Is the recession hampering your business and affecting your work as an individual? Are you one among those who is on bench because of no project allocation? Well, why not just sit peacefully and churn your brain to ignite the thought process which I am sure the recession will not be able to affect. Yes, I am talking about one thing which can really bring a revolution in your organization especially for start ups and also as an individual. The magic word is “IDEATION”. When you have nothing to do, brainstorm with your friends or colleagues. Think about the business ideas which are unique and you think can bring a change to the face of economy or society. The idea need not have to be great, but yes, it should be practical and something which can be implemented. Truly said by someone, that only when you think 100 ideas, then only there would be 10 which would be viable and perhaps 1 or 2 which would hit the bull’s eye. Sometimes, the worst of ideas have made millions not because they were rejected outright by few angel investors or didn’t have the potential to made it but because of the confidence and commitment by the individuals to make it happen.
In times, when the recession is hitting every individual and business, Economic Times came up with POWER OF IDEAS and to everyone’s surprise some 11,000 entries were received out of which 1000 got selected for second round of selection. And, those who were rejected, well my advice would be to work on your idea more, think about the loopholes of your ideas and work on it to make it more viable. And, if not anything, start ideating more. Every individual can bring a change. Whether it’s an economy or society, change starts with an effort of a single individual. And, Ideation is one way to bring that change. Ideas good or bad help you in exploring and understanding a lot about the nuances of business because a lot of research is involved. A thorough research on the market, competitors, and services/products gives you an insight whether your thought process is in right direction. Sometimes, there is a common question which arises is, what triggers an idea?? Well, the answer is “Difference”, difference to the society, economy or you as an individual. Anything that can give you a creative satisfaction is the cause for an idea to evolve. Whether an idea to be a success or a failure depends on the efforts, analysis, and viability of implementation of an organization or an individual. There’s nothing which can beat the recession the way an IDEA do. Idea can be about a fresh start, diversification, acquisition or merger or sometimes a mere discussion. An IDEA CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE, rather, it changes the very moment of you as an individual or organization because of the hunger to do something new. So, what are you waiting for?? FORGET THE SENSEX and START IDEATING….
Friday, April 3, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Product Management: An Insight (Contd.)
1. Confusing innovation with value: Innovation without a clear purpose is simply technology looking for a problem to solve. There are countless products on the market today simply because they were now possible, not necessarily because they solve a real problem, or solve the problem better than other solutions. What motivates the engineers on the product team may not be the same thing that motivates others. Engineers care a great deal about the technical challenge itself, and the particular technologies that they get the opportunity to learn and use. However, if the engineering team is provided with a clear vision and product strategy, and if the engineers are provided the opportunity to see the customer problems directly, then they can often come up with innovative solutions to very real problems, and breakthrough products can result. The key is that innovation needs to happen in the context of a vision and strategy. The innovation needs to be in support of providing true customer value.
2. Confusing yourself with your customer: We must constantly put our products in front of customers directly from the target market, and consider carefully their response and constantly strive to keep their perspective in mind and not our own understandably skewed viewpoint. So many products today are unusable to all but the product’s creators. Typically this is the result of poor product design and no usability testing. When usability testing is performed, it is often too little, and too late in the product lifecycle to matter. If you haven’t had your product tested for usability recently, it is likely the insights you will gain from testing will benefit you greatly. The goal should be to redesign your product as necessary to get to the point where you can run usability testing with people from your target market and have these potential customers emerge enthusiastic and eager to buy the product. The use of prototypes during usability testing can significantly help in building confidence that the product you eventually build will, in fact, be usable and desirable.
3. Confusing the customer with the user: The person who buys the product to address a business requirement may have very different concerns from the people that sit down and use the product every day. Sales people understand this distinction, and often break the types of users down further into the various people in a company that influence a purchase. But too often the product team is just exposed to the customers – the buyers or economic decision makers – who may do their best to try and represent the needs of the users too, but it is critical to have a clear understanding of the different types of people that will actually have to use the system. The technique of personas or user profiling can help to raise this issue early and ensure the product.
Interesting, more in the next post….
