Industry Perspectives

All industries are experiencing challenges similar to the ones summarized in the "Challenges" section. Effectively addressing them often requires the type of integrated management processes described in the thought leadership section. Our experience helps us understand how these challenges are being experienced in various industries and how our approach needs to consider these differences.

Manufacturing
The manufacturing sector has been at the forefront of leading management approaches such as ERP, TQM, Six Sigma, ABC and Balanced Scorecards. Overseas competitors and partners, rapidly changing and expanding product lines, the ever increasing role of services and demand volatility have combined to present unique challenges for this sector. Effectively addressing them requires greater collaboration to coordinate an ever increasing number of component parts. Greater management process integration is central to achieving this to effectively address a number of common business issues:

• Managing demand changes and capacity constraints using sales & operations planning (S&OP)
• Improving S&OP by combining it with NPD processes to more effectively manage capacity constraints
• Improving financial planning by combining it with S&OP processes
• Understanding and managing total costs of products, services and customers
• Managing supply chains across different business units and legal entities

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Financial Services
The financial services sector is undergoing significant change. Rapid changes in technology-driven products and services, combined with consolidations of banks and insurance companies across the globe, serve to complicate managing such organizations. Greater management process integration provides the means to address a number of issues that are specific to this sector:

• Having a single view of the customer to support customer-focused strategies
• Rapidly integrating M&A transactions to maintain this customer-focus
• Managing products, services and customers across legal entities
• Managing the value of IT in this technology intensive sector

Hospitals
Most hospitals have already capitalized on obvious cost reduction opportunities that do not pose potential conflicts regarding quality of care. This has typically involved improving the performance of individual departments through automation, process changes, and staffing assessments or reductions. However, few such opportunities remain. Significant improvements must now come from improving how departments work together. In other words, by tearing down "functional silos."

Integrated management processes provide the means to promote greater collaboration between physicians, clinicians, ancillary, support and finance staff to simultaneously improve productivity, service and quality. Such collaboration provides the basis for a more stimulating work environment, to which top talent will be attracted. Moreover, it provides the basis for effective pay-for performance programs – ones that promote behaviors that give care providers incentives to simultaneously consider clinical, financial and service-related objectives in their decision-making.

Government
Government agencies are being increasingly asked to do more with less, while also becoming more accountable for results. Performance-based budgeting is a management approach that seeks to achieve these objectives. PBB is a process for allocating resources to outcomes that stakeholders value, the ultimate purpose of which is to reduce costs and ensure that planned results are achieved. Greater management process integration provides the means to address a number of issues that are specific to this sector:

• Managing expectations about service levels that can be achieved, in light of budgetary constraints
• Managing business outcomes that affect multiple government agencies
• Coordinating resource allocation between government agencies
• Getting government agencies to operate more like businesses