Posts

The Big Picture of Business – Business Success Checklist

/in , /by

When you own and operate a business you need to have certain procedures for an efficient and seamless function. Sometimes the difficulty of managing your time makes for a haphazard operation. An inefficient operation results in unproductive activities which often miss the point and worse yet, result in wasted time and wasted resources.

One of the ways in which you can optimize your business activities would be the focus and attention to detail that a checklist can stimulate. Here is my own business success checklist that will help you optimize your activities for a more efficient and purpose oriented endeavor. Success is inevitable.

Clearly defined purpose.
Having a clearly defined purpose will focus your activities to a customer-oriented perspective. When a business loses sight of the customer and what they really need they often run into difficulties. Your clearly defined purpose can also center the attention and be a source of inspiration for your employees.

Provide leadership.
A leader’s purpose and job is to give direction and purpose and motivate his people. Leaders must also provide support for the emotional needs of their employees while they are at work and even sometimes when they bring personal concerns to the working place. The business absolutely needs energetic and emotionally mature leaders for it to prosper.

Focus on excellence.
When a company is content with being merely mediocre it may survive but it will never do extremely well. The company must have an emphasis on high standards, a desire to create and give value to customers, accountability to the employers and to your customers, and the drive to learn. If these are incorporated into the culture of your company a culture of excellence in all things will soon be prevalent.

Plan for the future.
When your business has contingency plans for future scenarios you will seldom be caught by surprise. You never know when the next big recession will hit. Most successful businesses have planned responses to most scenarios because they took the time to think “What If”. It is important to identify swings and trends so that innovation can remain a strength of your business.

Instill discipline.
This is often an unpopular issue but this is a critical matter. The sharp focus and direction on your objectives and goals can only be maintained with constant monitoring of your procedures and processes. Whether your focus is on customer service, profits, investing, marketing, or company growth a constant awareness of your current position in relation to where you want to be is essential.

Business Success Checklist

1. The business you’re in

  • Study and refine your own core business characteristics.
  • Understand “The Business You’re In” and how it fits into the core business.
  • Design and re-engineering of products-services.
  • Development of technical abilities, specialties and expertise.
  • Utilization of industry consultants or technical specialists.
  • Development of core business supplier relationships.
  • Make investments toward quality controls.

2. Running the business

  • Objective analysis of how the organization has operated to date.
  • Formalize the organizational structure.
  • Document practices, procedures, operations and structure in writing.
  • Communicate policies and procedures to employees.
  • Physical plant is regularly studied, updated and modified.
  • Distribution standards are documented, practiced and measured.
  • Time management and “just in time” concepts are applied.
  • Plans are in writing to address inventories and reducing surplus.
  • Legal compliance and precautions plan is annually updated, with measurable goals.
  • Outsourcing, privatizing and collaborating plan is annually updated, with realistic, measurable goals.
  • Purchasing plan (with processes and vendor lists) is in writing.
  • Repair and maintenance contracts are routinely maintained.
  • Purchase and lease of equipment plan is annually updated, with measurable goals.
  • Continuous quality improvement plan is annually updated, with measurable goals.

3. Financial

  • Cost containment is one (but not the only) factor of company operations.
  • Each product-service is budgeted.
  • Long-term investments plan is annually updated, with realistic, measurable goals.
  • Assets are adequately valued and managed.
  • Cash flow, forecasting and budgeting are consistently monitored.
  • Written, consistent policies with payables and receivables are followed.
  • Strategic Plan includes provisions for refinancing, equity and debt financing.
  • Accounting firm utilization plan is annually updated, with realistic, measurable goals.
  • Banking and investing plan is annually updated, with realistic, measurable goals.
  • Payables plan is annually updated, with realistic, measurable goals.
  • Receivables plan is annually updated, with realistic, measurable goals.
  • Finance charges are negotiated.
  • Insurance plan is annually updated, with realistic, measurable goals.
  • Benefits plan is annually updated, with realistic, measurable goals.

4. People

  • Corporate culture reflects a formal Visioning Program.
  • Employees know their jobs, are empowered to make decisions and have high morale in carrying the company banner forward.
  • Top management has as a priority the need to develop and practice People development, skills and team building responsibilities.
  • Human Resources program is active, professional and responsive to the organization.
  • Incentives-rewards-bonus plan is annually updated, with realistic, measurable goals.
  • Personnel Policies and Procedures are written, and distributed to all employees.
  • Each employee has his-her own Position Results Oriented Description plan.
  • Training plan is annually updated, with realistic, measurable goals.
  • Professional development plan is annually updated, with realistic, measurable goals.