2. Confusing yourself with your customer: We must constantly put our products in front of customers directly from the target market, and consider carefully their response and constantly strive to keep their perspective in mind and not our own understandably skewed viewpoint. So many products today are unusable to all but the product’s creators. Typically this is the result of poor product design and no usability testing. When usability testing is performed, it is often too little, and too late in the product lifecycle to matter. If you haven’t had your product tested for usability recently, it is likely the insights you will gain from testing will benefit you greatly. The goal should be to redesign your product as necessary to get to the point where you can run usability testing with people from your target market and have these potential customers emerge enthusiastic and eager to buy the product. The use of prototypes during usability testing can significantly help in building confidence that the product you eventually build will, in fact, be usable and desirable.
3. Confusing the customer with the user: The person who buys the product to address a business requirement may have very different concerns from the people that sit down and use the product every day. Sales people understand this distinction, and often break the types of users down further into the various people in a company that influence a purchase. But too often the product team is just exposed to the customers – the buyers or economic decision makers – who may do their best to try and represent the needs of the users too, but it is critical to have a clear understanding of the different types of people that will actually have to use the system. The technique of personas or user profiling can help to raise this issue early and ensure the product.
Interesting, more in the next post….
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
PRACTISING the Best PRACTICES
There is always a room for improvement and every organization has some measurement and benchmark placed to improve their policies and processes. The Best Practices is certainly not absolute and it depends on the kind of organization and its services/ offerings. But few things for an organization to look for while defining the best practices for them are:
1. Internal Practices: Before you start looking outside, concentrate internally. If you are a start up, then check the measure, matrices and balances and see whether they are properly in place. Before you actually start on improving policies and processes, see to it that the basic requirements are met for any processes or policies. For e.g. a successful project management should fill the criteria of gathering exact client requirements, defect management, risk management etc. And, if you are already an established organization, how the existing practices have affected and impacted the organization as a whole in terms of performance and running of organization.
2. Market Benchmarking: An organization cannot run in isolation. A lot of external factors impact the organization. It’s always advisable to research on specific practices and policies used by other organizations in the market who sell the same kind of services/ offerings. Not only that, you can also focus on the practices and policies which are generic to all the organizations. For e.g. Risk Management is very specific area while Resource Management is quite a generic one.
3. Involve your customers: Customers are the king. Always involve them while setting up the best practices in your organizations, take their suggestions and regularly inform them regarding the changes in process and policies in your organization. Publish Newsletters and let them know the practice areas of other organizations and how it differs in your organization. And, sometimes, involving your clients and customers can help you get the benefits of extracting information regarding the dynamics of other organizations as they are the one who works with different service providers.
4. Involve Industry Experts: Industry Experts are the one who have the experience of working in various organizations across the globe, working with acclaimed industry leaders and renowned organization. So, they have the knowledge of setting up the best practices for each and every kind of organization. Involving them would certainly help the organization in knowing the loopholes in the existing practices and the areas of improvement.
5. Documentation and Version Control: It might seem trivial but this is one of the important aspects of best practices in any organization. Proper documentation and version control helps in knowing the history and the changes that actually occurred in any practices and its overall impact.
1. Internal Practices: Before you start looking outside, concentrate internally. If you are a start up, then check the measure, matrices and balances and see whether they are properly in place. Before you actually start on improving policies and processes, see to it that the basic requirements are met for any processes or policies. For e.g. a successful project management should fill the criteria of gathering exact client requirements, defect management, risk management etc. And, if you are already an established organization, how the existing practices have affected and impacted the organization as a whole in terms of performance and running of organization.
2. Market Benchmarking: An organization cannot run in isolation. A lot of external factors impact the organization. It’s always advisable to research on specific practices and policies used by other organizations in the market who sell the same kind of services/ offerings. Not only that, you can also focus on the practices and policies which are generic to all the organizations. For e.g. Risk Management is very specific area while Resource Management is quite a generic one.
3. Involve your customers: Customers are the king. Always involve them while setting up the best practices in your organizations, take their suggestions and regularly inform them regarding the changes in process and policies in your organization. Publish Newsletters and let them know the practice areas of other organizations and how it differs in your organization. And, sometimes, involving your clients and customers can help you get the benefits of extracting information regarding the dynamics of other organizations as they are the one who works with different service providers.
