Mid 2009 ,as we started to see the glimmers of the economic recovery Accenture consulting published a paper about their research on past economic downturns and found that high-performing businesses put a premium on operational excellence and pulled ahead of their competition at the end of an economic recession. They found that 5 factors influence the creation of positive,long-term impacts in both good times and bad.
In fact Accenture's research finds that high performance is the result of actions taken across the business cycle: when companies are operationally disciplined in the good times and when they press this advantage as the cycles turn downward.
Accenture observed that the companies that come out ahead share 5 essential characteristics regardless of their market positioning :
1. They can identify their competitive essence, which is the one area or process in which they perform better than anyone else in their industry in order to deliver something distinctive to their customers.
2.They know what structural changes they must make to beat their competition.
3.They know what it take to out-execute their rivals.
4.They continuously find the right balance between "out-structuring" and "out-executing" their competitors.
5.They choose the right "change journey" to keep them headed toward operational excellence.
We will get more in details for those 5 characteristics in following posts, but it is important first to define what is meant by "Operational Excellence"
Operational Excellence is not simply doing the same thing better.While it does include the disciplines of simplification and standardization as well as the elimination of waste, waiting time and rework, it is important to note that operational excellence also addresses the way the business is set up and how the work is executed on a day-to-day basis.In addition,technology is a key change factor driving the need for operational excellence.The rapid rise of e-commerce channels is just one small tell-tale of why businesses must build new operating models at the same time that they improve or replace the old ones.
The question is : Do I have the right operating model to compete and win in a dramatically changing multi-polar world ?
