Two chapters of Enlighment

I have always been intrigued with business process automation. Having a software engineering background, I learn the power of business software that we can harnessed to reduce/eliminate business waste by automating and simplifying manual processes. With several emerging technologies spurred by the maturing internet adoption, managing and integrating business software have becoming more feasible and inexpensive to achieve. Adopting advance technology to support business operations now has become an affordable luxury nowadays; however, one has to adopt and use them carefully to avoid unnecessary technology overuse that could potentially hamper business activities.

Recently I start reading Paul Hamon’s masterpiece, titled “Business Process Change – A Manager’s Guide to Improving, Redesigning, and Automating Processes”. Just by completing the first two chapters, Paul has successfully persuaded me to step back from my point of views in business process automation that are much polluted with fancy emerging technologies. Paul reintroduced me with Porters’ model of competition and perspectives that one can use to redefine business strategy. One of Porters’ perspectives that really hit me hard is the importance of achieving competitive advantage by balancing the company’s strategic positioning and operational effectiveness. Just like a coin that always have two sides, so far I have only been looking one side of the coin – the operational effectiveness. Porters explains that without clearly understanding its strategic positioning, a company will overdue its operational effectiveness. When competing companies in the same industry overdue the operational effectiveness to maintain its competitive advantage, it will cause condition that Porters called “hypercompetition”. When this situation occurs, competing companies are struggling to make profit and favor to relieve the condition through merger/acquisition. It amazes me how I can use this to analyze the current domestic aviation industry, for example. Porters’ perspective seems fit very well with the situation (eg. airlines claimed to lose money & merger between Delta & Northwest Airlines) . Please note, however, that I am not implying those executives do not understand Porters’ model, but it is definitely very challenging for them to define a compelling strategic position that differs from the competitors in this saturated market.

Though I am still far from completing the book, I have decided to give thumbs up for this book for successfully influencing me with its first first two chapters. I am going to march ahead with the rest of chapters and will write more review about this book in my later posts.