Business systems at their simplest level are sequential
frameworks of major functions that reinforce the competitive
advantage and the value proposition of
organizations. Initially, the notion of competitive advantage
was linked to the success of a company, which means what your
company can do, other companies cannot do easily.
A micro economic theory says - unless it's difficult, your
competitors will surely imitate your competitive advantage and
while competing with the same competitive advantage the profits go
back to the customer. Thus, successful businesses constantly seek
new forms of competitive advantage.
What is Competitive Advantage?
In a broad sense, it is the condition that enables a company to
operate in a more efficient or higher-quality manner than the
companies it competes with, which results in benefits accruing to
that company.
Competitive Advantage
When you try to reinforce the competitive advantage, you need to
align all departments with the new strategy.
A business system is a way that allows you to be relatively
systematic in how you lay out those choices to keep all departments
aligned to your competitive advantage. Individual departments
cannot make their choices in isolation from the others.
Since companies today participate in consortiums, outsource
their pieces of the work or buy component parts from each other, it
is becoming more and more difficult to optimize the entire system.
In addition to this, with a faster pace of change, globalization
and specialization, it is more difficult to optimize the
system. The relevance of concepts behind the success of business
systems have gained importance in the last 20 years and will surely
become more important in the next 20 years.
Sustainable Competitive
Advantage
Outcomes you can expect
Managing the framework of a business system is as important as
ever because it helps us understand the more interconnected we are,
the more important it is to manage the overall framework. One
piece of framework with a flaw can cause disruptions up and down
the entire system. The linkages in larger organizations are even
more sublinked, a flaw in one piece causes widespread
disruption.
Flaw in one piece can disrupt alignment of
all departments
The only way to prevail in the present competitive world is
to constantly seek ways to gain competitive advantage by ensuring
alignment of an organization as a whole.
We offer our services in facilitating your organization's
alignment process. It all starts with establishing a cohesive
team out of the people responsible for shaping the organization -
the Core Team. Without leadership cohesion, any effort to build
organizational culture may fall apart because of a weak foundation.
As soon as the Core Team is ready, we can facilitate the crafting
of the organization's strategies for alignment of all actions via
review of strategies and cascading the newly stated direction for
all employees.
If you would like to learn more about how our Department
Alignment services can help your organization, click here.