4. Involve Industry Experts: Industry Experts are the one who have the experience of working in various organizations across the globe, working with acclaimed industry leaders and renowned organization. So, they have the knowledge of setting up the best practices for each and every kind of organization. Involving them would certainly help the organization in knowing the loopholes in the existing practices and the areas of improvement.
5. Documentation and Version Control: It might seem trivial but this is one of the important aspects of best practices in any organization. Proper documentation and version control helps in knowing the history and the changes that actually occurred in any practices and its overall impact.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Product Management: An Insight
Products are everywhere, some succeed and some fail. To create a successful product, it needs to follow a structured approach which is the product development process. Product development is the process of designing, building, operating, and maintaining a good product or service. Software and Internet companies use a product development process to ensure that they are not just manufacturing a technology, but creating a product that people will want to buy and continue to use. Product development adds things like pricing, marketing, and customer support to the technology to create a complete product. Without a product management philosophy and discipline, an IT organization becomes focused on the technology instead of the customers and is often organized along technology lines rather than in ways that benefit the customer.
This article is dedicated to few common product pitfalls which lead to a product disaster which are listed below:
Confusing product requirements with customer requirements.
Confusing innovation with value.
Confusing yourself with your customer.
Confusing the customer with the user.
Confusing features with benefits.
Confusing building right product with building product right.
Confusing good product with good business model.
Confusing Inspiring features with “Nice-to-Have” features.
Confusing adding features with improving product.
Confusing impressive specifications with an impressive product.
To briefly explain the first point, it’s not always wise to look forward to your marketing team, sales or customer for knowing about the kind of product you are working on. Sometimes, the customers don’t understand or know the kind of similar products available in the market and sometimes they don’t have the expertise on the technology and don’t understand the possibility of developing the product. Hence, Product management is responsible for defining the right product. It is the job of the product manager to deeply understand the target market and their needs, and then to work to combine what is possible with what is desirable, to create products that solve real problems. This is why top product managers often come from the engineering ranks; they understand what is possible, and when they see an unmet need they can often envision new and innovative solutions. Product marketing is also very important, just very different. Product marketing is all about communicating what the product does to the target market, and supporting the sales channel with the tools they need to effectively sell. Good product marketing is difficult and critical, but it is not at all the same thing as inventing the actual product.
Interesting, more in the next post….
This article is dedicated to few common product pitfalls which lead to a product disaster which are listed below:
Confusing product requirements with customer requirements.
Confusing innovation with value.
Confusing yourself with your customer.
Confusing the customer with the user.
Confusing features with benefits.
Confusing building right product with building product right.
Confusing good product with good business model.
Confusing Inspiring features with “Nice-to-Have” features.
Confusing adding features with improving product.
Confusing impressive specifications with an impressive product.
To briefly explain the first point, it’s not always wise to look forward to your marketing team, sales or customer for knowing about the kind of product you are working on. Sometimes, the customers don’t understand or know the kind of similar products available in the market and sometimes they don’t have the expertise on the technology and don’t understand the possibility of developing the product. Hence, Product management is responsible for defining the right product. It is the job of the product manager to deeply understand the target market and their needs, and then to work to combine what is possible with what is desirable, to create products that solve real problems. This is why top product managers often come from the engineering ranks; they understand what is possible, and when they see an unmet need they can often envision new and innovative solutions. Product marketing is also very important, just very different. Product marketing is all about communicating what the product does to the target market, and supporting the sales channel with the tools they need to effectively sell. Good product marketing is difficult and critical, but it is not at all the same thing as inventing the actual product.
Interesting, more in the next post….
Monday, January 12, 2009
The buzzword is CMR more than CRM...
Customer Relationship Management has been the mantra for many organizations now. Though critical, most of the CRM implementations are failure stories. Why?? Probably because, most of the times, the organization wants the CRM deployed quickly and the returns are expected soon, the vision remains unclear, the management of customers appears to be a Herculean task. They fail to understand what the customers really want and how CRM can be a driving force to better manage the relationship. There is a paradigm shift now from CRM to CMR i.e. Customer management of relationships, it’s just not about customer relationship but customer empowerment too. CMR gives the customer the power to tell what he’s is interested in and not interested in.
