Service Strategy in Action


Book Description

In today's competitive global markets, simply making a great product is not enough. To achieve profitable growth and stand out among competitors, you must start to strategically compete through service and innovative solutions for business customers. Professors Christian Kowalkowski and Wolfgang Ulaga guide you how to shift your business from a goods-centric to a service-savvy model. The authors' proprietary twelve-step roadmap to profitable service growth will help you break out of a narrow product-centric logic and discover how to � determine if your company is "fit-for-service," � make the most of your existing services, � innovate and create value-added services and customer solutions beyond your products, � embed a true service-centric culture in your organization, � drive change and align your service strategy with corporate goals, � transform your product-centric sales force into a service-savvy sales organization, � design an organizational structure that promotes service growth, and � align your interests with distributors and partners. Kowalkowski and Ulaga's twelve-step roadmap is based on rigorous research and long-standing experience working with businesses. They have worked with hundreds of managers in industrial and professional services companies, conducted research projects, led executive workshops, and published numerous articles in scientific and managerial journals, including Harvard Business Review, among others. Here, they share not only their own insights but the lessons learned from successful case studies and years of extensive research.




Good Strategy Bad Strategy


Book Description

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy clarifies the muddled thinking underlying too many strategies and provides a clear way to create and implement a powerful action-oriented strategy for the real world. Developing and implementing a strategy is the central task of a leader. A good strategy is a specific and coherent response to—and approach for—overcoming the obstacles to progress. A good strategy works by harnessing and applying power where it will have the greatest effect. Yet, Rumelt shows that there has been a growing and unfortunate tendency to equate Mom-and-apple-pie values, fluffy packages of buzzwords, motivational slogans, and financial goals with “strategy.” In Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, he debunks these elements of “bad strategy” and awakens an understanding of the power of a “good strategy.” He introduces nine sources of power—ranging from using leverage to effectively focusing on growth—that are eye-opening yet pragmatic tools that can easily be put to work on Monday morning, and uses fascinating examples from business, nonprofit, and military affairs to bring its original and pragmatic ideas to life. The detailed examples range from Apple to General Motors, from the two Iraq wars to Afghanistan, from a small local market to Wal-Mart, from Nvidia to Silicon Graphics, from the Getty Trust to the Los Angeles Unified School District, from Cisco Systems to Paccar, and from Global Crossing to the 2007–08 financial crisis. Reflecting an astonishing grasp and integration of economics, finance, technology, history, and the brilliance and foibles of the human character, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy stems from Rumelt’s decades of digging beyond the superficial to address hard questions with honesty and integrity.




Service Leadership


Book Description

The purpose of this book is to provide a comprehensive theoretical framework as well as practical strategies—not just for survival but for a true search for excellence in the uncertain and ever-changing world of customer service management. The theoretical framework is based on the notion that customer service contains three key variables: a promise, a process, and people. After going through the step-by-step process of service management, the reader will have the necessary understanding and skill to choose the right strategy for the right circumstances, to design service processes, to identify the means and methods to implement these processes, and to measure the outcome. Key Features: Shares insight from CEO′s on how service leaders think, strategize, and apply tools of the trade to achieve their objectives Relates chapter content to real world challenges faced by corporations Includes a discussion on both quantitative and qualitative methods in a service context Conceptualizes the new paradigm of service leadership and the development of a multi-disciplinary approach to the topic Provides an Instructor′s Manual on CD containing an outline of the text with teaching points, PowerPoint slides for every chapter, a test bank, answers to end-of-chapter questions, and sample syllabi Service Leadership: The Quest for Competitive Advantage provides an accessible application of theory suitable for upper level undergraduate and graduate courses in Service Management, Service Marketing, Customer Service, Human Resource Management, and Leadership.




Strategy That Works


Book Description

How to close the gap between strategy and execution Two-thirds of executives say their organizations don’t have the capabilities to support their strategy. In Strategy That Works, Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi explain why. They identify conventional business practices that unintentionally create a gap between strategy and execution. And they show how some of the best companies in the world consistently leap ahead of their competitors. Based on new research, the authors reveal five practices for connecting strategy and execution used by highly successful enterprises such as IKEA, Natura, Danaher, Haier, and Lego. These companies: • Commit to what they do best instead of chasing multiple opportunities • Build their own unique winning capabilities instead of copying others • Put their culture to work instead of struggling to change it • Invest where it matters instead of going lean across the board • Shape the future instead of reacting to it Packed with tools you can use for building these five practices into your organization and supported by in-depth profiles of companies that are known for making their strategy work, this is your guide for reconnecting strategy to execution.




