Business & Finance

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 13 nov 2013

Social media is creating new dynamics in the delivery and performance of customer service. It is providing tools for both marketers and customers to share their views and experiences with a larger audience at a speed that wasn't available before. Product and solution providers must understand that customer service is a critical element of a company-customer relationship that is build over a period of time with a value exchange from both sides. Customer service is the front of the organization that deals directly with the customers and a bad experience have a potential to negatively affect this relationship. The article explains the customer service mistakes that should be avoided - Limited use of the automated phone systems; Proper use of automated phone systems; Not apologizing or appearing unsympathetic; Passing the buck; Not solving the problem. Read on...

The VAR Guy: Top 5 Customer Service Nightmares To Avoid
Author: Elliot Markowitz

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 11 nov 2013

Customer participation in the design process is becoming an important part of the innovation and creative strategy. Though most organizations are still struggling to fully incorporate the concept of empathy and customer-centeredness in their business practices. In their book, 'Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All', authors David Kelly (Founder of IDEO and d.school at Stanford University) and Tom Kelly (Partner at IDEO and executive fellow at Haas School of UC-Berkeley) share their design experiences and how companies and organizations can build their creative competence. The excerpt from the book focuses on empathy (understanding what people need and incorporating them in products and services) and how over the years they have used anthropological field research at every stage of the design process to empathise with the end users. Authors suggest 'hybrid insights' an approach that integrates quantitative research into human-centered design. They cite a successful example of a bank that utilized these concepts to understand the needs and wants of the millennial generation (GenY) and created specific financial products for this target segment. Read on...

Slate: Why Designers Need Empathy - Designing better online banking for millennials
Author: David Kelley, Tom Kelly

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 06 nov 2013

With increased pace of change, global reach and advance communication technologies it becomes imperative for businesses to align and adapt their processes to this changing reality. Although the basics of business like cost reduction, profitability and customer focus don't change but the way businesses achieve their goals continues to change. Business Process Management (BPM) as a concept and practice have been there with trends like 'work simplification', 'workflow automation', 'business process reengineering' etc being part of it and revolutionizing the way its stakeholders (owners, managers, workers) think about business organization. BPM suite offered by software and IT solution vendors that is used to simplify and streamline business processes should be capable of adapting to the changing demands of the business environment. Human resource department with various administrative tasks requires BPM suite that can align with the changing demand and workforce requirement like freelancers, part-time workers, telecommuters etc, that the standard off the shelve HR solution might not be efficiently able to address. BPM suite gives HR flexibility to customize and individualize the processes with changing expectations. Read on...

Firmology: Is Your BPM Solution Responsive Enough to Keep Up?
Author: Maricel Rivera

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 04 nov 2013

Performance measurement and management are a set of activities and tools that are essential to ascertain the effective and efficient utilization of resources and enhance and improve capabilities of the organization for continued success. Strategic planning is required for organizations to define goals and the processes to achieve them. Every component of the organization has to be aligned and focused towards these goals and objectives. Cost and profitability analysis ensures that better decisions are made, costs are controlled and profitability is optimized. Strategic planning coupled with cost and profitability analysis can fill the gap in performance management solutions. Organizations need to complete the performance management cycle by efficiently aligning and converging the priorities of finance and IT departments and make relevant investments in obtaining the best solutions either by utilizing outside consulting expertise or by seeking in-house skills of the existing software vendor. Read on...

Business 2 Community: Filling The Gaps In Performance Management
Author: Malcolm Faulkner

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 01 nov 2013

Organizations become stagnant if they don't continue to learn and adapt to the changes in their environment. Professor Don Mroz of Post University in US, suggests five essential aspects that can transform a stagnant organization into dynamic, thriving and evolving workplace with innovation at its core - (1) Create a learning environment (idea sharing, professional development, discussions for idea generation, openness to collaboration) (2) Consider your attitude (culture of openness, receptive to new ideas and concepts, don't fear change, adaptive attitude) (3) Create a culture of trust (value perspectives, understand diversity, awareness of ones behavior, sensitivity to others) (4) Celebrate small wins (employee recognition, foster and support small achievements, value organic sense of progress) (5) Experiment (encourage experimentation, learn from failures). Moreover organizations should continue to look for newer ways and models to better themselves, innovate and adapt to their specific environment. Read on...

