Growing a Successful Business - How to Create an Unbeatable Business Structure

For years I've taught and consulted with many fortune 500 companies as well as many large government agencies on how to structure and run an efficient business and therefore grow a successful business. I've written many technical books and developed a methodology on this subject. I show organizations how to replace old, outdated methods and organizational structures with modern methods and an organizational structure more suited to today's fast moving, efficient, customer focused environment. That's the subject of this article.

As I go through this article I'll show you what I see in large organizations that have caused many customer service problems and also show you what they should have done to avoid those problems. More importantly I'll show you what you can do now to avoid falling into the same traps.

AN IMPORTANT CONCEPT.

I use something called "Event-Driven" concepts in order to obtain many benefits for an organization. Basically "Event-Driven" means focusing on whomever or whatever is your customer. Let me start with a basic premise: All systems we encounter, be they human, computer or in nature, have a fundamental characteristic in common - they're all "Stimulus-Response mechanisms". For example: A storm (the Event), produces rain (the Stimulus), which produces erosion (the Response). Over time, the response can be something as significant as the Grand Canyon in Arizona.

Every organization simply selects a set of Events that it wishes to respond to from the external world; e.g. A customer wants to place an Order or Request your services. Each external need to which the organization responds is called an "Event". Now, it's the "Event" happening outside your business that initiated the action that your business takes. For example when a customer wants to buy a product of service from your organization the Stimulus Request may go through a whole bunch of people tasks (even different departments), and/or a bunch of computer programs (even different computer systems). It may be recorded and retrieved in and out of manual files or even computer databases and so on before it becomes an Event Response out of the whole organization. The total set of individual processes, their data and files make up what I call an "Event-Driven Reaction or Partition" - one initiated by the customer. Note the best context within which to view an Event-Driven Reaction is from a whole business point of view rather than from any one person/department or computer program/ system context. Taking this view will also give us the most benefits to the organization.

Using my example above what appears to be very obvious in this all-too-typical large organization structure is our Event response has been sliced-up (partitioned) for very different reasons than around a customer's need. In fact the predominant partitioning/structure seems to be based on human skills and computer software package reasons rather than customer focused Event-Driven reasons; the resultant structure even being controlled by a classical military hierarchy, in other words formed from industrial-age and earlier reasons. In an efficient, customer-focused business we must not perpetuate this "fragmented" structure.

If you are a small business owner reading this then as far as un-fragmenting an existing business you're in great shape; you won't have big established departments and systems to restructure. It will be easy for you create an unbeatable infrastructure from the ground up using my methodology. Now if you have a medium or large sized business you will benefit even more with my Event Driven methodology. However, you are probably going to need to do some restructuring to obtain a streamline, customer-focused, cost efficient business.

GETTING SERIOUS WITH PROVEN METHODS AND MODELS.

To gain the benefits from using an Event Driven structure you will have to do some analysis on your existing business. There are many models you can use to formally document your business, for example: A Business Process view -- A Process Model showing process workflow A Business Information view -- An Information Model showing file/data storage A human Implementation Structure -- A Company Hierarchy diagram. I recommend at least you produce a Business Process Model for your business. It depicts the individual processing flows through your business. I believe we should strive to produce a "natural response" view to the fulfillment of a customer's need. Using an Event Driven process model results in a "seamless" business response view to your customer.

If you fragment or repartition this Event-Driven Reaction when creating a new design/implementation of the internal structure of your business it will cause customer delays and introduce potential problems when future changes are needed. In other words it won't be part of a maximum efficient business. So now I can give you my definition of an Event-Driven Reaction:

"An Event-Driven Reaction consists of an end-to-end set of business components required to completely satisfy one need of a Customer."

One organization where I had the privilege to teach hundreds of people Event-Driven concepts was at the package courier company Federal Express, they already acknowledged their main Event Stimulus - the package - and that any internal department boundary and especially a file that stopped the processing of its contents would slow down the response to their customer. So the package (their main Event Stimulus) was "king" and needed to be kept flowing as much as possible in implementation without any internal boundaries (e.g. departments/holding files) to slowing it down. So obviously this concept works with large as well as small businesses.

We can and should take the Event Driven structures depicted in a process model and make them run without any unnecessary partitioning in the real world, i.e. in our new design of the organization. (I call the implemented results Event-Driven Compartments). Event-Driven partitioning concepts coupled with the new technology available to implement them today, such as the internet, will allow you to create "efficient, customer-focused systems", not just "technologically faster industrial age systems".

The main point is to end up with a functional unit from the point of view of a customer. Most importantly by keeping the Event-Driven Compartment whole and specific to one Event-Driven Reaction we will have implemented a structure that has maximum efficiency and which no other business can beat. Today we have a computer literate customer base. Home computers are common and customers know their capability and are less likely to accept slow response excuses. They can spot industrial age systems both manual and computer oriented. When industrial age, unnatural boundaries are removed there is no reason why our Event reaction should not be a continuous flow performed in a minimum time frame.

If you are lucky enough to be applying Event-Driven concepts to a small business you're going to avert a lot of problems in the future. More importantly you're going to implement a business that will be agile and easy to change and one that I believe no other business can beat because it's the most responsive to its customers (i.e. it provides the shortest distance between two points - the customer's request and your complete reaction). Of course Event-Driven concepts work on any size business.

SUMMARY.

I believe Event-Driven, Customer Focused organizations should be the rule not the exception and will be the ones that will grow and survive in hard times. I hope the contents of this article will play a part in guiding your business to be one of them.

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