Business framework

by Alex Roan on Jun 18, 2024

One of the challenges of improving operations is identifying and prioritising where to focus. A good way to provide some structure to the approach and to improve communications is by working with a framework or map which helps to visualise the areas of the business and the nature of possible improvements.

There are many ways to visualise business areas. A well known approach is Michael Porter's value chain.

I prefer to start from a model with a few differences. Breaking down an orgnisation into corporate, line of business and buisiness services better mirrors real life organisation structures. Removing 'support' terminology better respects service functions ability to deliver value. Changing the focus from manufacturing to product or service delivery. This leas to:

This gives us a summary of the operational areas to consider for improvements. But what about the nature of improvement. I would start by considering 10 key attributes of a business:

I define these business areas and attributes in detail in my recent article on operations assessment.

This results in a matrix which helps us to consider the range of potential improvements across the business.

We can use this view to summarise points of view or the results of analysis for discussion. For example, if considering outsourcing we may summarise the scale of potential impact on business areas and attributes:

We could prepare a view that summarises one or many factors inluding; process maturity, business risks, open roles, high risk systems etc.

This could be a good way to summarise the state of the operations for strategy discusions. Of course, it's important that good quality detail exists below any summary.

We can also use this map to list out and work through potential improvement topics per business area. Consider some examples for finance.

Working on business transformation over the years two challenges I see are not considering full scope of implications and miscommunications. Frameworks can help provide a bit more rigour to both of these.