Best Management Practices

1. Context analysis

1. 1. Continuously assess the external environment.
  2. Appoint a dedicated staff with specific responsibilities to monitor the external environment.
  3. Measure customer satisfaction throughout the life of the customer relationship.
  4. Identify emerging trends in customer preferences that may affect customer expectations.
  5. Track demographic projections of customer populations.

2. Strategy development

1. 1. Focus on strategic thinking instead of strategic planning.
  2. Emphasis on the importance of external as well as internal factors.
  3. Emphasize qualitative, not quantitative, aspects of strategy development.
  4. Focus on the future instead of the present.
  5. Review the strategy on a regular basis.

3. Strategy implementation

- 1. Modify organizational structure, competencies, and control systems to facilitate implementation of the strategy.
  2. Make sure that the organizational structure supports strategy implementation.
  3. Ensure that employees have skills needed to accomplish strategic goals.
  4. Ensure that managers and employees have information needed to accomplish strategic goals.
  5. Integrate planning with other control systems, including budgets, information systems, and compensation.

4. Performance evaluation

- 1. Monitor progress toward the firm's overarching strategic goals.
  2. Restate the general goals described in the vision and strategy in terms of variables that can be measured directly and objectively.
  3. Demonstrate commitment to achieving tangible results.
  4. Develop a set of performance measures and monitor the firm's accomplishments with respect to them.
  5. Modify the strategic plan as needed to achieve the company's long-term objectives.

1. Research and development

- 1. Develop a strategy that integrates product innovation and process improvements with quality management.
  2. Focus on solving customers' emerging problems.
  3. Cultivate an environment that enables all employees to contribute their best.
  4. Reward idea generation.
  5. Support product launch through careful planning and monitoring.

2. Marketing and sale

1. 1. Develop a framework for market segmentation.
  2. Use customer information to drive strategic marketing.
  3. Use the Internet as a sales and distribution channel.
  4. Organize selling teams to meet the increasing complexity of customer demands and product and service capabilities.
  5. Create a simple, easy to use order taking process.

3. Production and delivery

- 1. Adjust the product design where possible to match existing manufacturing tools and techniques.
  2. Develop plans for any new tools and techniques that are needed.
  3. Outline the operations and the sequence of operations to be performed to produce the product.
  4. Assign specific equipment and personnel to each operation.
  5. Measure the time required to perform each operation.

4. Customers services

- 1. Align customer service strategy and processes with overall corporate mission and goals.
  2. Solicit "feedback" from customers to obtain useful data on customers' expectations, needs and responses to the services provided.
  3. Invest in extensive training of customer service representatives in both product features and human relations skills.
  4. Empower customer service representatives to make decisions.
  5. Maintain state-of-the-art call center operations to better serve customers.

1. Human

- 1. Continuously communicate progress, changes in plans, and any other relevant matters.
  2. Use the company's strengths to attract high-quality workers.
  3. Develop benefits to attract and hold key employees.
  4. Provide learning opportunities in a variety of ways and settings.
  5. Create opportunities for employees to discover and develop their own skills.

2. Technology

- 1. Create a culture that legitimizes and facilitates knowledge management.
  2. Develop processes that systematically transfer the company's knowledge within the organization.
  3. Implement technology that captures knowledge, stores it, and distributes it where and when it's needed in the organization.
  4. Design a decision-making methodology for selecting technologies that will help the company achieve its business goals.
  5. Prepare for constant technology change.

3. Material

- 1. Identify requirements for the most cost-effective use of fixed assets.
  2. Create a comprehensive strategic facilities management plan integrated with corporate business strategies and corporate real estate business planning.
  3. Define and assess needs of facility management customers, including senior management, business units and external customer groups.
  4. Define a risk management strategy that is thoroughly integrated with corporate strategy.
  5. Integrate business continuity planning with strategic management.

4. Financial

- 1. Develop budgets that accommodate change
  2. Generate clear, concise customer invoices that are easy to read and calculate
  3. Decide which payroll activities to outsource and which to keep in house
  4. Identify and understand the information needed by internal customers to execute the business strategy, satisfy customers, and evaluate and improve business process performance.
  5. Evaluate financial risks in the context of business objectives