High Growth AND Operational Excellence: Mission Possible?

High Growth and Operational Excellence: How can a company balance this with SAP? 

Some companies break on to the scene with a brand new technology introduced at the right time while others achieve success after years of hard work and elbow grease.  To paraphrase the oft quoted words of Thomas Edison, “genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.”  Regardless of how you make your initial mark, key ingredients to achieving and maintaining a high growth rate requires a combination of both innovation and solid hard work, directed by a strong vision.  Technology today makes this more practical than ever before.

In my view, mid market companies tend to have a collegial culture: one that is fantastic for embracing new ideas and being innovative, but comes with the inherent downside of lacking structure.  A real challenge for high growth companies is to walk the fine line between fostering innovation while laying down structure. So we often see companies working to balance their innovative nature overtly state that they will innovate planfully.   Venture Capitalist often place senior leadership within an organization that needs to perform the balancing act of risk management while executing the existing growth plan. So often the difference between success and failure is the ability to measure one’s risk, set andmeasure milestones all in the context of limited staff and poor reporting systems.   

When I meet founders, ceo’s and Board Members, the most common question is “How can I understand if there is value from an investment in technology or business process improvement?”  Measured risk comes from tapping in to the passion for innovation, along with strong rear view perspective of the sheer determination and grit that brought the organization to its current state of success. Engaging a broad internal team in such evaluations is done for this reason but often misses the mark on the hard value /risk discussion.  These always wind up on the ceo’s desk.   

SAP provides a great deal of confidence and support in answering this critical question.  From Value Engineering to best practice based implementations, I find specifics answers for these leaders.  It is amazing how far we have come in the last 5 years on these threads but also cloud computing, time to value and services solutions that ensure a customer’s success.  Consider a few developments of late:

• SAP access through my iPad and iPhone are as common place as checking email on a blackberry.
• Business ByDesign competing and winning customers on head to head functionality and performance selections.
• MidMarket companies are adopting Sybase Mobility solutions as part of their SAP deployment strategy supported solely by our dedicated Inside Mobility Team.
• CRM onDemand, a pure cloud based solution, is winning market share with our partners and dedicated inside CRM Team.  

Less than one year ago, these statements would not be in this blog.  These “New Norms” are being established every day.  SAP embodies the concept of planful innovation to unlock decades of expertise and capture significant revenue growth as a reward.  I work hard to keep my eyes open to these milestones, as every executive in our customers’ businesses does too.   Hopefully, you are as well and I would enjoy hearing your view.