Monday, May 13, 2013

SMART COMPANY AWARD to Mayberry Pharmacy

Paul Mayberry runs seven pharmacies in South Wales and is a smart guy!

A recent innovation in Wales is for all doctors' prescriptions to include a QR code (the black and white square box that looks a bit like a bar code and can be read by smart phones) which has within it the specific prescription.

How did Paul react to this?

He bought a robot dispenser with QR code reader, and now has the prescriptions from all seven pharmacies sent to it, it dispenses automatically 24 hours a day 7 days a week and sends the drugs etc to the relevant pharmacy to pass to the patient.

The result? - already Paul has seen both stock levels and costs go down dramatically!

This is a really smart company, with an ability to be fleet of foot to adopt new technology in a way I believe we all need to be these days.

I am very pleased to give Mayberry Pharmacies a SMART COMPANY AWARD.


SMART COMPANY AWARD to Owen Mumford

I love coming across world class companies that I’ve not heard of before.

Owen Mumford  are based in Woodstock, near Oxford in the UK and are a world leader in the design, manufacture and supply of drug delivery and capillary blood sampling devices.

They manufacture everything themselves in their factories in Woodstock and Chipping Norton, working 3 shifts, 7 days a week. Have over 750 employees and operations in USA, Germany, France and China as well as the UK with exports of over 80%.

Remarkably they have grown in every single one of their 61 years and have never borrowed a penny in all that time! Started by Mr Owen and Mr Mumford - and still on the Board.

I am so impressed by absolutely everything this company does - a truly remarkable, world class, company.

I am very pleased to give a SMART COMPANY AWARD to Owen Mumford

SMART COMPANY AWARD Vistage and John Watkinson

I have now run workshops for over 100 CEO groups,  in the UK and around the world. These groups are part of various Peer Group Organisations and the largest  is Vistage International based in San Diego but with over 16,000 members in 15 countries and I have spoken for a number of their groups.
Each group, typically around 15 non-competing members, has a Chair and as a speaker the Chair makes such a difference to the day and the value the Group gets from the session.

I have learnt over the years that best Chairs are those that clearly 'care' about every single one of their members and their personal journey.

The epitome of such Chairs is John Watkinson who runs V55 and K230 in the UK. He oozes his commitment to  his members to simply being as successful as they can be and one of his means of achieving that is to help the speakers to also be as successful as they can.

I am extremely pleased, therefore, to give John Watkinson of Vistage a SMART COMPANY Award - highly deserved!

STUPID Autoglass

Would you believe, three weeks after taking delivery of my new car - ding - I get a stone chip in the windscreen.

I then remember the Autoglass TV ad saying they fix them 'for free' so I go to their website and - it's excellent! They take you through the car, the chip ("is it smaller or larger than a £2 coin?") and finally the booking to fix it.A number of dates are not available but, joy of joys, they can do it at my home on a Sunday afternoon - perfect.
So I book it - and there's just a closing comment from Autoglass that 'we will call to just check to finalise a few details"

Autoglass at this point are well on the way to a SMART company Award.........but from now on it's all downhill......

The promised call comes. Then after a short while I realise that's she's asking me ALL the questions I have already answered online - like  "is the chip larger or smaller than a £2 coin?" and the only response to my comment that I answered this before online  is "I have to ask all these questions".

Anyway we get through it all until finally we come to the booking to have the chip repaired and she tells me there are no weekend dates available and the first availability is 10 days away.

At this point I politely tell her that I've wasted my time and to forget the whole thing.

However this is not the end......

The next morning my wife takes a call from Autoglass wanting to speak to me to fix an appointment (we find out later this is the local branch). My wife tells him I am out but that she would get me to call.

Two hours later he rings again complaining that I have not yet called! (I'm out for the day of course)

I ring him the next day. He has both my name and address wrong but shares with me that "the Autoglass systems are rubbish". All they ever get from the website is name and phone number and NONE of the other information that I had patiently entered. A complete wate of time.

- but, good news, he tells me he CAN do it the following Saturday - and we agree their 11am to 3pm slot.

Over the next four days I get six emails from Autoglass confirming the time and date of the booking.

THEN - on the nominated Saturday my wife and I are having a lie in and the phone rings and, yes, it's Autoglass:

"I'm 10 minutes away". I then point out that this is two hours early, inconvenient, and that they had emailed confirming the time six times!

When he does finally come he apologies for all the emails but explains that every time they just look at a booking the system automatically sends a email confirmation.
It's raining so I ask him if the repair works in the rain - "no" he says "if you do it in the rain it slides down the screen"

I have totally lost the will to live..........................

(Epilogue: he comes back the next day, Sunday, and does the job)

So there we have it a stupendously STUPID company who work really hard to go from hero to zero in the eyes of their customers in just about everything they do.

Autoglass therefore receive a STUPID COMPANY Award.