Trianz Blog
January 27, 2010 – 10:19 am by Manisha Desai
Over the last few years, we have experienced tremendous growth in social media. Recent news reports suggest that many organizations that once shunned social media are now beginning to adopt its use as they attempt to get closer to their partners and customers. In an economically challenging environment, social media is helping companies find new ways to market themselves without spending significant dollars. As overall marketing budgets are slashed, social media has emerged as a tool for cost savings.
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Posted in Service Business Management | Permalink | No Comments » |
December 24, 2009 – 1:16 pm by Evgenii Zherebchevskiy
The blog “Shared Services Implementation” from November 18, 2009, co-authored by Margaret Chang, Cindy Lo, and Jessie Wang, (http://trianzblog.com/wordpress/?p=136#more-136) provided an effective outline of key considerations to build an effective shared services model. The actual implementation, however, is likely to face several hurdles and setbacks that need to be proactively addressed for an organization to seamlessly transition to the shared services model. Based on our recent experiences of planning and building a shared services organization in a Fortune 100 company, we can outline some of the most critical challenges that a company needs to address in order to create a best-in-class shared service organization.
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November 18, 2009 – 2:59 pm by Margaret Chang
Co-Authors: Cindy Lo, Jessie Wang
In today’s recessionary market, many organizations are trying to do away with waste and create efficiencies by optimizing and consolidating operations through the implementation of shared services. There are many design considerations an organization must assess when deciding to implement a shared services model. Due to the breadth of changes in the organization’s design and structure that will result from such a model, careful planning and coordination are required from the cross-functional program management team. Other factors that are also critical to the success of a shared service model include governance, organization, operations and metrics. Most importantly, shared services needs to support the different teams in an organization while the model is taking root.
In our last blog, An Overview of Shared Services, we discussed data management shared services, AP shared services and the high level challenges of implementing shared services. In this blog, we will discuss the implementation of shared services, including developing an approach and effectively transitioning people within and outside of the shared services organization.
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Posted in Service Business Management | Permalink | No Comments » |
September 30, 2009 – 3:15 pm by Katie Yuchi
In the ongoing financial and economic crises, companies are finding it increasingly difficult to boost sales in a recessionary market. They are under relentless pressure to reduce costs in order to increase, or just maintain, profitability. In this highly expense-conscious environment, companies are exploring various options to save on direct and indirect expenses. Shared services has become one of the top choices for companies, especially large corporations, to support intense efforts in reducing expenses and costs. In this article, I will share what shared services is, its benefits, and its common capabilities. This article is an introduction to our next blog, a more detailed description of shared services implementation.
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Posted in Service Business Management | Permalink | No Comments » |
August 25, 2009 – 5:57 pm by Shabbir Ghadiali
With the advent of the Internet, the worldwide web (www) has become a ubiquitous platform for enterprises and consumers to interact, learn, network and transact business. It continues to provide a new channel between providers and customers and promises to enable business models to run on cheaper operational and financial expenses rather than old brick and mortar models that require capital investments in buildings, warehouses, stores and human capital. The services sector in particular has struck it big with www. The platform of www has spread its utility across many industries, ranging from retail, financial, healthcare, education, communications and entertainment. In particular, let’s consider the online IT services industry for the focus of this blog.
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July 1, 2009 – 5:38 pm by Dinesh G
Managing IT beyond operational benefits can create significant value and can go a long way in building a competitive advantage. However, this requires a differentiated approach that many companies find difficult to execute. Some companies with a long-term vision that aligns IT with their strategic business direction have achieved significant results and created a hard-to-replicate competitive advantage.
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May 29, 2009 – 1:18 pm by Jason Shamas
During these difficult economic times, companies are facing the challenge of balancing two competing goals: minimizing costs while encouraging revenue growth. Nowhere is this challenge more apparent than within a company’s sales organization. It is responsible for of maximizing revenue in an environment in which customers are aggressively reducing expenditures and delaying buying decisions. However, the sales organization is expected to do so with fewer resources, given that companies often cut SG&A expenses during economic downturns.
One approach for balancing these competing goals is to consider adjusting different levers that make up an overall sales strategy. This article examines how companies can adjust their sales coverage models to better manage the impact of the economic downturn. It focuses on five elements of the sales coverage model: Go-To-Market (GTM) Models, Account Coverage, Use of Overlays, Product and Customer Mix, and Operational Support.
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Posted in Sales and Channel Operations | Permalink | 1 Comment » |
April 30, 2009 – 3:21 pm by Jhanvi Vyas
The global economy has taken a dramatic turn for the worse. With limited credit availability in the market and operational performance under pressure, many businesses are seeking to optimize performance on their balance sheets. Having an effective, focused, and operationally sound sales planning cycle is critical for any company to reduce its working capital requirement and remain profitable while focusing on the right opportunity, products and markets.
This article discusses the three main components of the sales planning cycle – strategy development, operational planning and implementation. The proposed framework allows companies to conduct sales planning in a structured manner.
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March 30, 2009 – 11:50 am by Cindy Lo
In today’s economic downturn, many high tech companies face the challenge of sustaining or improving their sales growth rates despite suboptimal margins and profitability erosion in such a complex business environment. The inability to strategically manage a closed-loop pricing process (Figure 1) is also a major concern for these organizations, especially when current policies and analytics systems lack accessibility, scalability, and technical capabilities. Overcoming these challenges in order to effectively price and discount products and services is critical in order to minimize revenue and margin leakage.
This article will discuss why strategic pricing and profitability management is important to companies, and the types of investment returns gained from improvement opportunities such as pricing optimization software. A large part of the successful implementation of this software is not only putting the technology in place, but also assessing the degree of change management required throughout the organization and proactively managing executive sponsorship, stakeholder engagement, communications and user training.
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Posted in Finance Operations | Permalink | 1 Comment » |
February 26, 2009 – 4:55 pm by Namrita Singh
If revenues and profits are the lifeblood of a business, then sales forecasts are the leading indicator of a business’s financial health. Faced with the pressures of today’s weakening economy, keeping a check on the financial health of a business is essential for planning ahead and preparing the company to best deal with unknown cliffs and craters.
Given the complexity and size of today’s organizations, sales forecasting is no longer an isolated exercise. Rather, it must be integrated into all facets of an organization to produce a business that runs more efficiently; thus saving money, increasing profitability and serving its customers better. Quality people, accurate data, current systems, relevant policies, and streamlined processes can support reliable sales forecasting, but it is a wasteful activity if it is not incorporated by management into the very core of decision making for all key business functions:
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