Every organization is different, so are its requirements. It’s always essential to align the right kind of CRM vendor application with the kind of clients you cater to and the services/ products you offer. More than what you perceive as important in CRM application, it’s important what your client wants in an application. The organization should not try to implement CRM as a technology but as a Sales and Marketing practice. The organization should be ready for a process and philosophy change if required from client’s perspective. It has been observed that CRM is being used to curb the information flow for security reasons because of which the importance of information flow among certain stakeholders is ignored. CMR addresses that companies should encourage information flow not only with customers but also within the organization. A classic example being one organization bidding with two different solutions/offerings and the two teams are unaware of each other, the result being business clash among practices. CMR just not stresses on capturing right kind of customer information but also how that information would be helpful to the organization in return. It’s a two way process of maintaining the relationship. The most important question to ask next is whether your sales force is trained enough to understand the terminologies of the application and enter the correct data. In many situations, the sales force just ignores the meaning of certain terminologies and enter data what they assume and in the process the reporting shows inaccurate results hampering business forecasts. Training and updating the CRM users on the latest functionalities and features should be a continuous process and automation of knowledge transfer should be a key initiative by the organization through CRM. As they say, the first step for the success of CMR is CRM. Interesting, more in the next post…
to be continued)
Every organization is different, so are its requirements. It’s always essential to align the right kind of CRM vendor application with the kind of clients you cater to and the services/ products you offer. More than what you perceive as important in CRM application, it’s important what your client wants in an application. The organization should not try to implement CRM as a technology but as a Sales and Marketing practice. The organization should be ready for a process and philosophy change if required from client’s perspective. It has been observed that CRM is being used to curb the information flow for security reasons because of which the importance of information flow among certain stakeholders is ignored. CMR addresses that companies should encourage information flow not only with customers but also within the organization. A classic example being one organization bidding with two different solutions/offerings and the two teams are unaware of each other, the result being business clash among practices. CMR just not stresses on capturing right kind of customer information but also how that information would be helpful to the organization in return. It’s a two way process of maintaining the relationship. The most important question to ask next is whether your sales force is trained enough to understand the terminologies of the application and enter the correct data. In many situations, the sales force just ignores the meaning of certain terminologies and enter data what they assume and in the process the reporting shows inaccurate results hampering business forecasts. Training and updating the CRM users on the latest functionalities and features should be a continuous process and automation of knowledge transfer should be a key initiative by the organization through CRM. As they say, the first step for the success of CMR is CRM. Interesting, more in the next post…
to be continued)
Friday, January 9, 2009
Ernst and Young’s tips for Business in 2009
One
Focus on Cash, manage it well as it is the most precious asset that businesses hold. Ensure that even if your revenues are dropping, you have sufficient cash to meet your immediate obligations.
Plenty Cash reserve can avoid situations like automobile companies in US.
Two
Pay attention to risk management as unidentified risk can lead to catastrophic results - shown by 2008. Try to ensure that effective risk management is tied directly to business priorities.
Lehman fiasco along with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lacked good risk management policies in place.
Three
Be mindful of compensation as pay programmes affect stakeholders in the form of accounting, reported earnings, disclosure and tax implications.
Four
Keep your eyes open for mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Companies looking to expand through M&A should stick to their core services and competencies and ensure they're making smart purchases, including snapping up an underperforming competitor as prices become more affordable.
Fifth
Retain high performers in tough times. For companies searching for quick ways to reduce costs, labour may seem like an obvious expense. But retaining top talent during crisis time can help companies stay afloat and reduce costs in the longer term.
Sixth
Always look beyond here and now. While navigating current challenges, businesses should not forget about the future.
Seventh
Make your non-financial metrics count. In the current state of the global economy, many will argue that economic reality will kill the budding green industry. But investing in clean technology can give you competitive advantage in the form of cost cuts, efficiency, compliance with new regulations and the creation of new products and services.
Eighth
Get ready for International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Soon public companies will be expected to provide securities administrators with a detailed implementation plan and quantify the conversion's impact on their business, more precisely.