5. Business development

  • All members of top management have Business Development responsibilities.
  • Company has and regularly fine-tunes a communications strategy.
  • Sales plan is annually updated, with realistic, measurable goals.
  • Marketing plan is annually updated, with realistic, measurable goals.
  • Advertising plan is annually updated, with realistic, measurable goals.
  • Public relations plan is annually updated, with realistic, measurable goals.
  • Research plan is annually updated, with realistic, measurable goals.
  • Marketplace development plan is annually updated, with realistic, measurable goals.
  • Creative collaborator-vendor plan is annually updated, with realistic, measurable goals.

6. Body of Knowledge

  • Consultant plan is annually updated, with realistic, measurable goals.
  • Performance reviews are conducted annually updated, with realistic, measurable goals.
  • Company learns how to benefit from changes.
  • Organization predicts and stays ahead of trends.
  • The company leads the industry.
  • Everything that goes on outside our company affects our business.
  • Willingness to invest in research.
  • Commitment toward collaboration and working with other companies.
  • Maintains active government and regulator relations program.
  • Maintains active community relations program.

7. The Big Picture

  • Shared Vision is crafted, articulated and followed.
  • Ongoing emphasis upon updating, fine-tuning and improving the corporate culture.
  • CEO accepts and ideas and philosophies with employees and stakeholders.
  • Creative business practices are most welcome here.
  • Strategic planning is viewed as vital to business survival and future success.
  • Outside-the-box thinking does indeed apply to us and will be sought.
  • The organization maintains and lives by an ethics statement.
  • The organization subscribes to continuous quality improvement ideologies-processes.
  • Maintains active crisis preparedness and prevention program.

About the Author

Hank MoorePower Stars to Light the Business Flame, by Hank Moore, encompasses a full-scope business perspective, invaluable for the corporate and small business markets. It is a compendium book, containing quotes and extrapolations into business culture, arranged in 76 business categories.

Hank’s latest book functions as a ‘PDR of business,’ a view of Big Picture strategies, methodologies and recommendations. This is a creative way of re-treading old knowledge to enable executives to master change rather than feel as they’re victims of it.

Power Stars to Light the Business Flame is now out in all three e-book formats: iTunes, Kindle, and Nook.

The Big Picture of Business – Quality is Important for Business: Real Quality vs. Arbitrary Metrics

/in , /by

There’s this thing that websites do. They use the term ‘metrics’ out of context. Their metrics are arbitrary, and they jerk the chains of sellers with figures that are unsubstantiated. They arbitrarily disable accounts. Sadly, this is what is thought of as “quality” in the digital age.

Websites that sell products are digital platforms, not the arbitrators of quality in the business world.

Metrics are easily skewed and do not reflect the overall customer satisfaction. A criticism of performance metrics is that when the value of information is computed using mathematical methods, it shows that even performance metrics professionals choose measures that have little value. This is referred to as the ‘measurement inversion.’ Metrics seem to emphasize what organizations find immediately measurable — even if those are low value — and tend to ignore high value measurements simply because they seem harder to measure (whether they are or not).

To correct for the measurement inversion other methods, like applied information economics, introduce the ‘value of information analysis’ step in the process so that metrics focus on high-value measures. Organizations where this has been applied find that they define completely different metrics than they otherwise would have and, often, fewer metrics.

Quality is not something that managers assign others to achieve. It is a mindset that permeates organizations from top-down as well as bottom-up. Rather than assume all is wrong or right with an organization and take a defensive posture, management must view quality as essential to their economic survival or growth. Quality entails four concepts:

  • Success is determined by conformity to requirements.
  • Quality is achieved through prevention, not appraisal. The quality audit by objective outside communications counsel is merely the beginning of a process.
  • The quality performance standard is zero defects. That means doing things correctly the first time, without wasting counter-productive time in cleaning up mistakes.
  • Nonconformance is costly. Make-good efforts cost more on the back end than doing things right on the front end.

Organizations measure quality by overall involvement. It is not enough for management to endorse quality programs; they must actively participate.

Quality should be viewed as a journey, rather than a destination. It applies to service industries and manufacturing operations. Even non-profit and public sector organizations must utilize quality approaches for staff and volunteer councils/boards.

Employees must buy into the process by offering constructive input. All ideas are worthy of consideration. Life-threatening experiences (loss of business or market share, economic recession) signal the urgency for the team to collaborate.

