Collaborating is Not That Easy!

I have spent a great deal of my career focused on collaborative business portals, wikis, workflow and document management tools and methodologies which allow company employees to manage product lifecycles, document work processes, share business and technical requirements, etc. They all add various levels of strategic shareholder value. A surprise has been the continued level of e-mail usage to foster collaboration.

One of the first things that we have learned is that when you use e-mail or social media sites as the basis for your business collaboration... you're at a significant disadvantage. Here's one reason why...

This is the collaborative equation used for simple e-mail or telephone based collaboration, from what I remember. Is this yours, too?

How about more complex collaborative strategies. Are you familiar with the 80's term "Concurrent Engineering" or "CE". We use an enterprise-wide CE strategy for addressing the Time-To-Market (TTM) and Time-To-Volume" challenges as these graphics depict:

Today, we use the term "Concurrent Enterprising" or "Value Chain Management" to address the TTM and TTV challenges which help us to collaborate across a "Design Chain" for product development teams or collaborate across a Supply Chain for logistic and inventory management teams or many other needs from one end of the value chain to the other.

Our members use our Collaborative Groups capability to address the issues and challenges of collaboration. If you would like to read about these collaboration enablers, let me know. I will send you a short .pdf document which describes how we can help your team to address collaboration. Just send me your e-mail address at chvaluechains (at) gmail (dot) com.

What we have learned a lot about work collaboration over the years. Tools like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Quality Management Systems (QMS), Product Data Management, Product Lifecycle Management, Requirements Management, and Business Process / Rule Management automation, are several key system types, to name a few. What are your key applications that you use to promote collaboration?

Enter Industry Benchmarking Practices to Generate Collaboration!

But what really gets people working together (across functions or across the 4 walls of the enterprise)? That is is the use of Shared Industry Intelligence (SII) to enable teams to see how well they perform vs industry peers. Industry Benchmarking is the reason why trade associations like our own, are so important. We help you and your industry peers to generate SII data so that all Members can greatly benefit! Here's some areas that are ripe for SII data generation...

1. Industry Benchmarking of Key Performance Indicators (KPI's)
2. Key Risk Indicators (KRI's)
3. Key Compliance Indicators (KCI's)
4. Key Internal Control Indicators (KICI's) etc.

When you can see your own team's performance vs industry peers, that's when a team get's pumped up! They we as three Industry Trade Associations help a company move to a Concurrent Enterprising / Value Chain Management charter.

The Value Chain Management temple of Strategic Shareholder Value helps to explain the draw to VCM strategic value creation! Each of the areas shown are ripe for industry benchmarking collaboration. Let us know if you'd like to participate in our VCM Industry Benchmarking Study for 2022. You will learn how to target VCM best processes and practices and how you rate in "peer average" and "best-in-class" VCM work excellence.

Phil Wilson,

Global Managing Director

American Association of C+H Value Chain Organizations