Transforming a product-driven firm to a customer-driven enterprise is inevitable today in order to stay ahead in today’s extremely competitive market. The days of mass marketing, mass media communications, and little-to-none direct interface with customers are long gone. The emphasis now should be on maximizing customer relationships and becoming customer-driven organizations rather than merely selling […]
About Mark Bridges
Mark Bridges is a Senior Director of Strategy at Flevy, where he leads various Social Media Marketing initiatives for Flevy, including Inbound Marketing, Lead Generation, and Community Management. Flevy is a marketplace for business documents--specifically, documents used by folks who work in a business function (e.g. Marketing, Corporate Finance, IT, etc.). These documents can range from Excel Financial Models to customizable PowerPoint Templates to "How-To" Business Frameworks. Prior to Flevy, Mark worked as an Associate at McKinsey & Co. and holds an MBA from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. You can connect with Mark on LinkedIn here.Author Archive | Mark Bridges
The 8 Most Critical Levers to Managing and Sustaining Change
Most Transformation initiatives fail to achieve their anticipated objectives. Change Management is all about engaging and rallying people at all levels in the organization make the transition and sustain that change. It is critical to ensure that the entire workforce is eager and ready to embrace the required new behaviors. More often than not, the […]
Do You Know What Makes an Organization a Learning Organization?
In this era of rapid change only organizations that are evolving and continuously learning can succeed. Successful organizations discover how to tap their people’s commitment and capacity to learn at all levels. A Learning Organization is a place where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new ideas and […]
The Secret to Success in the Digital Age: Building a Customer-Centric Culture of Innovation
A large majority of organizations rarely focus on gathering and utilizing customer-centric knowledge. So much so that they even introduce a product without having vital insights on the customer and their unmet needs, and they are often clueless about them. Consequently, many product development initiatives fall flat as managers struggle to filter and evaluate ideas. […]
The 5 Building Blocks to Developing a Learning Organization
Organizations need to persistently improve the way they do business to staying ahead of the curve. New ideas trigger organizational improvement and build the foundation of a Learning Organization. Scholars have defined a Learning Organization in many different ways. Some suggest it as an organization skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying […]
Managing Performance by Leveraging the Organizational Health Index (OHI)
The typical approach to improving productivity focuses on assessing variance in quality, time, rate, service, or cost, around which management systems develop incrementally or revolutionarily. Organizational Health Index, on the contrary, focuses on improving performance through improved alignment of organizational systems. For example, by improving competence of key components such as mindset, work design, technical […]
Product Strategy: The Advantages Smart Customization Offers
The advantages of Smart Customization are more visible in the manufacturing industry—owing to fairly speedy cash recoveries when factory costs are aligned to customer value. It is becoming an integral pillar to Product Strategy in many organizations. However, services sector can also benefit from smart customization, but this demands relatively closer interactions with customers and […]
Product Strategy: Key Challenges to Tackle while Implementing Smart Customization
Customers, these days, demand ever-higher levels of personalized products and services to suit their needs. Their demand is grounded on technological disruption and access to up-to-date information. They believe that in an economy characterized by disruption and operational innovation—that makes customization possible—they have an excellent chance of getting customized offerings from the suppliers. Thus, Product […]
Key Account Management: How to Manage Large Global Accounts?
Large accounts make up a significant portion of business for most B2B companies. Therefore, losing an important customer can have detrimental effects on the organization. The significance of key accounts is urging top B2B companies to revisit their key account management approaches. Additionally, the increasing level of sophistication of the purchase process being adopted—such as, […]
Retail Strategy: How to Effectively Manage IT Costs
The Retail industry is under constant pressure by low margins and ever-increasing rivalry. Weak consumer spending; saturated markets; increased consumers demands for service and lower prices; and intense competition has put significant strain on retail bottom lines and growth avenues. Thus, Retail Strategy must evolve to accommodate these market changes. Such low margins force the […]
Real Estate 101: Developing an Integrated Real Estate Strategy
Disruption is constantly changing the retail business environment. In fact, it is adding complexities to it with every passing day. Sweeping changes in consumers’ behaviors and the challenges to retail economic models are pushing the current retail models to undergo considerable transformation. A number of organizations that possess a sizable property portfolio find it challenging […]
Strategic Cost Reduction Primer: A Systematic Approach to Transforming Costs
Cost Optimization Programs are hard to manage, sustain, and often tend to fall short of delivering the promised value. The failure could be attributed to many reasons—including lack of clearly delineated objectives, failure to account for the operational difficulties, internal resistance to change, trying to cut corners from everywhere, not paying attention to planning optimal […]
