Consulting
Dahne Associates provides management consulting services to organizations that seek economical, effective and timely solutions to their needs. We are committed to providing quality service to a wide variety of clients through the incorporation of four main elements into our management philosophy: consideration of client needs; careful planning; proven standards; and sound project management.

We go to great lengths to ensure we understand your objectives and corporate culture. Becoming a productive member of your team is key to delivering a quality product. A detailed plan is developed to define the activities that are necessary to meet your objectives. This plan, used as a road map to project success, helps keep each project on time and within budget. Experience dictates results. We rely on a proven approach that integrates your objectives with our methodology. The end result is a detailed project plan that clearly defines the phases and tasks necessary to complete the project. Using successful project management techniques, we closely monitor, evaluate and document all activities. Regular status meetings and detailed reports provide the information needed to evaluate projects and to identify potential problem areas.

Our skills include such diverse areas as:


Benchmarking and Best Practices

Benchmarking is the search for industry best practices that will lead to superior performance. If a company is to become a leader in its industry, it must understand it's competition. Taking the best practice from each appropriate competitor will enable you to build a company that will stand above your competitors.


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Business Plan Preparation

The business plan is a key document in the success of a company. It is a "living" document that puts on paper the strategic (long term) and tactical (short term) goals of the company. The business plan is where company management records their vision and a baseline from which to measure success. The plan should be revisited periodically as company goals change due to both internal and external forces. The business plan, along with the executive summary, can be used to solicit funding from outside sources in both the early stage of a business, as well as during later growth stages. Functionality of the business plan is ensured by meeting with an organization's leadership to plan the appropriate application of information, people, management and technology resources to the key tasks and measurements of the organization's performance. We work to ensure that the plans are achievable and measurable as defined by the organization. In addition to assisting organizations draft business plans, we can also work to facilitate the plan.


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Business Reengineering

The review and development of recommendations for modifying manual and computer based processes within an organization to maximize return on information investments.


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Coaching and Mentoring

Dahne Associates offers executive, professional, and team coaching and mentoring for leadership, growth, development, and change facilitation. Consulting is a process of providing knowledge, guidance, advice or helping a client to gain access to important information needed to make decisions. Coaching and mentoring is a process of defining goals and outcomes, developing strategies to accomplish objectives, and supporting a person, team, or organization during that process. A consultative coach is able to operate skillfully in both arenas of change. At Dahne Associates we believe that blending coaching and consulting services is a strategy that is extremely effective with today's savvy clients in today's complex organizations.


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Cost Analysis

Cost Analysis involves the application of specific tools and techniques to collect and analyze costs applied to a specific business process. Data regarding resources such as personnel, equipment, and material required to drive a particular process are defined. The cost analysis technique involves a mixture of standard spreadsheet-based methods for computing labor and material content and overhead contributions, in addition to algorithms for projecting the effects of volume and learning curves on process efficiency. Typically a cost analyst is dedicated to building a custom spreadsheet model for the particular business process being studied. The results of the analysis are very useful for cost justifying new processes, procedures, or capital equipment purchases.



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Executive Training

The development and presentation of specialized training for all sizes of audiences from small companies to large corporations. Training can be provided in a myriad areas ranging from technical to employee relations. We have trained in areas such as:
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Financial Systems Implementation

Financial systems are where businesses face some of their most challenging issues - financial function development, planning and budgeting, costing, management accounting, financial and management information systems. The outcomes of financial system implementation projects are tangible and visible in the day-to-day operations of the company and represent measurable quantitative and qualitative improvements - cost reduction, availability of information supporting operational management and strategic decision making.


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Management Consulting

Advisory services contracted for and provided to organizations by specially trained and qualified persons who assist, in an objective and independent manner, the client organization to identify management problems, analyze such problems, recommend solutions to these problems, and help, when requested, in the implementation of solutions.


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Mergers and Acquisitions

Assistance to companies in merging with other entities as either the acquirer or the acquiree. Assistance with companies looking to acquire other entities in order to grow their business.


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Organizational Assessment

The Organizational Assessment provides a snapshot of the current state of the company, provides a basis for planning, and establishes a means of monitoring progress.


