Today’s global economy demands more than just increasing efficiency or maximising ROI. Organisations must also be adaptable to changing markets, conditions, policies, and technologies. According to BCG, operational excellence can deliver significant value to companies, with the potential to generate 5% to 15% increase in EBITA. A Harvard Business Review study found that moving from the worst to best management can result in a $15 million increase in profits. These numbers highlight the importance of operational excellence across all sectors and functions, fuelling growth and success for businesses, government departments, and non-profits.
Choosing the right model: A balancing act
Choosing the suitable model to deliver impact is complex and involves tradeoffs:
- A technology startup may prioritise agility and choose lean processes, resource efficiency, and rapid decision-making.
- In contrast, a large manufacturing firm may focus on long-term planning and standardised processes for consistent quality but may be less responsive to market shifts.
Identifying interlinkages between functions to navigate complex organisational structures and market dynamics is a skill that can be learned and applied across domains.
Benefits of operational excellence across domains
Every domain has unique needs and goals for deploying operational strategies. However, businesses need to understand the challenges and tradeoffs and adopt a suitable strategy to balance efficiency, growth, and innovation.
Here are a few examples of the benefits of operational excellence across domains:
- Healthcare: Enables cost savings, resource allocation, timely responsiveness, revenue cycle management, and risk minimisation.
- Finance and banking: Ensures accuracy, security, regulatory governance, compliance, and streamlined processes such as customer onboarding, loan approvals, etc.
- Human resources: Increases employee retention and strategic workforce planning through collaboration.
- Software development: Offers the flexibility to quickly develop and deploy software products while maintaining superior quality.
- Customer services: Integration of chatbots and AI-powered systems to provide quick, convenient, and efficient customer support.
Operations strategy can be a key driver of success that cuts across functional boundaries. An integrated approach across functions in an organisation can lead to transformative outcomes, irrespective of the field or industry. Learning core operations strategy has become essential for a management professional in recent years, as evidenced by top MBA programmes including it in their curricula.
Boost your professional growth by mastering operations strategy
Elephants & Cheetahs: Operations Strategy from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) is an 11-week certificate programme where you will learn how to leverage core operations strategy models, which are explained through 15+ real-world corporate examples. Taught by an experienced instructor, the programme is modelled after an on-campus elective course in IIMA’s 2-year MBA.
The course name, Elephants & Cheetahs, represents contrasting approaches to business and operations:
- An ‘elephant’ signifies a firm competing on low cost through economies of scale.
- A ‘cheetah’ denotes an agile organisation competing on time responsiveness.
In this course, you will learn how to adopt fit-for-purpose operational strategy models and develop an integrated business strategy by aligning goals, streamlining operations, promoting cross-functional synergy, and fostering collaboration.
Leverage IIMA’s certificate to develop a balanced scorecard approach towards transforming organisational performance.