Ninth
Be smart with tax strategies to save you money. Talk to your advisor and do it early. Implement tax strategies to improve cash flow or minimize taxes.
Tenth
See the lemonade, not the lemons. Use the heightened scrutiny caused by the current financial and economic challenges to identify ways to improve and grow your business.
According to Ernst & Young, a climate of fear and risk aversion creates real opportunities for investment and innovation if firms are able to step back and see beyond the current turmoil.
Focus on Cash, manage it well as it is the most precious asset that businesses hold. Ensure that even if your revenues are dropping, you have sufficient cash to meet your immediate obligations.
Plenty Cash reserve can avoid situations like automobile companies in US.
Two
Pay attention to risk management as unidentified risk can lead to catastrophic results - shown by 2008. Try to ensure that effective risk management is tied directly to business priorities.
Lehman fiasco along with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lacked good risk management policies in place.
Three
Be mindful of compensation as pay programmes affect stakeholders in the form of accounting, reported earnings, disclosure and tax implications.
Four
Keep your eyes open for mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Companies looking to expand through M&A should stick to their core services and competencies and ensure they're making smart purchases, including snapping up an underperforming competitor as prices become more affordable.
Fifth
Retain high performers in tough times. For companies searching for quick ways to reduce costs, labour may seem like an obvious expense. But retaining top talent during crisis time can help companies stay afloat and reduce costs in the longer term.
Sixth
Always look beyond here and now. While navigating current challenges, businesses should not forget about the future.
Seventh
Make your non-financial metrics count. In the current state of the global economy, many will argue that economic reality will kill the budding green industry. But investing in clean technology can give you competitive advantage in the form of cost cuts, efficiency, compliance with new regulations and the creation of new products and services.
Eighth
Get ready for International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Soon public companies will be expected to provide securities administrators with a detailed implementation plan and quantify the conversion's impact on their business, more precisely.
Ninth
Be smart with tax strategies to save you money. Talk to your advisor and do it early. Implement tax strategies to improve cash flow or minimize taxes.
Tenth
See the lemonade, not the lemons. Use the heightened scrutiny caused by the current financial and economic challenges to identify ways to improve and grow your business.
According to Ernst & Young, a climate of fear and risk aversion creates real opportunities for investment and innovation if firms are able to step back and see beyond the current turmoil.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
It's 100, Way to go STRATEGYAAN
Dear Readers,
It gives me immense pleasure to announce that this is the 100th post of STRATEGYAAN. A blog which started on Feb 2007 succeeded in gathering a religious group of readers who not only enjoys BLOGGING but every bit of STRATEGYAAN. STRATEGYAAN just not believe in talking something new but always been in the forefront of sharing knowledge. STRATEGYAAN has always valued KNOWLEDGE and will continue to do so in the future too, that’s why I call STRATEGYAAN, just not a BLOG, but a “KNOWLEDGE BIBLE”. “Strategyaan” got its name from the combination of two words i.e. STRATEGY+GYAAN (which means KNOWLEDGE in “SANSKRIT”). I really thank to all my readers making STRATEGYAAN a blog worth to read.
Ashutosh
It gives me immense pleasure to announce that this is the 100th post of STRATEGYAAN. A blog which started on Feb 2007 succeeded in gathering a religious group of readers who not only enjoys BLOGGING but every bit of STRATEGYAAN. STRATEGYAAN just not believe in talking something new but always been in the forefront of sharing knowledge. STRATEGYAAN has always valued KNOWLEDGE and will continue to do so in the future too, that’s why I call STRATEGYAAN, just not a BLOG, but a “KNOWLEDGE BIBLE”. “Strategyaan” got its name from the combination of two words i.e. STRATEGY+GYAAN (which means KNOWLEDGE in “SANSKRIT”). I really thank to all my readers making STRATEGYAAN a blog worth to read.
