Price wars have broken out in consumer industries around the world. In fact, retailers such as ALDI, Amazon, and Walmart have used price to position themselves against traditional competitors in the market, pinching margins all around. Prices are being reduced because of the belief that this will boost their perceived value to consumers, who implicitly […]
About Joseph Robinson
Joseph Robinson is the Vice President of Strategy at Flevy. Flevy is the marketplace for best practices in business management. Learn how the Fortune 100 and global consulting firms do it. Improve the growth and efficiency of your organization by leveraging Flevy's library of best practice methodologies and templates. The documents at Flevy (https://flevy.com) are of the same caliber as those produced by top-tier management consulting firms, like McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and Accenture. Most were developed by seasoned executives and consultants with 20+ years of experience. Flevy covers 200+ management topics, ranging from Digital Transformation to Growth Strategy to Lean Management. You can peruse a full list of management topics available on Flevy here. Prior to Flevy, Joseph worked as an Associate at BCG and holds an MBA from the Sloan School of Management at MIT. You can connect with Joseph on LinkedIn here.Author Archive | Joseph Robinson
Effective Communication 101 for CIOs
“When it comes to communicating, the CIO is both a storyteller and educator.” Chris Manriquez, VP for IT and CIO, California State University, Dominguez Hills. CIOs must be both a storyteller and an educator. Aside from this, they must also be a strategist. The majority of CIOs might speak the language of technology fluently, but […]
The Growth of a Giant: The Logistics Clusters in Supply Chain Management (SCM)
In the late 1990s, business strategist Michael Porter argued that clusters make business more competitive by increasing the pace of innovation and stimulating new business formation. National and regional governments quickly embraced the idea and immediately supported its development by providing the necessary funding support. As expected, good things started to happen: businesses became interested […]
The Art (and Science) of Winning a Price War: The Price War Strategy
“To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.” Sun Tzu, The Art of War Many companies are competing on the basis of low prices. Yet, Price Wars represent a fundamentally different dynamic than simply trying to get […]
Why Companies Need to Take a Serious Look at Factory Audits in Supply Chain Management (SCM)
Factory Audits are often conducted by companies to confirm whether the supplier is delivering the supplied goods per agreed-upon terms and standards (e.g. quality, safety, ethical, environmental, etc.). This has become an important undertaking for companies to continually ensure that it consistently meets it’s quality and performance standards. In a time where there is global […]
When Survival in the Midst of Chaos Calls for Supply Chain Sustainability
In the modern age, organizations are striving to form a sustainable Supply Chain system to cope with the challenges that are arising. Such issues include the emission of hazardous substances, excessive resource consumption, Supply Chain risks, and complex procedures. Through Strategic Planning, organizations around the globe are adopting strategies to become a sustainable organization. In […]
The COSO Framework: An Organization’s Guide to an Effective Internal Control System
As the business and operating environment changes, there has been a greater demand for transparency and accountability as to the integrity of internal control. This has become very critical today as businesses drive to enhance the likelihood of them achieving their objectives and be able to adapt to changes in the global business environment. The […]
Organizational DNA: The 4 Building Blocks to Effective Execution
The most resilient and consistently successful companies have discovered that the devil is in the details of the organization. No company may ever totally master the enigma of execution. But for them organizing to execute has truly become a competitive edge. Execution only becomes effective when the company’s DNA is holistically integrated. This means weaving […]
The 6 Pillars of Supply Chain Management (SCM) Thinking: A New and Revolutionary Way of Looking at Supply Chain Management
Supply chain thinking used to be limited to the managers of a few global companies—companies that were struggling to coordinate internal information and materials. This, however, led to an exciting boom in cross-business coordination based on Supply Chain Management concepts. Today, the field has broadened and shifted over time. Current supply chain trends—differentiation, outsourcing, compression, […]
Mastering Strategic Supply Chain Planning: The Pegasus of Strategy
Strategic Supply Chain Planning is the “Pegasus of Strategy.” It can soar, but it also needs to keep its feet on the ground. Companies with a global supply chain now need to introduce its strategic left hand to its operational right hand. To make planning more valuable, its strategic supply chain planning needs to combine […]
Organizational DNA 101: A Guide to Defining Your Organization’s Behavior and Characteristics
Execution has become the new watchword in Boardrooms. As organizations fail to effectively implement strategies, the importance of execution has risen to the forefront. Essentially, the first step in resolving these dysfunctions is to understand how the inherent traits of an organization influence and even determine each individual’s behavior. Organizations must also understand how collective […]
When Organizational Behavioral Issues Start Affecting Organizations
Most organizations are unhealthy. Only organizations that are recognized to be Resilient, Just-in-Time, and Military can be described and relatively free from dysfunction. Yet, only 27% of the responses gathered from the Org DNA Profiler showed a healthy profile. The Org DNA Profiler is a short online self-assessment tool launched on December 9, 2003. It […]
