Juggling Today's Challenges
By
Dennis Sullivan
Chairman & CEO
Today’s leaders are faced with a fast-paced business environment. It is
filled with challenges and new decisions every time they turn around.
Business magazines, management gurus, and anybody with a laptop or a
microphone is willing to give advice. The problem is that most of them
don’t have the responsibility or the accountability to deliver results
to their customers, employees, or stockholders. So how do those at the
top of any organization decide which direction to go, what change to
make to their business model, or what strategy to follow?
Understanding the alternatives and knowing when and where to apply new
business strategies is step one. Next is being able to relate those new
concepts, and old ones with new names, to their unique business
problems. That is the real challenge for today’s business leaders.
“Business analytics” and “business transformation” titles top the
best-seller book charts these days. But haven’t we always measured
things, tracked performance, and incorporated some form of predictive
analysis in all projects? Yes, but today, with the ability to mine
mountains of data and cut research time to hours instead of weeks,
leaders can make better, faster, and more informed decisions.
Outsourcing and insourcing decisions become more than just a unit-cost
analysis. Information is available around cost, customer satisfaction,
and the impact of one product decision on the company’s overall
profitability. This allows a better understanding of the impact of
future decisions while giving the top decision makers a better chance of
getting the “right” strategy in place the first time. With access to
data-driven decision-making information and creative leaders who are
able to blend experience with data, you don’t need a Ph.D. in math to
make a good decision. New generations of leaders are emerging in the
health care and financial services industries, and they are equipped
with experience and data to help change the direction of industries that
need creative thinkers.
With health care reform at our doorstep, it will take strategies with a
wider lens to react to the potential impact in the industry. Changes in
investment strategy and informed consumers with their own investment
data at their fingertips will require the investment industry to ramp up
service delivery models. New operational strategies are needed to better
serve customer needs in the next ten years. Be ready! The change is just
beginning.
