How to Transform Your Organization to Succeed During the Revolution

Businesses in every industry have always had to adapt to stay competitive. But the need to transform is even greater in today's global market, where success is realized by the swiftest and most agile of competitors. However, many companies are asleep at the wheel and they better wake up soon before the revolution comes knocking at their door. How can you prepare? Read the following thoughts to help you identify the necessary initial steps.

Transforming companies is a high-level and broad strategic concept. As they say, the "devil is in the details". The globally competitive arena has little room for laggards. Enterprises in every industry are trying to align and integrate processes and technology with business strategy to foster expansion into new markets, and more quickly deliver the products and services customers demand. In this climate of uncertainty and risk, companies are also seeking to optimize operations to achieve these goals at lower costs. Those businesses able to harness their assets toward these ends will advance at a pace and with an agility that will leave their competitors well behind and those organizations that do not embrace this reality are lacking in true strategic vision reflective of the reality that the revolution has unleashed on us all.

Getting there from where you are as a business is requires insights uncommon among many company leaders and management, but it also requires planning, precision, and the patience to shape organizational culture to new business models and new ways of working (can I stress patience and uncommon insights). Another saying has it, after all, that the journey of 1,000 miles begins with the first step. That step is sure to differ depending on the particular industry and organization, and how the organization currently manages the integration of technology and business strategy to support its road map. Some businesses will focus primarily on upgrading ERP systems to streamline processes or overcome the complexities of their application and IT environments via service oriented architectures. Others will concentrate initially on driving greater productivity and ROI from data center infrastructures. Still others will aim, first and foremost, to improve the flow of information to reduce lead times in the supply chain. Some will not see these examples as integral pieces of the solutions at all.

The optimization of business processes lies behind many of the efforts organizations will undertake on their way to business transformation. Yet in so many companies, understanding of processes is fragmented by department, and integration is stymied by "silo'd" IT infrastructures, making it difficult to improve on current practices—and blocking efforts to realize the full potential of business transformation.

Surely that goes a good way toward explaining why a growing number of organizations are turning to business process outsourcing providers that can leverage deep industry and functional expertise, leading technology practices, and an advanced, global delivery model to help them transform their highest-value business processes and improve their business performance. Leading BPO analyst firm NelsonHall reported in June that the BPO market is forecast to reach $450 billion by 2012. "Underlying strength in the BPO market is being amplified by the current economic slowdown, placing pressure on organizations across all sectors to review their efficiency in mature markets," the firm notes.

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