If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

You do not need expensive consultants to perform a health check of your organization. All you need is intellectual honesty. The following "acid test" questions are provided to enable you to assess the operational efficiency of your organization. 

1. To which extent is the bulk of your customers aware of the features, options, possibilities of your products and services ?

q       Fully

q       Largely

q       Partially

q       Basically

2. Is your billing process fully automated and integrated with your operations ?

3. Does the general management receive reliable management reports coming directly from the corporate information systems or do those reports have to be reworked in spreadsheets ?

4. Do you have a precise, detailed and reliable knowledge of the profitability of your large customers or of any homogenous group of smaller customers ?

5. Do you have a precise, detailed and reliable knowledge of the profitability of the products and/or services delivered ?

6. Can these specific profitability items be related to your profit and loss general accounting ?

7. Is your sales force fully knowledgeable of the product offering applicable to the prospects that they visit ?

8. Does your business run as efficiently as you had planned it to run say three years ago ?

9. Have you considered downsizing recently ?

10. Does the IT department deliver its systems on time, on budget and within the specifications ?

11. What fraction of its time does general management spend on strategy ?

q       less than 2 %

q       between 2 % and 10 %

q       between 10 % and 20 %

q       More than 20 %

12. Has anyone within the organization a clear view of the status of all cross-departmental projects in progress ?

If you can give a favorable answer to [almost] all those questions then your company is a textbook case worth studying in business schools. We would be very happy to learn business skills from the managers running your organization. 

Else you might consider Strategic Simplification to increase the overall Pareto efficiency of your organization. Do not hesitate to contact us for further information.

Ó IT Cortex