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Symbius Information Discovery for Homebuilding Operations

Expedited Data Analysis for Breakthrough Results

To respond to industry changes, your 2007 business plan now calls for lower total costs, stepped-up productivity, and better deal-making in operations and purchasing. Symbius' Information Discovery for Homebuilding Operations helps you unlock your business data and use it to your advantage to identify savings opportunities and drive strategic decision making. We are the only management consulting firm devoted 100% to the production homebuilding industry, from strategy and organization to operations, purchasing and supply chain.

The benefits of the Information Discovery for Homebuilding Operations include:

  • Increased Understanding
  • Reduced Risks
  • Greater Agility
  • Enhanced Business Performance

What our customers are saying:

"Symbius has been instrumental to our purchasing and supply chain strategy and programs. The incredible progress we've made in the past year(s) could not have been accomplished without their guidance, support and expertise." -Scott Hearty, Vice President of National Purchasing Operations, Standard Pacific Homes (Big Builder # 11)

"Symbius has been an invaluable advisor in helping us determine where we are and where we need to go." - Mary Fitzgerald, VP of Purchasing, John Laing Homes (Big Builder # 34)

Overview

From whom are we buying? How much do we spend? Are we using common suppliers and trades? Can we get better deals from manufacturers, regional trades or large local trades? How much overlap of suppliers do our different divisions have? The answers to these types of questions can be found using Symbius' Information Discovery tools and techniques.

There are a number of reasons why homebuilders may not be taking advantage of their data to facilitate business improvements. The most common reasons are:

  • Don't have the resources or tools
  • Don't have the expertise
  • Can't get the data
  • Don't have the training
  • Separation of Information Technology groups and business users

In all types of planning, you need to know the facts before devising a plan or developing a strategy; the homebuilding industry is no exception. Facts can come from a number of sources: discussions, technical documentation, or system data. The challenge then is to turn that data into. Information Discovery takes complex data and distills it quickly into useful information, allowing you to identify savings opportunities.

Information Discovery benefits include:

  • Ease of Use: the buyer is able to understand quickly how to use the tools and processes to produce results.
  • Speed of operation sets Information Discovery apart from traditional data gathering because of the capacity for delivering results quickly.
  • Analytical capability to restructure and view data in powerful ways to aid in the process of finding facts and setting strategy.
  • Scalability allows for the addition and modification of data in the future without complicated restructuring.
  • Recognizing the trees in the forest: You see both the details and the summary, so you can dive down or roll up as desired.

Methodology

The Symbius Information Discovery for Homebuilding Operations methodology has four key process steps:

  • Determining Data Requirements: Use business objectives to drive the discovery process. For example, a company might want to obtain additional leverage in the purchasing process through selection of a few key suppliers across a region, understand the profitability of certain design center upgrade products or programs, or evaluate what the contribution of a proposed incentive program from a supplier might be over time.
  • Acquiring Data: Locate the available sources of data and place it in one location: an analytical database. The data can come from disparate sources, formats or locations, thus providing summary views not normally available.
  • Storing, Extending, and Cleaning Data: Take the disparate formats/sources and convert the data into a usable format. We use a proprietary analytical database that allows us to accomplish the task quickly.
  • Analyzing Data: Once the data is cleansed, it is available for strategic decision-making. The results, both high level and low level, can be exported to reports or spreadsheets for quick sharing of information.

Demonstrated Results

Information Discovery can be a powerful weapon in the toolkit of a top-notch purchasing team. Capturing existing data and making it available to the team often produces groundbreaking "Ah Ha" moments that help crystallize strategic direction. In one case, a company discovered that it was spending 90% of its money on 5% of its suppliers, making that case for consolidating its supplier base and simplifying supplier management.

What can you expect? Let us show you how you can use Symbius' Information Discovery for Homebuilding Operations as part of a larger process to:

  • Evaluate your strategic options in purchasing
  • Develop an appropriate and effective sourcing strategy
  • Identify the best practices and steps to get there

The benefits of Information Discovery to the sourcing process are tangible ® and homebuilding industry benchmarks show that hard cost reductions of 5-10% are possible.

Available Offerings:

  • Base Camp (Data Discovery): Our team takes your operational data out of a structured IT environment, using proprietary analytical methods, and gives you simple, powerful, and flexible tools to analyze it and use it.
  • Summit (Discovery+Strategy): Use information discovery to empower strategic decision making. Our team unlocks and structures your business data for easy interpretation, and works alongside your team to develop strategies and action plans that will produce immediate results.