Do you believe that a manager should analyze Business Environment to stay and compete in business?

#Q1People in business who has been unaware of or ignores their changing environment has at best; lost opportunities for profit and at worst, led their company to disaster. Do you believe that a manager should analyze BE to stay and compete in business?

*Ans: With big “yes”, I believe the manager should always analyze Business Environment to say and compete in business. We know very well in real world when the ground rocks, structures must bend. The same is true for companies competing in today’s turbulent business environment. Organizations that are best able to anticipate and the analyze the market movements, re-emerge from the worst system shocks and take advantage of gaps left by those unable to withstand the impact will win. Doing so requires organizational promptness.

For most companies, the path to organizational alertness involves transformation, the ability to carve away at inefficiency and regroup around what is truly core to the business. While the task may appear discouraging, there are a number of steps that management can consider to lighten the burden of change:

1. Integrate and automate fundamental knowledge-sharing processes. Such integration will enable IT to advance an organization’s ability to problem-solve, improve decision-making and convert information into insight. The tangle of forces that created the current economic difficulties looks set to leave an undercurrent of volatility even after the global recession eases. Competitive advantage will go to those who align their businesses well to embrace and respond to change.

2. Optimize core processes. By minimizing excess spending and non-core programs, companies can better direct limited resources to satisfying customer expectations, activities that position a company well not only during times of recession but also for long periods of growth.

3. Minimize information silos. Barriers to change include conflicting departmental goals and priorities, a culture of risk aversion and silo-based information. By reducing silos, business leaders can improve collaboration inside and outside their enterprise and better align departmental goals and performance measures with overall strategy.

We take the example of the market turbulence of the past year may have foreshadowed a new phase of globalization, one in which volatility is likely to remain a constant. Even after the current recession lifts, underlying fluctuations in energy, commodity and currency rates, the emergence of new and non-traditional competitors, and rising customer demands will continue to roil traditional business and operating models for some time to come. To be competitive, companies may find themselves in a big challenge. How can they respond quickly and nimbly to the changing environment without getting caught in knots? In today’s knowledge age, the ability to transform information into insight in response to market movements is core to sustainability. Companies must think of ways to make their processes more flexible. The challenges are the organizational agility, particularly in tough economic times. The major factors are as following (according to the EBI):

1. Organizational agility is a core differentiator in today’s rapidly changing business environment.

Nearly 90% of executives surveyed by the Economist Intelligence Unit believe that organizational agility is critical for business success. One-half of all chief executive officers (CEOs) and chief information officers (CIOs) polled agree that rapid decision-making and execution are not only important, but essential to a company’s competitive standing. Agility may also be linked to profitable growth: research conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) suggests that agile firms grow revenue 37% faster and generate 30% higher profits than non-agile companies.

2. Internal barriers stall responsive change efforts. More than 80% of survey respondents have undertaken one or more change initiatives to improve agility over the past three years, yet 34% say they have failed to deliver the desired benefits. The main obstacles to improved business responsiveness are slow decision-making, conflicting departmental goals and priorities, risk-averse cultures and silo-based information.

3. Yet most companies admit they are not flexible enough to compete successfully. While the overwhelming majority of executives view organizational agility as a competitive necessity, actual business readiness is more mixed. More than one-quarter (27%) of respondents say that their organization is at a competitive disadvantage because it is not agile enough to anticipate fundamental marketplace shifts.

4. Technology can play an important supporting role in enabling organizations to become more nimble.

Technology should function as a change agent in the use and adoption of best-in-class knowledge sharing processes, so companies can improve their use of critical data.

Conclusion

From all above survey reports, and  the facts we can say as manager  People in business who has been unaware of or ignores their changing environment has at best; lost opportunities for profit and at worst, led their company to disaster.