Creating United Teams

Whether you are a start-up or an accomplished corporate, it all boils down to – Are you making the numbers? For the start-ups, it will determine if you get the next round of funding and at what valuations, whereas for a corporate, it determines which way your share price will head in the next quarter. As a senior leader, you can’t afford to miss making the numbers. But what exactly does making the numbers mean?

• Deliver sales growth a certain level above market growth and as projected.
• Deliver margins that are higher than prior period’s margins by projected basis BPS.
• Deliver a healthy cash flow to net income ratio, better than prior period - higher the better

?If you do this consistently right, your company is the darling of investors, shareholders, and the markets. Conversely, any adverse surprises here can be brutal leaving you no room for cover.

You need to have some fundamentals in place before achieving this consistently. These are:

• A top-notch R&D team that constantly innovates to give your offerings a cutting edge.
• State-of-the-art Manufacturing that churns out defect-free products for your customers.
• First-rate commercial organization that executes flawlessly at the point of impact (= customers)

?Let us dive further on the commercial organization. This typically comprises of:

• Sales team that’s responsible to achieve sales targets through execution of a sales strategy.
• Support Function teams that are supposed to support the Sales organization. This includes at least a few of the following:

* Marketing

* Supply Chain & Warehousing

* Order Execution

* Purchase

* Service & Application support

* Legal & Compliance

* Regulatory Affairs

* Business Processes

* Finance & Accounting

* Human Resources

* Partner Management

* Customer Experience

* Quality Assurance

Each of the support functions comprises of their own functional teams and are often guided by a set of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) of their own - as stipulated by their functional heads. In its entirety this structure is supposed to work like a well-oiled engine with all parts mutually supporting the others. But often, this is not the case.

Caught in an inadvertent silo of their own making, in many organizations, support teams obsess on their functional KPIs often foregoing the interests of the all-important customer, and in some cases, acting directly in conflict with what your customer needs. This situation is damaging and can lead to disgruntled customers, a demotivated sales team and ultimately a misaligned organization. And that in turn can adversely impact “making the numbers” we discussed in the beginning.

?If you can relate to this situation in your organization, you are not alone. There is a lot that can be done to correct this. You should be ready to invest – for the long-term organizational benefit. ?We at TalenTransformers have carefully curated a “Professional Services Firm” transformation module that can greatly help align all the functions to your superordinate goals. This can potentially turn your teams into client fanatics who take pride in delighting their clients AND meeting their KPIs.

As always, we would love to discuss this further. For that, please mail to [email protected] or visit our website www.talentransformers.com or simply ping us on the LinkedIn homepage using “Getting started” button.