The cornerstones of the recession proof enterprise

Recession proof enterprises focus on Customers, Cash and Cost
The other day I heard the CEO of Akzo talk about the 3c’s that mattered most in challenging times: Customers, Cash and Cost. One of the key questions, however, how to execute and re-align your organizational processes to these 3C’s? In practice a large number of organizations are organized in silos that prevent effective collaboration and thus reaching cost efficiencies or customer centric actions. Recently, a book was published that provides a good read on this topic. It was written by David Aaker (2008) titled ‘spanning silos’.

Recession proof enterprises talk to customers
‘If you’re in management, you need to leave your office right now, put down all the reports and slides, and go talk to your customers. If you’re in B2B, talk to your customers’ customers. Get out from inside the battle and see the conflict from a different perspective.’ (http://www.chrisbrogan.com/how-to-win-in-a-recession-like-a-ninja/) This quote was taken from a recent blogpost on how to win in a recession like a ninja.

Recession proof enterprises focus on customer intimacy
In an earlier post I addressed customer intimacy as an effective recession proof strategy. I defined customer intimacy as people collaborating in a structured and customer centric way to create customer value and achieve results.

Recession proof enterprises focus on Communication, Collaboration, Compliance and Control.
A few years ago I wrote a paper on the arrival of new technologies that have a promise of improving the way people work together and structure their processes. These new technologies were enabling new ways of working and structuring processes in way that was previously not possible.

One of the key ideas behind this paper was to step aside from functional silos but to provide cornerstones to get organized around processes. In order to align people and achieve results one must take the following into account: communication, collaboration, compliance and control:

• Facilitating better communication by giving all stakeholders real-time access to relevant information based on a single source of truth.
• Improving collaboration by integrating business processes throughout the value chain
• Promoting compliance with internal policies and external regulations via highly standardized and transparent systems
• Establishing more control by providing real-time access to key performance indicators at the push of a button