The Sales Café

Setting up a Business Architecture helps solve unwanted mysteries

How well an organization performs in and across locations or departments can be a mystery to many. Business leaders have to assume that each person is doing their job well and that local leaders will course correct when that is not the case. However, there is a nagging awareness that something important - something slithering in the dark spaces beween the departments - could raise its ugly head and cause corporate misery. Rather than hope an antidote will be available when needed, you can dig deep inside the organization before a crisis hits and take positive action to prevent these kinds of unfortunate surprises. 

Using the following checklist is the first step in creating a Business Architecture that will help identify hidden issues and immediately improve system-wide best practices. 

Do you know the answers?

1. Aim for the future:  What’s changing and how does that impact your business?
2. Identify the big changes:  What do we have to do to be successful in the future & how is that different than today?
3. Pinpoint focus:  What are the few key things we have to do to move to our future state?
4. Prioritize actions:  What are we working on today and how does that relate to what we will need to do?
5. Measure effect:  How will we know if we are making progress to our desired state? What can we measure?
6. Repeat:  Change is the only constant. Repeat the five steps to make sure you are adaptive to the inevitable changes.    
   

Once you've tackled these questions, assign a dollar value for each answer or situation. How much does your organization stand to lose or gain if the worst or best were to happen? 

Set up a structure using Business Architecture

The first way to put your arms around these issues is to map your business and create an architectural plan. Business architecture explains the structure of an organization in terms of its capabilities, governance structure, business processes, and business information. The business capability is what the organization does; the business processes are how the organization executes its capabilities. The business architecture takes into account all of an enterprise's external stakeholders (including customers, suppliers and regulators) and captures all pertinent and critical data and information.

A business architecture helps you understand the impact that change has on the business environment. Ensuring harmony between goals and objectives, programs and initiatives, and the underlying information systems and processes enables managers to adapt to dynamic - and inevitable - business change.

Example: Preventing micro-managment after a merger

Organizational leaders often micro-manage, not because of character flaws, but because they don't know what's going on. An incoherent structure, misaligned processes, and poor reporting systems try even the best managers.

In a post-merger environment, these problems are magnified. Very often, the goals for the newly combined organization are stated before the path to reaching them is built. The leaders of the acquiring company manage without knowing exactly what the workers from acquired company do. New managers don't know what the new reports are doing - and the new reports don't want to tell the new managers what they are doing! Both sides are afraid for their jobs. 

Creating a post-merger business architecture provides managers with a deep current understanding of the business - the "as-is" state, and tools to visualize and create the path towards "to-be" state: what the teams do, the processes they use, how current workflow affects other areas of the business, the results produced by the work processes, and how processes and people are managed. 

With a deeper understanding of the business and how it runs, leaders and managers can make rational decisions without having to micro-manage. 

Business mysteries are dangerous and certainly unwanted. With a business architecture in place, leaders can know what is happening throughout the business, how managers and workers are addressing challenges, and how to create successful solutions.

While economists have recently announced that there has been a global recession, and that it will extend into 2009, most business people have seen two dramatic dips, one last year and one now.

As with all recessions, amidst all the doom and gloom, there are interesting opportunities. For entire sectors of the marketplace, in all lines of business, companies and people are taking the steps to remake themselves now, launching the necessary strategies that will initiate a strong recovery. These are smart moves, because any company that wants to stay in business beyond this current economic maelstrom needs to create a plan to find new business and grow.

It could be the recession or just the usual forces that propel change that are stressing your company. Telltale signs might include:

• Sales opportunities of any size become challenging to close, because the market is so volatile;
• Customers are not buying at all; and,
• High commissions have spiraled downward, adding a level of personal stress to salespeople and resulting in them not keeping an eye on the ball.

When times are tough, companies basically fall into two camps: either 1) they cut back to stay profitable; or, 2) they lose the ability to make a profit and have few prospects in the pipeline. Obviously, it’s better to be in the first camp.

Take Action
Here are a few steps you can take during the next six months to navigate this uncertain economic climate.

1. Put together a good plan that deals with reality and determines your next arc of growth. Be honest about your company’s current strengths and weaknesses. This is essentially a recovery plan. It needs to be well thought out and well researched. This is a very shrewd investment of time and resources.
2. Assign your sales force the tasks to execute this plan. Make this a team effort. Have your sales people use the extra time they may have now to find new markets and do the critical on-the-job research.
3. Assess your people and fill the gaps. But, only fill the gaps, focusing on your plan instead of general “need to get better at selling” initiatives.
4. Invest in your personal leadership development. This is not the time to start building basic skills in your people – you need to lead them through the battle.