Empowerment of employees means they accept the challenges and consequences. They must view the company as a consumer would… being as discerning about buying their own services as they are about fine dining, premium clothing, gifts for friends, a car or a home.

What if we were all paid based upon customer perceptions of our service? That would make each of us more attentive to what we offer and whether our value is correctly perceived.

Each member of an organization must view himself/herself as having customers. Each must be seen as a profit center and as having something valuable to contribute to the overall group. Each is a link that lets down the whole chain by failing to uphold their part.

What is missing in most organizations is the willingness to move forward, not the availability of information or room/desire for improvement. Willingness requires complete and never-ending commitment by management. The first time the organization tolerates anything less than 100 percent, it is on the road back to mediocrity.

The most common pitfalls toward success include:

  • Taking a piecemeal approach to quality.
  • Thinking that quality needs apply to some other department, company or industry, not your own.
  • Thinking that you are already doing things ‘the quality way.’
  • Failing to address structural flaws that fuel the problems.
  • Focusing upon esoteric techniques, rather than true reasons for instilling quality.
  • Saying that something is being done when it is not.
  • Failing to engage customers and suppliers into the process.
  • Failing to emphasize training.
  • Setting goals that are too low.
  • Communicating poorly with the organization and its publics. Without employee communications, suggestion boxes, publications, training videos, speeches and other professionally prepared instruments, the company is fooling itself and its customers about the commitment to quality. Without good communication from the outset, the program will never be understood and accepted.

Quality improvement is the only action that can simultaneously win the support of customers, employees, investors, media and the public. Productivity translates to profitability in an advantageous climate in which to function.

Investment Toward Economic Survival and Growth

Research shows the by-product costs of poor quality are high for any business, up to 40 percent. Lack of attentiveness to quality has cost the United States its global marketplace dominance. Other nations preceded the U.S. in adopting the quality process and overtook our nation in many areas.

In 1981, more than 70 percent of U.S. automobiles realized defects within six months of purchase. That figure has now dropped below 40 percent, compared with just under 30 percent in Japanese cars. Had quality been a focus in Detroit years earlier, then the obvious would not have transpired.

The Japanese have always viewed quality as a national issue… not just an individual company matter. The real victim of America’s late entry into the quality process was every employee whose livelihood was endangered. Consumers did not worry; they simply bought goods and services elsewhere.

Success via competitiveness has many dimensions:

  • Production efficiency became America’s focus by the 1950’s.
  • Marketing’s importance was fully embraced in the 1960’s. Marketing departments deal most often and immediately with the side effects of poor quality.
  • The 1970’s brought the first wave of strategic planning. Without mapping a course, how can any organization reach a destination?
  • The 1980’s brought us the quality process… which is the bow that wraps a package containing the other three elements. At the start of the decade, many executives viewed the quality process with indifference or fear. By decade’s end, virtually all (92 percent) agreed that quality is the main prescription for survival.

Though quality is one element of competitiveness, it cannot cover defects in the other areas. The quality audit by objective outside communications counsel can also examine the production, marketing and strategic planning functions.

Companies must place demands upon their own organizations to embrace customer service tenets. Satisfied customers talk to others… encouraging them to buy based upon quality of the company. Dissatisfied customers will aggressively discourage higher numbers of prospects from buying.

The mark of any professional is the manner in which he/she corrects mistakes. Most often, this means correcting misperceptions about company attitude, rather than the condition of goods. The faster the correction, the better the level of satisfaction. Quality is the sum of impressions made on the customer.

Payroll is the biggest overhead item. Improvement can be quantified by increased productivity, reduced turnover and heightened employee morale.

The empowered team is trusted to seek quality on their own. Bad managers will fall by the wayside. Employees who do not pull their share will stick out like sore thumbs. The team will not be judged by the superstars but, instead, by the average. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

In order to complete the chain, organizations must insist that suppliers, professional services counselors and vendors show demonstrated quality programs, as well as ethics statements. Educational and incentive programs should be implemented.

During tough economic times, investment in a quality program is not costly. Anyone who is unwilling to spend for quality is hastening company decline.

Business Strategy Steers the Quality Process

Quality is one of the most vital ingredients of competitive success. Total Quality Management (TQM) is recognized as a prerequisite for survival. One fourth of all corporations now administer quality programs.

The focus on quality has gone beyond the finished product and addresses all processes throughout the organization. Evaluating quality is not just a question of meeting customers’ expectations… but rather exceeding them.

