Management uses performance measurement primarily for monitoring purposes, and many performance indicators have been developed to support operational decisions. These indicators are, at best, descriptive signals that some action needs…
Innovation cultures in a company are shaped by the interactions between its business perspective and its invention perspective. The business perspective focuses on revenues, markets, improvements to existing products, and…
Business markets can be segmented with some of the same variables used in consumer market segmentation, such as geography, benefits sought, and usage rate, but business marketers also use other…
After the purchase, the consumer might experience dissonance that stems from noticing certain disquieting features or hearing favorable things about other brands, and will be alert to information that supports…
A profitable customer is a person, household, or company that over time yields a revenue stream that exceeds by an acceptable amount the company’s cost stream of attracting, selling, and…
How change is managed will depend on the magnitude of the challenge faced in trying to effect strategic change. To understand this it is useful to consider the type of…
The enhanced capabilities of IT already help organizations to provide product/ service features that are valued by customers: ● Lower prices (through reduced costs) – particularly where the product is…
Research on historical patterns of strategy development in organizations shows a pattern of what has become known as incremental strategy development. Strategies do not typically change in major shifts of…
As products become commodities, the importance of services rises. That is, as differentiation from product advantages is reduced or neutralized, the customer relationship grows in importance. There is an unarguable…
The benchmarking starting point is measurement. However, we must distinguish between the act of measuring performance and the process of benchmarking. A benchmarking process uses a common measurement standard to compare…
It is in establishing strategy that an organization creates the distinctions that drive its competitiveness. The process for strategic planning engages an entire organization at all three levels of its…
The convergence across business domains has ushered in a new economic system that is redefining relationships among producers, distributors, and consumers or goods and services. In an increasingly complex world,…
The purpose in developing an IS/IT strategy is to ensure that the best possible value can be delivered from IS/IT investments. This can be achieved by tightly aligning the IS…
All organizations have some form of strategy, whether implicit or explicit, and the essence of business strategy lies in creating future competitive advantages faster than competitors. Yet, formal strategic planning,…
Many industries have entered into a state of competition called hyper-competition. Hyper-competition is a state of intense and often lethal competition within an industry. It has some very alarming characteristics:…
Questions are the spanners that unlock the mind. Here are the kind of questions you should ask yourself– and others. Understanding the problem • When did you first sense or…
There are many reasons firms use a corporate-level diversification strategy. Typically, a diversification strategy is used to increase the firm’s value by improving its overall performance. Value is created either…
Diversified firms vary according to their level of diversification and the connections between and among their businesses. There are five categories of businesses according to increasing levels of diversification. The…
Although most organizations remain small or die, some firms continue to grow in terms of revenues, vertical integration, and diversity of products and services. In addition, their geographical scope may…
The many ways in which advances in information technology (IT) affect strategy implementation is an important issue today. Evidence that managerial capabilities in managing IT can be a source of…