Think of a Recession as Bikini Season for your Budget

You know that feeling that accompanies spring? Right next to “I’ve got to do something about the clutter in the garage” is “I sure did pack on the pounds over the holidays- and I left them on!”
Well, when’s the last time you put your budget on the scale? Just like our bellies, our spending can […]

Idenitifying cash creators

Do an expense shake down. Take time at least once a year to scrutinize each and each and every company expense. Remember that old habits die hard. Evaluate you travel expenses, telecommunicate expenses,insurance costs, subscriptions, and so on. If the expense doesn’t contribute company’s profitably, eliminate it. You’re  just about guaranteed to find areas in […]

Balancing Your Strategic Priorities

Business owners and executives often fall prey to the allure
of setting too many financial goals. Or, their goals are exclusively financial.
This can detract from the other reasons you’re in business, such as employing
people, contributing to your community, or providing a needed product or
service. Enter the Balanced Scorecard.
We’ve always been big proponents of the Balanced Scorecard
and […]

How Does Your Game Plan Stack Up?

When the top "most used" business management tools globally were
announced in Bain’s Management Tools & Trends 2007 study earlier
this year, the results were no surprise to us.

Strategic planning
Customer relationship management
Customer segmentation
Benchmarking
Core competencies, mission & vision statements (tied).

In fact, when asked to consider both usage and satisfaction with
management tools, the 1200 international executives participating
overall gave […]

Outsourcing your outsourcing

Outsourcing is here to stay because of the numerous environmental pressures companies are dealing with. Basically, why keep non-core functions in-house when you can get them cheaper overseas? The problems arise when companies have tried to put this into practice. It’s not as easy as it sounds, so outsourcing brokers and consultants should be used. […]

Execution: The Art of Getting Things Done

As companies
scrutinize performance in demanding market conditions, leaders are increasingly
analyzing their abilities to execute on strategy. In the past, leaders were
called upon to deliver the strategic vision, and managers were expected to
handle the details that turn that vision into reality. Today, this is
changing—and changing for the better.
Execution is
the process that turns strategies and plans into […]

How ’bout some reports to go with that scorecard?

For the past two years, a large manufacturing company has used a process whereby each department head turns in a one-page monthly summary linked to the comprehensive corporate strategy. The reports also explain how well the company’s progressing with the defined action plans, what obstacles exist, and what can be improved.
At a monthly meeting, the […]

Printing up a superior customer experience

When a weekly community newspaper analyzed its value chain, the publisher realized that several of its supporting activities detracted from the overall customer experience. For example

In the general administration area, the newspaper’s invoices only offered one method of payment, when there were actually three ways to pay. The publisher immediately revised the invoices to include […]

Moving from Information to Insight

Business leaders often believe their organizations are swamped with business process information, but that information is a relative trickle…compared with the wealth of physical-world, biological, public and personal-preference data that is being made accessible by powerful technologies.
The sheer quantity of all this information is unprecedented, but so is the complexity of working with it. […]

Being Operationally Effectiveness

Michael Porter’s article, How to marry strategy & operational effectiveness, provides the distinction between a company’s strategic mission in contrast to its operational effectiveness.  The author discusses how managers should avoid having a macro view of their industry, but rather focus on the core competencies and critical success factors within their company.  This approach will […]