Ashutosh
Friday, December 19, 2008
Laws of BRANDING a CONSULTANCY
Most consultancies are good at selling, but not at branding. In other words, they do a very good job of rounding up prospects and making presentations to sell their services. On the contrary, they do an abysmal job of branding. To build a brand, Consultancies have to stand for something in the mind and need to position them in such a way that they differentiate from others. Advertising could be a good way of branding your firm, but its importance comes only after public relations. The big 4s don’t differentiate from each other; all of them claim to be the best accounting firms but nothing more than that. More than the service you provides, it’s your credibility of service that matters in the market. Position something which is unique to your organization only. Similarly, take the case of Wipro, Infosys, TCS or Cognizant, everyone has a catchy punchline but that doesn’t reflect the kind of work they do or position themselves unique to each other.
PR is generally a more effective branding strategy to establish a position in the mind. After that position is established, and then you can switch to advertising to maintain the position. To build a successful PR strategy, consultancies need a unique position that they can use to try to get into a prospect's mind. They might, for example, pick out a segment of the market that they are the leader in and then position themselves as the leader in that category. If they are not the leader, they need to position themselves as the “alternatives” in the market which can give them the best services as good as the leader. Good publicity requires a lot of time on the part of internal people and sometimes the hiring of expensive PR firms. The major cost of PR, both internally and externally, is the cost of the people involved. Most of the other expenses are relatively minor.
Naming a consultancy is a critical area which has lot of importance in branding the consultancy. Ernst and Young, Mc Kinsey, Bain consulting, do these names trigger an alarm bell?? Yes, you are right; they are named after the owners of the company. That’s the way you brand your company and yourself too. Bigger names are a disaster, so use smaller ones to brand them.
PR is generally a more effective branding strategy to establish a position in the mind. After that position is established, and then you can switch to advertising to maintain the position. To build a successful PR strategy, consultancies need a unique position that they can use to try to get into a prospect's mind. They might, for example, pick out a segment of the market that they are the leader in and then position themselves as the leader in that category. If they are not the leader, they need to position themselves as the “alternatives” in the market which can give them the best services as good as the leader. Good publicity requires a lot of time on the part of internal people and sometimes the hiring of expensive PR firms. The major cost of PR, both internally and externally, is the cost of the people involved. Most of the other expenses are relatively minor.
Naming a consultancy is a critical area which has lot of importance in branding the consultancy. Ernst and Young, Mc Kinsey, Bain consulting, do these names trigger an alarm bell?? Yes, you are right; they are named after the owners of the company. That’s the way you brand your company and yourself too. Bigger names are a disaster, so use smaller ones to brand them.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
CONSULTANCY PRACTICE
In my earlier post, I have highlighted BCG’s approach to proprietary approach to consultancy. So, what exactly is a Consultancy Practice, how to build it, what are the key elements of this practice? Well, this post answers all such queries. Consultancies whether big or small require certain elements in place to be managed successful. And, practices look to balance consultancy delivery to the customer against the need of developing new propositions and services. A consultancy practice may therefore be outward facing i.e. market facing or inward facing i.e. business facing.
Outward Facing:
Clients, their sectors, markets and business trends.
Knowledge of technologies and how those trends and technologies would enable or differentiates business strategies.
Alliances with key suppliers in order to gain an understanding of their products and services to provide new innovative business models to deliver business benefits.
Inward Facing:
Inward facing aspect emphasize that the consultancy practice’s key element is people. The consultancy should focus on enhancing consultant’s skills and competencies. Inward facing aspects includes:
Consultant skills and competencies including credibility, integrity, creativity and ability to influence customers.
Knowledge of markets, sectors, technologies and business trends and how to continually innovate new business models with enabling technology.
Products, models and services that allow consultants to deliver value of their customers.
I will give more insight on practices and some case studies. Keep reading.
Outward Facing:
Clients, their sectors, markets and business trends.
Knowledge of technologies and how those trends and technologies would enable or differentiates business strategies.
Alliances with key suppliers in order to gain an understanding of their products and services to provide new innovative business models to deliver business benefits.
Inward Facing:
Inward facing aspect emphasize that the consultancy practice’s key element is people. The consultancy should focus on enhancing consultant’s skills and competencies. Inward facing aspects includes:
Consultant skills and competencies including credibility, integrity, creativity and ability to influence customers.
