MARKET ASSESSMENT FOR NEW PRODUCTS – THE 10 KEY QUESTIONS APPROACH

We have spoken to many senior leaders who are frustrated with their product development processes and who believe that despite their best efforts, most products move forward because of “gut feel” rather than a detailed and consistent market assessment. Developing solid rationale and requiring a business case that includes an appropriate market assessment should be a requirement for advancing a new product or service concept to market. The business case, and its market assessment section, (more…)

There are multiple business and workforce trends occurring that are affecting every business, large and small, in every industry that will require senior leaders to rethink how they acquire, utilize and manage a workforce that consists of employees, temps and contractors.  The following trends have a greater impact on middle market companies. (more…)

We consistently hear from middle market CIO’s that the three items at the top of their strategic charter are:

1. Taking cost out the business,
2. Greater agility to meet changing market conditions
3. Improving and sustaining a close Business-IT alignment. 

Where and how your IT infrastructure is housed significantly impacts (more…)

In an earlier blog we saw that a well-crafted IT transformation strategy (a.k.a. cost takeout strategy) is so much more than a once and done cost reduction exercise.  A cost takeout strategy orchestrates (more…)

Continuous improvement has a long history in the business world and after over 50 years, many leadership teams we talk to believe that it can be done quickly and implemented throughout the organization in 6-12 months.  How wrong they are. This article is about not overdoing continuous improvement at the outset.

It is important to understand the base you are operating from. Most organizations (more…)

As cloud services have proliferated in the last decade, companies are increasingly asking themselves if they really need to have their own in-house datacenter. The digital footprint and budget for small companies often does not warrant the cost (more…)

The first blog in this series identified the phenomenon of Anti-Strategy as well-intentioned decisions made by senior leaders that are functionally focused because of a lack of a clear business strategy. With digital and information technology (IT) getting firmly established as a strategic corporate asset for middle market companies, we turn our attention to (more…)

In the introduction, I identified 5 things you need to do to drive continuous improvement.  They are:

1. Align continuous improvement with strategic objectives
2. Don’t overdo process excellence at outset; this is an evolutionary process
3. Integrate continuous improvement into a culture of strategic execution
4. Blend the best practices from the different methodologies
5. Focus on data, not emotions

In this article, we show how business strategy should drive continuous improvement programs and not the other way around. Continuous improvement (more…)

An earlier blog talked about the building blocks for aligning and integrating IT with the business.  As IT becomes increasingly intertwined with the core operations of the company it’s time to take a fresh look at traditional middle market approaches to IT related Business Continuity (BC) and Disaster Recovery (DR). (more…)

We have often heard middle market client executives say, ‘We continue to spend a lot of money on our IT Infrastructure, but how do we know that we are getting our money’s worth?  Are our existing technology and software investments effectively meeting our current needs?  Are our IT/IS platforms serving the company’s current life cycle needs and are they (more…)