What is the Most Effective Strategy to Massively Slash Shipping Freight Costs?
Freight costs reduction is almost always the last frontier in the cost reduction landscape. At the board level, most companies do not pay much attention to their external freight costs. These costs never get the attention they deserve because they are scattered all over the place, and generally out of sight. What if I told […]
Why Facebook’s $19 Billion purchase of WhatsApp reminds me of NewsCorp buying MySpace
On the face of it, the two companies could not be more widely apart. One is the paragon the new paradigm, while other is an old dying breed! I am, of course, talking about Facebook and NewsCorp. That is what all the pundits will tell you. They will also explain the logic of why News […]
Industrial Age Tools vs Information Age Weapons
This is the part 2 of my earlier post What I Learnt Fighting Pirates (Not in the Caribbean)! (that post was getting too long, so I had to break it into two parts). I asked bosun to send a repelling party to cut the ladder and the scrambling rope, while I sent two other reconnaissance parties […]
Optimising What? Why Business Transformations Fail?
Optimisation has always been a hot topic for strategists and business transformations executives. Now, as the mantle for leading corporations is moving from strategists to the integrationists and supply chain leaders – optimisation is hotter than ever before. When discussing business transformations, in my workshops, presentations and speeches, in particular I enjoy the audience interaction and […]
Why Executives Underestimate the Impact of Supply Chains?
CFOs are not the only ones who underestimate the impact of Supply Chains on modern corporations. CMOs, COOS and even CEOs are not fully aware of the full potential of supply chain management. When the potential is not fully known, expectations are too low and results are even lower. This speech and will show you […]
If Your Business Has Too Much Internal Focus, You Could Be Missing Out
It’s no surprise that customers hate companies with too much internal focus. As organizations free up their inter-departmental planning from rigidities, the communications start to bloom. Efficiency improves considerable and everybody starts running together, faster. However, a higher set of problems emerge due to lack of external focus – on suppliers, customers, and end-consumers. Many […]
Departmental Silos: The Achilles Heel of Your Company
Businesses are gradually being chained by a number of forces so ubiquitous and accepted by all of us, that we fail to notice their impact on businesses, economies, and people. Today, most organizations become veritable bureaucracies as they grow bigger. Every person sits inside his/her own department and is very careful about making sure that […]
ERP Unraveled: Why Your Business Might Suffer From Inadequate Planning
To combat the symptoms of departmental silos many organizations implement a very rigid Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. This helps run their internal processes and coordinates inter-departmental communication. By their nature, these systems are very formulaic and prescriptive with a one-size fits all approach to planning. Now a different bunch of problems start surfacing as a […]
Tinderization of Human Courtship – and What It Means for the Business Ethos
I vaguely recall reading a research paper on human courtship by a US professor, where he hypothesised a 13 stage courtship process starting with eye-lock to for-ever-after. He had studied several human societies – ranging from primitive isolated tribes to modern urban tribes and concluded that the process was uniformly similar, irrespective of the locale. […]
E- Learning; a philosophy not a manifesto
Stuart Emmett takes a look at E-learning Wherever we turn these days all kinds of “e” are quickly growing and developing around us. Now as my surname begins with an “e”, then I better be careful what I say. But this does mean that I do appreciate that “e” is only the fifth letter in […]