business management
Business Management – Using a Process to Make Effective Decisions
October 21, 2011 | 
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An important business management skill is the ability to make effective decisions. When it comes down to it, the most highly paid corporate executives and managers are financially rewarded by how effectively they make these decisions. These decisions are based on solving problems as well as expanding and developing the business.
Successful and effective managers use a well thought out process to make their decisions. These decision making processes enable managers to make the best decisions quickly. When it comes to a decision making process it can be broken down into three simple stages. These stages include the following:
? Information
? Analysis
? Taking action
The first part of the decision making process provides the trigger or the reason to take action based on the facts and information that is available at hand. The second stage is to analyse the situation to identify certain causes and then come up with potential solutions to the problem. At this stage it is important that the manager has a thorough understanding of the purpose of the decisions that are to be made. The next stage is the ability to make fast decisions based on the information available.
Making the right decision will be influenced greatly by how well you understand all the issues and factors involved. An effective manager will approach this by making a detailed list of the issues or criteria involved. For example, if you are ordering new machinery and you are deciding between which suppliers to choose then your decision criteria should include the companies reliability, training, installation and customer support.
Obviously an important criteria is cost as you have to keep within the budget. However, a decision should not be made solely on cost as the least expensive may not be best option. When making a decision list your criteria in order of importance. By weighting each criteria it will enable you to narrow down those key criteria that will have the most impact on making the final decision.
Business Intelligence Reports: The Greatest Way To Increase Performance
Business for Intelligence: Your Window to Corporate Performance.
This webcast went for approximately an hour. It was hosted by Forbes Magazine and Oracle. Forbes himself started the discussion by updating on the state of USA economy; and then, the panel took over to discuss Business Intelligence issues. Guest speakers were coming from different background firms in IT, such as Oracle, Accenture and MasterCard. In addition, many representatives of numerous companies in different industries were invited as audiences. The host of the webcast was one of Forbes Magazine employees. I am going to go through the exchange of the panel, and try to summarize the major issues covered. I will try also to show the relevance of the issues discussed to some companies, based here in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, since I am unemployed, and don’t have a particular company I can relate to.
Questions that all panel expert were trying to respond to, could be summarize as: “Why, with all the initiative and projects already on the Corporate IT agenda, should anyone invest in Business Intelligence?” Most of the responses to that question were emphasized on three points: managing Enterprise performance; measuring the access of Business Intelligence Implementation and Analysis of today’s Business Intelligence solutions.
First, the panel discussed the issue of the relation between Strategic Planning and Business Operations using for example inside data as not based on technology, but relying heavily on inside information analysis. Just to cite one the panel member: “we have to look at what happened, what is happening, and what is going to happen in our analysis”. In addition, they talked about compliance with Federal guideline in IT, mainly citing companies that wait for the Federal Government to step in, in order to work on their advancement in managing Enterprise. I am thinking here for example, Medicare CRM’s mission to provide comprehensive health plan management solutions that improve the public/private partnership of the current Medicare system, so that a new standard of service, excellence and ROI is achieved for both Medicare beneficiaries and Medicare Advantage plans” (Find law, 2008 & Appendix). For companies that provide Medicare, such as HealthPartners, it is this compliance that drives the analysis. On the other hand, the business skills and IT side, the panel pointed out the relevance of culture of information and change, and the role of business processes in information hierarchy. The main idea here for BI should be “optimizing processes”.
Second, panelist Susan from Oracle talked about how BI could make a difference. She went on saying that most of companies do what is called “departmentalization” of issues, and forget that all departments should be working together to minimize risks. She gave the example of Sales department needing help from marketing department for brand awareness, and manufacturing department for supply chain input. More over, she stated that collaboration could make easier by introducing a BI from already known data, not managed by each department, but by the whole company, under corporate enterprise. Consequently, this could increase profitability; therefore, increase the ROI. I couldn’t imagine for example, Target Co trying to direct each store, to take care of its own Management Enterprise Performance.