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Process Modeling

Successful businesses use business process and workflow models to plan and implement change initiatives, technology and organizational deployment, and to ensure ongoing high-performance operations. Effective business process and workflow models require rules, standards, and principles through which the fundamental elements of the business system are defined. Once defined, these elements become the "building blocks" for models used to analyze or redesign the business systems in a given enterprise. They provide a consistent, structured foundation upon which analyses can be based, providing a baseline. By narrowing the focus from the broad abstractions of processes, organizations, and systems to a limited number of concrete objects, an object oriented business model manages the volume and complexity of the information without losing sight of the real world. This approach also facilitates rapid business requirements development in that it provides a functional model of the information flow within an organization matched to its organizational structure and operational characteristics. The resulting model yields a clear understanding of the needs, uses and requirements for information and serves as a basis for complete information system management.

Process:  Pay Vendors
Purpose:  Provide accurate and timely payments to vendors. Provide accurate and timely reporting to managers.
Process Owner:  Frank Jackson, Controller
Personnel:  A/P Clerk, Mail Clerk, Receiving Clerk, Employees
Start
Customer & Supplier Inputs (Who, What)
Process
Customer Outputs (Who, What)
Stop
Order is placed with vendor and obligation is incurred.
 Vendors
  • accurate invoice


    • Employees
  • accurate purchase order request


    • Receiving Clerk
  • accurate PO receipt
    		•  Cycle Time Measures
  • A/P Aging
  • Vendor Balances


    • Adverse Indicators
  • # of late payments to vendors
  • # of calls from vendor A/R departments


    • Other Process Measures
  • # of calls from managers about vendor issues
    		•  Vendors
  • accurate check
  • timely check


    • Managers
  • accurate budget reporting
    		•  Vendor is paid and obligation is completed.



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    Project Management

    Project Management is a dynamic process, conducted within a defined set of constraints, that organizes and utilizes appropriate resources in a controlled and structured manner in order to achieve some clearly defined objectives. Development of an Action Plan is necessary to successfully manage a project. Action Plans are expressed in terms of timelines, activities and responsible persons and contain the actions and the sequence of actions necessary to meet the performance measures. We provide consulting and facilitation to develop a measurable Action Plan that supports the organization's Strategic Plan, Business Plan and Implementaion Plan, based upon a comprehensive understanding of the needs of the organization. A consulting model is negotiated with the client that includes both timeline and deliverables. The consulting portion of the project is usually longer than the facilitation portion because of the importance of clearly identifying the requirements and desired improvement, how success will be measured, and the skill set of the personnel needed to accomplish the desired outcome.


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    Requirements Analysis

    Businesses can improve customer service, gain efficiencies, improve productivity, and reduce costs by implementing appropriate systems. Dahne Associates can provide help in identifying functional requirements, selecting the appropriate hardware, software, and vendors, and installing and training personnel on new systems. During a requirements analysis, Dahne Associates will utilize structured methodology to define your company's needs. This service includes the following activities: Increased competition in business is driving most companies to reduce costs in many areas. Improvements realized through the implementation of new technology can help a business to become more competitive.


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    RFP Preparation

    The development of needs analysis and recommendations, the conversion of these requests to proposals, management of the bidding process, vendor negotiations, and recommendations for implementation.


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    Strategic Planning

    Strategic Planning allows organizations to be pro-active and anticipate changes in their business. Industry research is key to the process and helps to identify industry trends such as changing customer demands, changes in technology, changes in information processing and projected changes in the workforce. Strategic Planning is important to an improvement process because appropriate improvements meet both present and future needs of an organization and guide the organization's direction. Committing to an ongoing program of strategic planning will help your organization become a World Class competitor. A properly designed and executed strategic plan will enable you to
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    Technology Assessment and Integration

    Maintaining a solid working knowledge of the most important new technologies is critical to remaining competitive in today's highly competitive market. We understand how new technologies can be applied, how they interact with existing technology, and how they can be applied judiciously to a given challenge. Our commitment to maintaining a deep understanding of complex technologies enables us to create the maximum impact using the most economical means. We never lose sight of our clients' business priorities, and never allow technology solutions to degenerate into self-indulgent exercises in the application of the latest technology for its own sake. Our assessment services provide companies with operational, tactical, and strategic reviews of their current technology environment. Using our structured methodologies, we define the critical business and end-user requirements; gather metrics and statistics; map technologies across business requirements; and provide you with a comprehensive "Technology Assessment Report".


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