The business fundamentals are undergoing big structural shifts. Enterprises are expected to manage multiple yet competing aspects of innovation, agility, risk and efficiency, all together. This is in sharp contrast to the earlier paradigm of complementary aspects of linear business growth and easy availability of resources.
That squarely puts efficiency (or productivity), often considered as an operational construct, into the strategic thinking. Businesses need to be innovative and efficient at the same time to face the ‘volatile revenue – rising costs’ challenge. They need to realize that efficiency is not an anti-thesis to innovation, rather it is complimentary to it.
Innovation without efficiency is merely accidental, not a planned outcome. Moreover, it may simply fritter away if not operationalized. Similarly, efficiency without innovation may not be sustainable amid fast changing consumer expectations and disruptive forces.
Efficiency or productivity is a broad and deep construct that needs to be understood holistically. Organizations need to address the multiple aspects (as shown in the figure below) that span the organizational level (individual to collective) and focus (process excellence to process capability) to prepare themselves for the volatile environment and address the vulnerabilities that comes with it.
We present four simple yet powerful facets of efficiency.
Process automation is the simplest of the aspects, it helps a process or the person handling the process become more productive, hence saving time and cost.
Process standardization and integration takes the concept to a collective of processes or people, allowing them to share, collaborate and network better. The resulting efficiency or productivity gains depend on how well is the collective aligned and orchestrated together.
Process control that gives individuals the power to leverage information for decision making and save on deviations before they go out of control. Management dashboards, process metrics and KPIs, all help individuals control their environment. Management of performance is a capability that contemporary organizations need and the closer to real-time it is, the better the impact.
Process management encompass automation, integration, and control towards optimization of time and cost. It is a capability that is very relevant in the time of ‘volatile revenue – rising costs’ as it prepares a business to withstand fluctuations in multiple aspects that may have a direct bearing on the performance. It is like the shock absorbers inbuilt in a vehicle.
It is important that business leaders appreciate the multiple facets of organizational efficiency. It is an automated, standardized, integrated, controlled and managed business platform that can help enterprises make efficiency co-exist with innovation. How? Well if the work environment is less chaotic, resulting into lesser occasions for reconciliations and conflicts, it will allow people to focus on creative aspects of their work. It may not automatically happen, a suitable work environment or culture needs to be developed, but the moot point is that only an efficient organizations become an innovative organization.
The role of technology in building the business platform that is capable of linking efficiency and innovation also needs to be appreciated. Technology providers can map their services with the four simple aspects of efficiency in order to make them relevant for the user enterprises.
Coeus Age brings action-packed interventions in organizations to help business leaders participants –
– Appreciate the much broader connotation and aspects of efficiency (and productivity)
– Understand the multiple aspects of efficiency and
– Learn diverse ways to deal with those aspects
For details please contact Koushik Chatterjee at koushik@coeusage.com or 9810259805.
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