Breakthrough Business Results With MVT: A Fast, Cost-Free, "Secret Weapon" for Boosting Sales, Cutting Expenses, and Improving Any Business Process - Hardcover

Holland, Charles W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471697710 ISBN 13: 9780471697718

Publisher: Wiley, 2005

Synopsis

The first and only guide to using MVT as a breakthrough management tool

MVT(TM) (Multivariable Testing) has been heralded as a breakthrough business tool in major publications such as Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and Business-Week. Although MVT could become one of the most widely used management tools and has been applied by leading companies in every industry to create billions of dollars of value-no book on it has been published, until now.

In Breakthrough Business Results with MVT, MVT creator and guru Charles Holland shows managers how multivariable testing-an advanced mathematical method that allows simultaneous testing of up to 40 variables-can dramatically improve efficiency and profits in any organization. MVT reveals to managers precisely which factors have a positive impact on any important business decision or process, which have a negative impact, and which have no impact at all. Very often the results are radically counterintuitive. MVT identifies quickly the best ways for a company to make major improvements, such as boosting sales, reducing waste, increasing production, enhancing advertising strategies, or optimizing service levels. Faster and cheaper than other quality improvement methodologies such as Six Sigma, MVT is a natural tool for any organization that wants to reduce the amount of guesswork and politics when making crucial business decisions. In Breakthrough Business Results with MVT, Holland reveals the dramatic benefits that have made true believers of top executives in such companies as Lowe's, Ameritech, Williams-Sonoma, DuPont, Pacific Bell, and Boise, among others.

Charles Holland, PhD (Knoxville, TN), is principal and founder of QualPro, Inc., the leading MVT consultancy in the world. QualPro's work has been celebrated in most major business publications, and they have consulted to senior executives at many Fortune 500 companies. QualPro regularly conducts seminars on MVT, and their work has been widely publicized. *MVT is a trademark of QualPro, Inc.

About this title

About the Author

CHARLES HOLLAND, PhD, developed the MVT process in a nuclear weapons plant to solve critical problems using advanced statistics. In 1982, at the urging of quality guru W. Edwards Deming, he founded QualPro, an MVT training and consulting firm. Over the last two decades, QualPro consultants have assisted clients in implementing MVT at over 1,000 companies, including many of the Fortune 500. Many clients have improved business results directly linked to MVT valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. QualPro conducts seminars on MVT throughout the U.S., and its work has been profiled in most major business publications.

DAVID COCHRAN is Vice President of Operations for QualPro.

*MVT is a trademark of QualPro, Inc. For more information about QualPro and MVT, visit www.qualproinc.com.

From the Back Cover

Praise for MVT

"I have never come across a more powerful business tool than MVT to identify what needs to be done."
—Ed Mueller, CEO, Williams-Sonoma

"The [MVT] payoff is so big that just word of mouth keeps companies coming . . . DuPont rescheduled maintenance shutdowns at a polymer plant, increasing annual output by $18 million. SBC analyzed factors influencing sales practices, boosting revenues 167%. International Specialty Products improved manufacturing efficiency at a chemical plant, adding $1.5 million in profits."
—BusinessWeek

"After Circuit City instituted MVT-validated concepts in stores, it saw an immediate 3% comparable-store sales rise. It tested the changes three separate times to make sure the benefits were real."
—Forbes

"[MVT] has aided companies such as DuPont and Monsanto to redesign chemical plants . . .and even told the National Enquirer what to put on its cover."
—The Economist

"MVT allows companies to test many changes in procedure at once, rather than one-at-a-time . . . the technique is analogous to polling a small, carefully chosen sample of voters to predict how millions will vote."
—The Wall Street Journal

"[MVT] is designed to be a low-cost approach, altering methods, not equipment."
—The New York Times

"The real power of MVT is that you engage all of your workforce in generating the ideas, designing the experiment, implementing the experiment, and actually retaining and sustaining the gains you generate."
—Andy Mouhot, International Paper

From the Inside Flap

Every executive in the world wants the same thing—improved results: more profit, less cost, better quality, and higher customer satisfaction. But what business improvement ideas will produce these results, and how can you be sure that plans that look good on paper will actually work in the real world? Testing ideas one at a time is too slow and too expensive. Only one revolutionary method offers a powerful, fast, and inexpensive way to prove with certainty what ideas will have the biggest impact on your bottom line: MVT* (Multivariable Testing). MVT uses advanced statistics to test the real-world effects of dozens of business improvement ideas, discover the synergies between them, and identify those ideas that are the most powerful and profitable under real-world conditions.

In Breakthrough Business Results with MVT, MVT guru Charles Holland shows you how MVT can improve efficiency and profits dramatically in any organization. With amazing precision, MVT reveals what factors have a positive, negative, or negligible impact on any important business decision.

Holland describes the twelve basic steps in the MVT process and how to use the often-counterintuitive results to identify the best ways for your company to make major improvements. You'll discover how leading companies such as Lowe's, DuPont, Williams-Sonoma, and SBC have taken advantage of MVT's power to boost sales, reduce waste, increase production, develop advertising strategies, and optimize service levels with no new investment in equipment or people.

Holland demonstrates that MVT is also remarkably fast and economical compared with other improvement methodologies, such as Six Sigma. Many of Holland's Fortune 500 clients have added hundreds of millions of dollars to their bottom line with no capital investment at all, and MVT's speed and accuracy make it a natural tool for any organization that wants to minimize guesswork and politics when making crucial business decisions.

MVT can be applied with equal success to any process or business function, from sales and marketing to engineering and manufacturing, in any industry. Read Breakthrough Business Results with MVT and discover how your organization can revolutionize its decision-making process and give your bottom line the makeover it deserves.

"With [MVT], you not only solicit ideas from your staff, but you also have evidence showing which ones are effective and deserve to be implemented."
—Selling Power

"Some of the ideas that intuitively we'd think would help didn't, and some that we didn't think would help did¿and that's the way it's always been when I get into an MVT."
—Dennis Harris, President of Network Services, SBC/Ameritech

"[Using] the MVT process . . . what did we learn about ourselves? That our gut stinks."
—Jeff Wells, Senior Vice President, Circuit City

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0471697710
• ISBN 13: 9780471697718
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336