WIRED: How to Invigorate Innovation in a Stagnant Organization
Author: Don Mroz

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 31 oct 2013

In today's fast paced, ever changing and highly competitive global business environment companies and organizations have to learn to adapt to new realities and leverage this adaptiveness for success. In her recent book 'The End of Competitive Advantage', Professor Rita Gunther McGrath of Columbia University points out the lack of relevance of traditional tools of strategy like 'five forces', 'core competencies' etc in the current business scenario. According to her these strategy tools focused primarily on gaining sustainable competitive advantage. In her book she proposes a concept of 'transient competitive advantage' that relies on gaining value out of short-lived opportunities with speed and decisiveness. Her concepts assists companies with - Continuous reconfiguration; Using resource allocation to promote deftness; Building on innovation proficiency; Leadership and mind-set; Personal meaning of transient advantage. Read on...

EurekAlert: Columbia Business School Professor Rita McGrath cites the end of competitive advantage in new book
Author: NA

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 29 oct 2013

With advancements in analytics technologies and availability of big data, marketers have valuable tools and information on various aspects of customer interaction with their businesses. This information can be used to get insights and generate ideas for delivering better products and services. Moreover it can provide an opportunity to experiment and validate ideas at faster pace (accelerated business innovation). All this is creating new principles and dynamics of market behavior and giving rise to a new science, 'Customer Science'. To better observe, analyze and understand customer behavior and apply it for the benefit of businesses and customers, requires talented and skilled pool of 'Customer Scientists'. These scientists may not all come from the traditional marketing fields and would need to be diverse in skills - analytical, cumputer literate, digital natives, creative and thoughtful at the same time factual and pragmatic. Moreover knowledge of all the principles and methods of the past for analyzing and understanding customers and obtaining learning lessons like outcome driven innovation, balanced scorecard, GOAL, Six Sigma etc are now being utilized by enterprises to obtain insights from customer data and this will finally evolve into a mature field of customer science in future. Read on...

Business 2 Community: Birth of the Customer Scientist
Author: Ian Tomlin

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 29 oct 2013

One of the most important attribute of the organizational leadership is to build and manage its culture. Since organizations and their environment are continuously changing and evolving, it is necessary that members of the organization embrace change and adapt to it. John Kispert, CEO of Spansion, provides guiding principles to manage change by making innovation an inherent part of the corporate culture - Be accountable to each other; Promote open communication and trust; Be decisive and take risks. Read on...

Bloomberg: Want to Innovate? It Starts With Your Corporate Culture
Author: John Kispert

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 28 oct 2013

Telecommuting (Working from home or other convenient location without coming to office) is an important aspect of the work dynamics in many industries particularly those that have intensive use of computers and connected devices to accomplish work responsibilites by their employees who mostly work individually. Although advances in collaborative technologies have even facilitated team-work where employees working from different location can work together to complete projects. But recent work policy initiatives by Hewlett-Packard and Yahoo, that are intended to discourage work-from-home, have brought telecommuting to the forefront of the human resources debate. Their argument is that telecommuting is affecting the corporate culture and making team work difficult. Author suggests that to understand and estimate the effects of telecommuting on their organization's culture, business leaders should ask themselves these questions - (1) What kind of culture is to be created? (2) What are the needs of the organization? (3) How to plan to make sure that work-from-home policy does not compromise communication? (4) How often is it necessary for employees to collaborate? (5) How will a work-from-home policy affect productivity? (6) How will the work-from-home productivity is to be measured? Read on...

Reuters: How to Protect Corporate Culture in a Telecommuting World
Author: NA

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 27 oct 2013

'Operational Excellence' is the management concept that focuses on the continuous improvement of the business processes towards achieving perfection and maximum efficiency. Business practices like Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, Total Quality Management (TQM), Scientific Management, 5S etc are all related to 'Operational Excellence'. According to the author, over the years it has shown that businesses that focused one sidedly on Operational Excellence, although successful in short-term, got impacted by 'Systemic Inertia' in the long-term. They ignored the unpredictable and changing nature of the business environment. To overcome this author suggests - Businesses should experiment in small way and accelerate failure while the losses are still manageable; Inculcate entrepreneurial attitude, focus on outputs also and learn to adapt to the changes and demands of the environment; Increase flexibility, that might look operationally inefficient in short-term, but have long-term benefits. Read on...

Innovation Excellence: The Evil Twin Of Operational Excellence
Author: Costas Papaikonomou

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