Paying attention to quality can realize:

  • Lower operating costs. Research shows they can be cut in half.
  • Premium pricing for preferred goods/services.
  • Customer retention.
  • Enhanced reputation.
  • Access to global markets.
  • Faster innovation.
  • Higher sales.
  • Higher return on investments. TQM has increased profitability in some corporations up to six times.

Total Quality Management is customer-focused and strategy-directed. It is a top management activity… steered by public relations counselors. The human relations component is strong, but quality programs are substantially communications-driven.

The successful quality program empowers employees, who will achieve quality on their own. The more positive results are shown, the more universal will be participation. The quality process must have substance–not just rhetoric–in order to build momentum. There are no magic shortcuts. If the process is given proper attention and support by top management, it is a money maker.

How to Institute a Quality Program

Much has been written about Total Quality Management. Change is painful for most people but is necessary. Conducting “business as usual” means standing still… which means losing ground while other companies move forward.

Quality does not mean that true perfection will exist. It is simply a commitment to keep the wheels of progress at top-of-mind motion.

To change and improve requires methodically and systematically undertaking actions that will make your company ‘world class.’ These actions include:

  • Education.
  • Communication.
  • Reward and recognition.
  • Employee suggestion systems.
  • Involvement teams.
  • Benchmark measurements of accomplishments.
  • Statistical management methods.

Research shows that most companies implement quality programs as a reaction to a perceived negative image. Data is gathered in scattered areas, usually to produce flashy charts for customers. Because upper management does not know which programs to implement, the quality process stagnates.

Doing things for the wrong reasons or to temporarily pacify someone else spells failure. There are no quick fixes. Applying band-aids will just reopen the wounds at a later date. Quality can never be identified too broadly enough.

In order to put a quality program into place, the following steps must be taken:

  • Study the activities of admired companies. Interview them to provide insight. Set meetings to review what works for them. Read case studies of Malcolm Baldridge Award winners. Companies can and should be role models for each other.
  • Retain outside experts. Quality programs are communications driven and should be captained by public relations counsel who possess this expertise. They will conduct communications audits and strategic planning. This is not something that can be conducted alone by internal human resources departments. Good experts will tell you the hard facts and what needs to be done.
  • Research drives most communications programs. Commission customer and employee surveys. It will provide comparisons between the realities and perceptions that are held.
  • Ask counsel to write a plan of action for putting the quality program into place.
  • Assemble an internal quality team… making sure that all major departments are represented. Together with outside counsel, this committee will pursue its objectives, per the written agenda.
  • Set realistic timelines for putting recommendations into place.
  • Set schedules for routine review of the process. This includes repeating surveys to assure that you are making adequate progress.

By successfully combining employee involvement, process improvement, customer focus and demonstrated management endorsement, any company can succeed at quality. Even on a limited investment, quality can be attained.

The challenge is to discover what mix of price and quality the customer wants and to deliver it. Slogans only create adversarial relationships. Once the system owns up to its shortcomings and responsibilities, then a true quality process will occur. Failure to read the ‘handwriting on the wall’ will thwart company growth and, thus, the overall economy.

About the Author

Hank MoorePower Stars to Light the Business Flame, by Hank Moore, encompasses a full-scope business perspective, invaluable for the corporate and small business markets. It is a compendium book, containing quotes and extrapolations into business culture, arranged in 76 business categories.

Hank’s latest book functions as a ‘PDR of business,’ a view of Big Picture strategies, methodologies and recommendations. This is a creative way of re-treading old knowledge to enable executives to master change rather than feel as they’re victims of it.

Power Stars to Light the Business Flame is now out in all three e-book formats: iTunes, Kindle, and Nook.

Why Your Business Needs To Start Monetizing Its Data

/in , /by

Because of the digital age that we live in, most people know of and even understand what data is. They say that information is power. In the business world, that is quite right! Firms of all shapes and sizes have and deal with a lot of data on a daily basis.

Data examples include contact details and even the way customers pay for their goods and services. It’s a well-known fact that running a business is tougher than ever these days. But, the sad truth is that organizations aren’t using the data they have to make some money!

Data monetization is a lucrative market. The sector is large, but it could be bigger if more firms used the information they hold to increase their revenue.

If you’re still not convinced, keep reading to learn why your business needs to start monetizing its data today!

