Operational Excellence Key Challenges

Speed and the ability to adapt to changing market conditions are a significant challenge for business.

The threat of new competition (the #1 driver), rising customer expectations, expanding markets, and digitalization are the key drivers of change. These are driving force behind the every increasing need for Operational Excellence, especially for end-to-end Business Transformation, and rapid, agile, flexible solution offerings and execution.

New technologies and innovation acceleration are disrupting all traditional industries and markets. Start-ups no longer have major barriers to entry, computing powering is accelerating, and business models are being disrupted in just a few months, causing massive pressures on margins.

Every change in the market affects how a company operates and performs, often dramatically. And these days, it is difficult to respond to one disruption before being thrown off course by the next one. Advanced technologies, increasing digitization such as AI, Robotic Process Automation, Machine Learning, IOT, Cloud Computing, Big Data, Data Analytics, Advanced Robotics, 3D Printing, Mobile Applications are just some of the technology shifts.

These digitalisation's’ bring a quantum leap in productively improvement, but consequently leaders have to rethink their operations end to end, including how to incorporate digitalization activities along the whole value chain, e.g. use of big data in customer operations, or 3D printing technology in manufacturing.

Teams will need to embrace a culture of operational excellence, reimagined operations every day, foster open communication and faster decision-making. Product development, procurement, supply chain management, production system design, and all manufacturing and services will need to be transformed. Operational Excellence professionals needs to adapt and actively embrace all these new technologies and the new business models they create to ensure the organization is always at the cutting edge of execution excellence.

Whether its the need to keep up with new technologies, the pressures of implementing and sustaining a fully-fledged culture of Operational Excellence, or encouraging the allocation of resources and buy-in for Operational Excellence projects, it is clear that Operational Excellence practitioners are facing a period of incredible change and upheaval.

Exceptionally savvy companies manage these changes by developing end-to-end global operating strategies that enable profitable growth that take charge of innovation execution and stay nimble enough to respond to rapidly changing condition. Strategies that embrace and thrive on the power of technology to drive innovation.

Operational excellence is a key attribute of leading companies in any industry. Through the combination of the right business strategy, the right technology strategy, the right operating model, and the right execution path, companies ride out recessions more successfully and emerge from them more quickly, developing competitive advantage regardless of economic conditions.

The Global State of Operational Excellence: Critical Challenges & Future Trends seeks to understand the most crucial issues, priorities and successes faced by OpEx Practitioners in 2017. We’ve compiled the responses of hundreds of Operational Excellence practitioners to offer key insights into the state of Operational Excellence, including measures of success, the greatest developments, and much more in the following report.

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What is Operational Excellence

Operational Excellence is the execution of the business strategy more consistently and reliably than the competition, with lower operational risk, lower operating costs, and increased revenues relative to its competitor. It is needed more than ever is today’s technology driven rapidly changing business models, which require organizations to undergo end-to-end business transformation. Operational Excellence can also be viewed as execution excellence.

Some of the key process methodologies used are Lean Thinking, Six Sigma, Hoshin Planning, Balanced Scorecard etc.

However, the focus of Operational Excellence goes beyond the traditional continuous improvement methods to a long-term change in organizational culture. Companies in pursuit of Operational Excellence do two things significantly differently than other companies: they manage their business and operational processes systematically and invest in developing the right culture.

Operational Excellence manifests itself through integrated performance across revenue, cost, and risk. It focuses on meeting customer expectation through the continuous improvement of the operational processes and the culture of the organization. The goal is to develop one single, integrated enterprise level management system with ideal flow. The second component, a culture of Operational Discipline, is commonly described as doing the right thing, the right way, every time. This culture is built upon guiding principles of integrity, questioning attitude, always problem-solving, daily continuous improvement mind-set, level of knowledge, teamwork, and process driven.