Transformation of your business is more than just developing a strategy for growth or improvement; it’s about completely rethinking how you conduct business. The need to transform your business can be driven by changes in the industry, technological improvements, changes in regulations or responding to competitive pressures.
Any innovation or transformation involves a marked shift in the way you do business. This can be implemented in one big move or done in smaller projects over time. This may include improvements in how existing products or services are used, the development of new opportunities or changes in how your business is run.
This article explores ways to successfully implement business transformation, including how to transform your business model, operations and processes.
Business transformation through innovation
Innovation can help your business adapt and evolve in order to survive and thrive. In your business, innovation may be driven by the need to solve a problem or capitalise on a new opportunity.
You could improve how old products or services are used, find new uses for them or create new ones. Innovation may also include updates to how your business is run whether this be creating new processes or a business model.
Building a culture that supports innovation can help your business stay relevant, meet challenges, and stay competitive. Innovation is not just about new ideas, but also about new ways of applying ideas.
Encourage innovation by asking staff how they would improve the way they do their job, using business strategies that welcome innovation, reviewing current processes and arranging regular training and networking opportunities for all staff.
One way to make money from innovation is to commercialise your idea. Research and evaluate your innovation to find out if it will make your business money. Your idea or plan may sound great, but you need to assess whether your business is ready to sustain growth.
Protecting your innovation (or your idea) is essential. Whether your idea is a new product or service, or an improvement to an existing product or service, you must protect your intellectual property.
Innovate your business model
As technological advances and globalisation present so many new opportunities and threats to how we do business, leaders are now looking to gain a competitive advantage through innovative business models. Business model innovations have the power to transform businesses and reshape entire industries however they need to be very different to really make inroads in this way.
Improve your innovation process
Businesses best positioned to survive and grow in the peaks and troughs of economic cycles are those that continue to innovate. During challenging economic times, innovation can help your business make real gains in efficiency.
During economic downturns, the default position for many businesses is to cut staff or budgets to keep the business afloat. Other strategies may include understanding the supply chain process, focusing on what makes customers successful, eliminating waste and activities that don’t add value, and implementing other cost-reduction strategies. Effectively managing the cash cycle, the order-to-deliver cycle and the supply chain can simultaneously reduce costs and improve business efficiency.
In boom times, innovative processes allow businesses to cope with the influx of demand more quickly and more cost-effectively than competitors.
Adopting best practices
Proven ways to get the best results from having the right processes and technologies in place doesn’t mean attempting to copy and transfer others’ success to your journey. Your business, people and culture are unique and so your journey will be unique. It’s good to extract ideas from the experiences and challenges of others but how to apply them in your business will be unique.
Measurement and benchmarking
Comparing your business’ results to a standard is central to successful implementation of best practices. Internally, it contributes to an open and accountable organisation because it visibly communicates your progress. It also identifies shortfalls and areas requiring attention. Externally, a business obtains a reasonable idea of where it is placed alongside other organisations.
Adopting new technologies
Technology can assist in greatly improving business process. Operational applications, such as financial, human resource, supply chain, enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management systems, can improve efficiency, scalability and standardisation of processes.
Leadership and culture
Leaders who can successfully transform businesses are ambitious ambassadors for the business. Research consistently shows that organisations with effective leadership and an environment in which innovation can thrive are increasing their market share, profitability, customer satisfaction and other key performance indicators considerably faster than those that don’t.
Early in its life, while it is still small, a business is agile and flexible, seizing opportunities, taking calculated risks and building its culture as it develops. There’s a sense of urgency in advancing ideas through prototypes and taking them to market as quickly as possible. The culture encourages creativity and calculated risk-taking. As a business grows and becomes more complex (more people, customers, products and orders), problems surface and more defined processes are introduced to manage the business. The problem is, often these systems crush the entrepreneurial spirit of the business.
Build the right team
To transform your business, you need to hire the right people in the right roles and utilise their talents, interests and abilities. You also need to remove the people who are not right. Having the right people enables your business to make the changes it needs. The right people don’t need to be tightly managed or fired up; they are self-motivated.
If you’re looking to transform your business to aid growth, contact us today on 1300 ARABON or make a booking online.
