Organization Change Readiness
(Part 3 of 3)

This week, we will focus on Competitor Barrier change, Customer preparation for change to happen in your organization, and Product Pricing change.

These management domains are rooted into the ‘competition’ category.  The first domain ‘Competitor Barrier Change’ is the first thing most business owners think about.

The aged old question, how do we create a competitor barrier to gain access to more strategic and tactical business for growth?

It may mean that in order to create the barrier, one may need to change or evolve the product and or services to do so.  We touched upon this in last week’s BLOG. Perhaps it is necessary to evolve your product in order to respond to the competition positioning your company in preference to the customer base.

The question is, is your product, workforce, facility, etc ready for change in order to take these strategic steps? It may be that trying to drive a square peg into a round hole is not where the effort is needed.  Perhaps the overall product and/or service solution is to change the whole package to create something new that is advantageous over the competitors status quo product.

Many things need to be considered as to what makes business sense for the organization and long-term longevity. Careful consideration also needs to take into account about the competitor having barriers that can risk your plans to evolve.  It may be too much of an uphill climb for the return on investment.  Perhaps the level of business you would gain needs other strategies that we mentioned in previous the blogs “Partner Management & Strategic Procurement” series.  Many aspects need to be considered.

Looking now at Customer Readiness, there are a few aspects of this domain to be planned.  Some customers are very helpful and looking to develop a manufacturing supplier to benefit their business aspirations.  Sometimes they can be overwhelming and self serving that steers your team into a direction that does not meet your organization’s objectives and goals for the business.  One must be careful and tactical on how to engage the customer during such a strategic venture. 

When assessing a company for change readiness, we always prepare a ‘Stakeholder Analysis’ which provides strategy for how to manage the customer and other stakeholders that come into play. When a manufacturer can work well with the customer base for evolving the company, it builds a very strong relationship with them as they see your company well invested to be the supplier they desire.  This is often if not the impetus for making change and acquiring a bigger piece of the pie for long term growth. If that is achieved, then your organization has a gateway to new pricing strategies because the product and service offering has changed.  Manufactures make profits through internally developed value-add activity.  If you provide more, then the pricing reflects that.  Where you were manufacturing a widget of some sort earning $X, by offering a larger scope of work tomorrow, the earnings will be $$$Y.

Furthermore, your company becomes a strategic partnering supplier that the customer has invested in.  It makes it more difficult for them to walk away from the relationship.  There are always pros & cons to be well thought out, but the concept we have been talking about here has a well proven track record.  Strategic and tactical development of the business is key with intention and precision to be applied.

LYNXBMG has a business management health assessment (BMHA) suite that manufactures such as yours can utilize to assess the state of readiness for change. Over the past few months, we have posted blog and vlog articles breaking down the business management principles of the BMHA into digestible portions.

We look forward to hearing from you and are available to support your strategic developments. Until then, we hope you have taken away some useful and thought provoking information.  Please reach out to us any time via our Contact Us link.  We look forward to hearing from you.