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Mary Quicke |
Mary Quicke runs a 1,500 acre family farm, North West of Exeter.
The business has a 340-head Holstein Friesian dairy herd, a 300 sow pig unit and 680 acres of arable crops. The farm is one of the leading producers of farmhouse cheddar in the country.
- The probe approach
- Changing business focus
- In it for the long term – continuous improvement
The probe approach
Quicke’s was approached through Taste of The West to take part in a trial using a business benchmarking technique called Probe (Promoting Business Excellence) to look at their cheese business.
The Probe process works by getting together a team from across the company to look at all aspects of the business. Mary, her finance director and three other staff from the key production areas of the business met Dave Proctor from Comparisson International. Dave asked each of them to fill out a questionnaire, with 90 questions about the business. The questionnaire asks about different aspects of the business, including:
- How it operates
- The value of different parts of the farm operation
- The risks the business is prepared to take
- The competency of decision makers in the use of their finances and other resources
The process aims to see how teams perceive their own business. What this can emphasise is that different parts of the business may perceive themselves and those around them differently from each other. It helps the key decision makers to challenge accepted practises.
Dave put the results into a spreadsheet and Mary and her staff were shown how they compare against other firms from across all manufacturing sectors, and from other countries, that have answered similar questions. It positions their company on a graph that shows whether they are ‘best in class’, a ‘contender’, ‘promising’, ‘vulnerable’ or ‘could do better’.
Dave then provided them with a simple route map that highlights some of the key findings and some pointers on where they might be able to develop the business.
The process will be repeated annually and with reviews of the previous 12 months. At each review, the team will draw up the next year’s list of improvement objectives.
Changing business focus
Mary was initially sceptical about the benefits that could be gained by taking part in Probe. However, having been through the process it has completely changed her focus within the business.
Unrealistic views
Mary found that in most of the questions she scored the business at least two points higher than the rest of her staff. When she was asked to justify her reasoning by the facilitator, Mary says she realised “I had rose tinted glasses about the way the business was operating”.
Time for a new vision
Mary now considers all her business decisions in the context of delivering ‘world class cheese’. She has developed a vision of how she wishes to improve the business. Previously she had focused on the financial detail looking to drive out all cost from the system to achieve her overall target of generating £500,000/year from the business. She now focuses on what she is best at, which is driving the business forward to deliver quality cheese and new and better products.
Mary now delegates her previous financial responsibilities. She says: “The indications are that in the next year or two the business will be generating new levels of profitability”, which will see her surpassing her old targets, now that her focus is on delivering world class cheese rather than on the financial nitty-gritty.
Communication
Having developed a vision for the business, Mary understands the importance of communicating that vision to her staff. Previously she hadn’t been so effective in ensuring that everybody understood her thinking behind some of her business decisions. Now she is ensuring that all staff understand where the business is going, and therefore understand the importance of their individual roles in delivering the Quickes’ business vision.
Mary says: “Probe has encouraged us to be less risk averse. We’re not taking risks with our business, but we have taken the reins off and I’m letting colleagues run with their ideas”.
In it for the long term – continuous improvement
To become a world class cheese maker Mary Quicke has been benchmarking since the early 1990’s. Her first concern was to get the costs of producing milk as low as possible. They had been operating a high input, high output dairy system, and were increasing the number of cows on the farm, and the amount that each was producing. However Mary had became concerned that their cost of production was too high as although their yields were increasing, milk price was falling. At that point they had a cost of production of around 22 pence per litre (ppl).
Mary heard from another dairy farmer in Cornwall that was achieving a cost of production almost 10ppl lower than their own, she discussed with him what they were doing and subsequently got involved with a benchmarking system through a Partner to Profit discussion group. They made adjustments to their system that has left them with a cost of production of 14.4ppl.
“We are now making more money than ever before, including the times when milk price was 26ppl. Now we’re only getting 19ppl!”
Mary diversified the business to move away from solely milk production to the position they are in today, where the Quickes make 500 tonnes of cheddar a year, including smaller amounts of Red Leicester, Double Gloucester, Smoked and Herb Cheddar. The cheese is marketed from the farm. It is packed to customer specifications and they supply wholesalers, supermarkets and export markets. The farm supplies half of the milk made into cheese, with the other half coming from local farmers. The Quickes cheese has won two trophies at the World Cheese Awards in 2005.
Probe has enabled Mary to look at the whole business in a different way. She has been running Quickes for 18 years and says that she now realises the business had gradually become an external reflection of the way her mind works. Some of Mary’s strengths that came out of taking part in Probe were her understanding of the consumer and of the importance of market intelligence and knowledge.
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Many small/medium sized businesses are very busy being busy. It’s not an easy decision to take time out to review how to improve. Of a total of five companies that have piloted the Probe approach, all improved the way they do business. That to me is the wisest reason to use Probe benchmarking..