Third, an expert from Accenture discussed the use of data to gather the right information for the business. She emphasized on investing in “roadmaps” to achieve that goal. In order to really get to BI capability, a company has to use “the interactive approach”, she said. She pointed out the same remark brought by Susan about “compartmentalization” of business being a drag to increase collaboration. She suggested working hard, in order to install the best “system Integration”, a company could have. With regards to data, she recommended to better understand data as not only tangible or measurable, but also intangible or immeasurable. I would think for example, a project that could be easily done in six weeks, instead of two years, if interactive approach was taken seriously in preparing and implementing projects. I would be interested for example, in knowing how long it could take General Mills, to finalize a project of new cereal, using or not using BI interactive approach.
Finally, the really discussion started when almost everyone regarded ROI (Return on Investment) as the drive to many companies, which want Business and IT collaboration. Phil, from MasterCard mentioned about how complex business has became. Some executives think that, for a today’s business analysis to get optimize, a company has to invest in large and complex systems, and forget that they need to do more once it is there. It is not enough just to be there, it has to be managed. The idea that “build it, they will come” doesn’t hold. It is unbelievable to see some companies, spending so much money in IT infrastructure, to make data available all the time, which is the right think to do. However, if a company decides to invest for example in hardware to change the nature of BI, it should be an unfinished business if the same company fails to culturally and philosophically embrace BI ideas: “everyone in the organization has to participate”. The consequence of not doing so would undermine its ability to change for better the original aim for BI: increase ROI.
References
Accelacast.com (2008). Business Intelligence: Your Window to Corporate Performance. http://www.accelacast.com/webcasts/forbesoracle_bizint/
Findlaw.com (2008). Medicare Advantage Plans Struggle to Comply With New Federal Law. Retrieved This November 1, 2008 from: http://news.findlaw.com/prnewswire/20080820/20aug20081527.html
Appendix
Federal law requires Medicare Advantage Plans to limit their sales activities to a 4.5-month window of opportunity. And while the new 2009 law gives plans until 2011 to achieve full implementation of HR 6331, CMS has promised the 2.3 million Medicare Advantage beneficiaries (source: CMS 2005 data) immediate increased scrutiny and protection from illicit sales and marketing activities by non-compliant Medicare Advantage plans
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Creativity Management, Business Management, Sales And Marketing
“Teach a man to fish and he will never go hungry in his lifetime”
The proverb above can be perfect analogy for Business management. Precisely because, after you learn business management skills you can be certain that you will not be looking back, you will gain enough knowledge and confidence to manage your own business efficiently and effectively.
You will then acquire an insight into the effort and hard work you will have to have to put in your business, business management skills will, as always help you sail through any hardships you may be presented in the world of business management.
Effective business management needs planning and doing various activities at a time, but to do that you need to be fully knowledgeable in your respective field in details. You can also utilize business management books that are widely available online and off-line to help you gain learnings and expertise in this field. A business manager also has to understand business performance, the financial aspects of a business for without which he will bring no good for a business. Effective management needs to have creativity that is, with limited resources, can still extract development.
Creativity Management techniques
There are many strategies for enhancing creativity management. For instance, there are a number of methods of generating novel ideas, several methods of making diverse ideas, various methods of generating large numbers of ideas and several methods of elevating the frequency of idea generation.
But, it is of great significance to realize that techniques–although there may be thousands of them – are only one element of the creativity management process. Inside the scope of the creativity management framework, they fall in the creative thinking against critical thinking domain.
Can creativity be learned and enhanced?
Utilizing the scale of creativity: a)as a number of ideas generated, b) the variations of those ideas, c) the value of those ideas and d) the frequency of their production, we can scale creative output at any point in time.
After that, we can push individuals through a series of learning process, measure them again and find the + or – displacement.
Comprehending mechanisms such as the experience curve, adaptive and generative learning and automisation all show that creativity enhances with practice.
Once you are able to develop these creativity management, surely, you will be able to make good progress in your chosen business.
Sales and Marketing
Sales and marketing are usually used interchangeably, however, these are two different ideas, albeit somewhat similar. But, it is simple to determine between the two. Marketing is the method of attracting and keeping clients while sales is the actual selling of the product or services to the clients. In medium and large sized businesses, people designated for marketing and sales often do not work together, but it is critical to the success of a business for this to be so.
In small businesses, marketing and sales operations are commonly done by the same person, or the business owner. In such a case, there are no communication constrains because only one person is doing the work. The entrepreneur will always make sales and marketing together flawlessly because they are aware of everything that is happening and do not miss out on anything.
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