equipment operation in the province of Alberta.&nbsp; This was a very strong group of stores with great customer loyalty and carrying tier one market share brands.&nbsp; Our operations<span class=\"more-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/scpg.ca\/worthreading\/2020\/01\/23\/alarm-company-call-tuesday-night-1100pm-your-building-is-on-fire\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,4,8,9,13],"tags":[31,42,52,54,107,122],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scpg.ca\/worthreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scpg.ca\/worthreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scpg.ca\/worthreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scpg.ca\/worthreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scpg.ca\/worthreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/scpg.ca\/worthreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":314,"href":"https:\/\/scpg.ca\/worthreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions\/314"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scpg.ca\/worthreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scpg.ca\/worthreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scpg.ca\/worthreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scpg.ca\/worthreading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}