Technology is accelerating the rate of change in business. Across the open market, technology is affording greater changes in business practice and, specifically, business organization and process. To sustain competitive advantage, companies must be especially fluid. They need to adapt as quickly and as efficiently as the open market. Companies must inevitably become network economies.
The Loudthink® mission is to facilitate this transition. We provide management consulting and implementation services that deliver results. We deliver services using our methodology, which forms a repeatable process that can incrementally transform a company into a network economy. The methodology transforms transactions into loud transactions while still achieving immediate improvements in the bottom-line — thus real results now and real results later.
To each engagement, the Loudthink® team brings the five objectives described below. As a result, our services:
|
Are focused on achieving real gains in a timely and cost-conscious manner | |
|
Use technology simply to automate tasks for improved efficiency | |
|
Set the stage for companies to induce and leverage technology as the open market does |
Customers buy by balancing functionality, reliability, convenience and price — the four areas of product performance. A product or service succeeds when it is the most competitive in one of these areas. The more broadly a product excels, the more successful the product. All this remains true for services, though there we might term functionality as capability.
Each transaction within a company emphasizes an area of product performance. For example, order fulfillment emphasizes convenience. Entrepreneurs form companies when they identify a method of achieving competitive advantage in one of these areas. Entrepreneurs do so by finding new efficiencies, improving the technology of one or more transactions.
A company fosters entrepreneurialism when it financially motivates improvements in transactions. Incentive programs vary by circumstance, but all hinge on sharing the returns with those making the improvement. A company further fosters entrepreneurial spirit by delegating the responsibility and — most importantly — the authority to make improvements to those executing the transaction.
Those executing a transaction are often best positioned to see opportunities for improvement and to find ways to minimize internal fulfillment costs. Establishing performance goals, collecting the corresponding metrics and rewarding success establishes the simple feedback loop that cultivates entrepreneurial behavior. Instilling entrepreneurial spirit in each department will drive improvements in product performance throughout the company.
Technology fuels ever-accelerating change in the modern marketplace. To survive, companies need a flexible, modular structure. Transactions define the modules. Each module must form a profit/cost center, small and well encapsulated, so the company may quickly reconfigure and adapt.
Having formed profit/cost centers around transactions, a company can clearly see the impact of improvements. With the financial impact of improvement quantifiable, incentive programs are possible — thus instilling entrepreneurialism. Maintaining this encapsulation within the company affords the flexibility and accountability necessary to ensure continual improvement.
The ability to learn faster than your competitors is the only sustainable competitive advantage. Sustaining that competitive advantage requires building feedback into every transaction. Learning is a continuous process that mandates regular collection and analysis of that feedback.
The rule of thumb when staffing teams for continuous process improvement is 2% of departmental staff. Rather than dedicate resources, a company can relegate much of this 2% load to the realm of noise-level activities by delegating it to the entire department. Simply posting feedback metrics allows the team at large to learn, because exposure to the data allows them to discern cause and effect. Furthermore, coupling access to information with incentive programs spurs the entrepreneurial spirit that motivates improvements.
The pace of today's marketplace warrants frequent evaluations. Trends and changes in market conditions pose immediate challenges. With a culture of learning, entrepreneurialism and enthusiasm for improvement in place, with the data readily available to everyone, managers can invoke the know-how of the entire team. They can challenge the team to evolve.
Companies often attempt to instill entrepreneurial spirit, modularize the business and build in learning as part of a massive, sweeping, enterprise-wide effort. The monolithic structure of these projects leaves them quite vulnerable to schedule and cost overruns. Also, such projects typically take years to complete. They are often outpaced by changes and technological innovation in the marketplace.
In contrast, Loudthink® partitions projects by transaction into independent threads — and then phases these into digestible, incremental steps. This approach actually reduces risk and accelerates time-to-market along three axes: First, partitioning by transaction maximizes the threads' independence. Decoupling schedules avoids cascading delay and, more importantly, allows each to align with market and internal priorities. Second, phasing each thread in crisp increments requires concrete deliverables. The deliverables demonstrate progress, communicate clearly with stakeholders and offer logical points for sanity-checking priorities (across threads). Finally, with a more modular project, resource assignments can be optimized for specialization, utilization and/or urgency.
Loudthink® specifically targets achieving real wins — quickly. Along the way, we make simple changes that affect corporate culture and create the foundation for future gains. Loudthink® accelerates time-to-market because our methodology delivers the most valuable results — earlier.
Meeting deadlines is critical because once a plan is in place, it becomes the basis for subsequent plans and tasks. Similarly, staying on budget maintains original resource allocations across the company. Delivering on time and on budget saves reprioritizing, replanning and other switching costs. Delivering on time and on budget saves money.
Loudthink® manages to the business-level results, the returns-on-investment. These needs, not lists of detailed function points, define project scope. The team prioritizes scope to capture the essential returns while minimizing risk. We proactively prioritize throughout the project — to protect return-on-investment by keeping the project on time and on budget. Delivering on time and on budget makes money because it minimizes time-to-market.
Delivering on time and on budget is simply good business.