Why Your Business Needs To Start Monetizing Its DataPhoto courtesy of Sean Ellis

You learn more about your customer spending habits

Let’s face it, we all have uniquely personal spending habits. Some of us lead an extravagant lifestyle and are happy to pay for high-end products. Others prefer to count the pennies and only buy things we need rather than all those things we want.

Customer loyalty cards are one of the best ways of gaining insights into how people spend their money. It’s a classic way of fostering data monetization. Why? Because you can target specific promotions to individual customer groups.

Let’s say that you own a retail store. People will sign up for loyalty cards if they know they can enjoy special offers and deals that are applicable to them. Yes, you can offer targeted promotions to loyalty card holders.

But it’s also a good way of learning which products are best-sellers and which ones are nothing better than loss leaders.

Work with other firms to cross-promote products and services

If you run an ISP business, you could work with retailers that sell computers to offer your services to their customers. Likewise, you could offer discounted rates to people leaving particular competitors.

Sharing data is always a neat idea for two sets of organizations that can complement each other’s wares. There’s no point trying to go solo if there’s an opportunity to work with someone else. At least on an opportunity that is mutually beneficial of course!

Sell anonymous data to relevant organizations

No one likes the idea of companies selling their personal details to other people. But, did you know that you can sell anonymous data to third parties without it being controversial?

For instance, let’s say that you are a commercial property developer. And you own a shopping mall. Market research firms may wish to buy data from you like the following:

  • Number of shoppers per day, week, month or year;
  • Average store occupancy rates;
  • Shopper spending habits (e.g. Do they spend most of their cash on clothing, food, or electronics?).

As you can see from this example, anonymous data can be attractive to third party organizations. And because you aren’t selling any personal details, you won’t fall afoul of the law.

Return to the Tactical Execution Forum

Tactical Execution Best Practice 7 – Clearly Defined Organizational Roles and Responsibilities

/in , /by

StrategyDriven Tactical Execution Best Practice ArticleAll too often, duplicate effort is unknowingly expended by an organization’s various workgroups. Lack of organizational defined positional roles and responsibilities and/or work handoffs commonly result in employees unnecessarily performing highly similar if not the exact same activities. In some cases, workgroups may generate differing and conflicting outputs; in others, they may inappropriately change underlying application data such that hinders overall progress and propagates errors. Organizations clearly defining positional roles and responsibilities in standalone responsibilities matrices are better able to avoid these conflicts; releasing precious resources for the performance of value adding work and eliminating redundancy based errors.

Hi there! Gain access to this article with a StrategyDriven Insights Library – Total Access subscription or buy access to the article itself.

Subscribe to the StrategyDriven Insights Library

Sign-up now for your StrategyDriven Insights Library – Total Access subscription for as low as $15 / month (paid annually).

Subscribe Now!

Not sure? Click here to learn more.

 Buy the Article

Don’t need a subscription? Buy access to Tactical Execution Best Practice 7 – Clearly Defined Organizational Roles and Responsibilities for just $2!

Access the Article Now!

Return to the Tactical Execution Forum

About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

There is No Tradeoff With BYOD

/in /by

The bring-your-own-device (BYOD) movement has been portrayed as an impasse for organizations that must make tradeoffs between maintaining security and invading employee privacy.
This is an illusion — there is no tradeoff when you take the right approach to BYOD.

As a relatively young field spurred on by the mass adoption of smartphones and tablets, the BYOD space is in the process of reaching a common paradigm. In the meantime, organizations struggle to navigate a forest of mobile device management (MDM), enterprise mobility management (EMM) and other BYOD approaches that claim comparable benefits but don’t achieve them the same way.
Given the buzz and crowdedness of this field, some organizations simply don’t implement a BYOD solution, believing the medicine might be worse than the disease. This thinking is flawed and actually elevates the risk of data leaks, cybercrime and intellectual property theft.

A multi-persona approach to BYOD achieves the ideal balance of security and privacy, cost and flexibility, and choice for employees while overcoming the drawbacks of other BYOD approaches. With a multi-persona approach, there is no tradeoff.

Hi there! This article is available for free. Login or register as a StrategyDriven Personal Business Advisor Self-Guided Client by:

Subscribing to the Self Guided Program - It's Free!


 

About the Author

Omer EifermanOmer Eiferman is Cellrox’s CEO. He is a graduate of Bar-Ilan University with a degree in Computer Science and Statistics, and was a pilot in the Israeli Air Force. Omer has served in a variety of marketing, development and product management roles in technology companies. To read Omer’s complete biography, click here.