Knowledge of markets, sectors, technologies and business trends and how to continually innovate new business models with enabling technology.
Products, models and services that allow consultants to deliver value of their customers.
I will give more insight on practices and some case studies. Keep reading.
Monday, November 10, 2008
DIVERSITY: The new FORMULA for Business Opportunity
“Diversity” is the mantra for business and seen as an opportunity to cash in. Diversity drives innovation and not only that, it drives creativity too. A culture of diversity across functions helps business to strengthen the bottomline in terms of capturing new and diverse markets. By working together, a diverse team of customer service representatives can more effectively understand and meet the needs of customers with a range of backgrounds. A diverse product development team can find ways to expand the use of a product, and ways to make the product more effective for a wider customer base.
According to IBM, workforce diversity is the bridge between the workplace and the marketplace. People tend to do business with people they believe can understand their unique needs. Companies that demonstrate an ability to meet those unique needs are going to win customers in any market. A corporate culture that fosters diversity and inclusion can support recruiting and retention efforts as well. Employees choose and remain in jobs at companies where they feel welcome and comfortable. A company that embraces diversity can offer that kind of work environment, and as a result, can attract and retain top talent with diverse backgrounds. For a successful corporate diversity initiative, sometimes, the corporate culture needs to be changed to suit the lifestyle and working style of people from diverse backgrounds. It’s a proactive and slow process which needs to be tailored accordingly and tied to the company bottomline. These initiatives should be widely focused, leverage technology and should be receptive to change. These corporate diversity initiatives should have a benchmark set and the progress should be continually monitored to check whether the organization is at a right path. Top management must ensure that the commitment to diversity has buy-in at all levels of the organization by making diversity an integral part of company success. It should be taken care that these initiatives are not single handedly responsibility of some particular department. Companies that relegate diversity to a single department miss out on opportunities to improve and integrate the diversity initiative that are offered by other areas of the company. For example, a communications department has the expertise to effectively communicate the initiative company-wide. A purchasing department that already has vendor diversity can offer insight.
When there is a diverse group of people with varied background and knowledge quotient, it gives rise to diverse ideas, and sometimes those vague ideas turn out to be innovative enough when brainstorming occurs and thought process is given. The diversity ranges from people to subjects, knowledge, and creativity, level of thinking, analytical skills, research abilities so on and so forth. That’s why a company like IBM which has a global presence and gives importance to diversity boasts of INNOVATION. So, are you ready to embrace diversity in your work culture????
According to IBM, workforce diversity is the bridge between the workplace and the marketplace. People tend to do business with people they believe can understand their unique needs. Companies that demonstrate an ability to meet those unique needs are going to win customers in any market. A corporate culture that fosters diversity and inclusion can support recruiting and retention efforts as well. Employees choose and remain in jobs at companies where they feel welcome and comfortable. A company that embraces diversity can offer that kind of work environment, and as a result, can attract and retain top talent with diverse backgrounds. For a successful corporate diversity initiative, sometimes, the corporate culture needs to be changed to suit the lifestyle and working style of people from diverse backgrounds. It’s a proactive and slow process which needs to be tailored accordingly and tied to the company bottomline. These initiatives should be widely focused, leverage technology and should be receptive to change. These corporate diversity initiatives should have a benchmark set and the progress should be continually monitored to check whether the organization is at a right path. Top management must ensure that the commitment to diversity has buy-in at all levels of the organization by making diversity an integral part of company success. It should be taken care that these initiatives are not single handedly responsibility of some particular department. Companies that relegate diversity to a single department miss out on opportunities to improve and integrate the diversity initiative that are offered by other areas of the company. For example, a communications department has the expertise to effectively communicate the initiative company-wide. A purchasing department that already has vendor diversity can offer insight.
When there is a diverse group of people with varied background and knowledge quotient, it gives rise to diverse ideas, and sometimes those vague ideas turn out to be innovative enough when brainstorming occurs and thought process is given. The diversity ranges from people to subjects, knowledge, and creativity, level of thinking, analytical skills, research abilities so on and so forth. That’s why a company like IBM which has a global presence and gives importance to diversity boasts of INNOVATION. So, are you ready to embrace diversity in your work culture????
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