Strategy-in-Action


Book Description

The meltdown of stalwart companies from AIG to JAL to Lehman and government crises from Greece to Spain make it abundantly clear: With economic uncertainty and rapid innovation, empowered consumers and free agents, and the constant pressure to be faster, better and cheaper, the established wisdom on strategic planning works no more. Once hailed as “brilliant” by experts, it is the very approach that got so many companies into the mess in the first place. This path-breaking book shows how successful organizations of all stripes transformed their strategy paradigm based on Strategy-In-Action and the power of human capital: standing in the future, listening for vital intelligence in far-flung locations, giving voice to dissenting views, maximizing ownership by stakeholders, especially implementers, getting quick wins and screening out losers quickly in the action. Above all, successful companies of all sizes have ended the long-standing divorce of strategy—hatched by a select few behind closed doors—from action, the supreme test of strategy. Dr. Thomas D. Zweifel, strategy and performance expert, gamechanger and author of seven leadership books such as "Communicate or Die," "Culture Clash 2," "Leadership in 100 Days" and the award-winning "The Rabbi and the CEO," has teamed up with Edward J. Borey, CEO, corporate strategist and turnaround guru. Together, they bring to bear their combined half-century experience in innovating strategy design and execution at Fortune 500, midsize enterprises and startups as well as large public-sector and UN agencies. The result: a turn-key methodology for senior managers who need adaptive and people-centered strategy that yields quick wins and stands the test of time.




Service strategy


Book Description

Management, Computers, Computer networks, Information exchange, Data processing, IT and Information Management: IT Service Management




Connected Strategy


Book Description

Business Models for Transforming Customer Relationships What if there were a way to turn occasional, sporadic transactions with customers into long-term, continuous relationships--while simultaneously driving dramatic improvements in operational efficiency? What if you could break your existing trade-offs between superior customer experience and low cost? This is the promise of a connected strategy. New forms of connectivity--involving frequent, low-friction, customized interactions--mean that companies can now anticipate customer needs as they arise, or even before. Simultaneously, enabled by these technologies, companies can create new business models that deliver more value to customers. Connected strategies are win-win: Customers get a dramatically improved experience, while companies boost operational efficiency. In this book, strategy and operations experts Nicolaj Siggelkow and Christian Terwiesch reveal the emergence of connected strategies as a new source of competitive advantage. With in-depth examples from companies operating in industries such as healthcare, financial services, mobility, retail, entertainment, nonprofit, and education, Connected Strategy identifies the four pathways--respond-to-desire, curated offering, coach behavior, and automatic execution--for turning episodic interactions into continuous relationships. The authors show how each pathway creates a competitive advantage, then guide you through the critical decisions for creating and implementing your own connected strategies. Whether you're trying to revitalize strategy in an established company or disrupt an industry as a startup, this book will help you: Reshape your connections with your customers Find new ways to connect with existing suppliers while also activating new sources of capacity Create the right revenue model Make the best technology choices to support your strategy Integrating rich examples, how-to advice, and practical tools in the form of "workshop chapters" throughout, this book is the ultimate resource for creating competitive advantage through connected relationships with your customers and redefined connections in your industry.




You Don't Need an MBA


Book Description

MBAs are old news. In this ground-breaking book, leadership expert Alicia McKay teaches leaders to focus on the things they don't teach you at business school.Leaders are made, not born. But they are not made in the lecture halls and seminar rooms; you don't need an MBA to be an effective leader.They need to get smart, be strategic about the next step and expand their range, to face a complex and uncertain future. They need paradox: clear values and open minds, high performance and meaningful space, dedication to detail and big picture perspective. They need to ask different questions, design different options and most of all, they need to do that with others on the same journey.In this thought-provoking book, Alicia McKay teaches you the five skills every strategic leader needs:* How to develop true flexibility* How to make good decisions* How to develop powerful systems* How to drive real performance* How to have meaningful influence Drawing on the latest global thinking on leadership, You Don't Need an MBA uses Plain English to demystify the skills leaders of the future need and outlines a way forward; united leadership that focuses on real outcomes, not quick-fixes.




Bridging the Services Chasm


Book Description

Bridging the Services Chasm provides a comprehensive framework companies can use to make critical service strategy decisions that have rapidly become the difference between product success and market failure. Based on the analysis of technology providers, this book leverages a combination of public record, unique survey data, and direct interaction to clearly define the critical role services is now playing in the success of product companies. In 1991, Geoffrey Moore published Crossing the Chasm. This seminal work framed and defined the specific challenges that companies face as they attempt to drive new product offerings to market. Since then, a new set of strategy challenges for product-centric companies has become evident. And there is a new chasm that companies must decide how to cross: The Services Chasm. Bridging the Services Chasm frames the services strategy decisions product companies can no longer afford to defer and provides a clear path for action.




The Strategy Book ePub eBook


Book Description

Thinking strategically is what separates managers and leaders. Learn the fundamentals about how to create winning strategy and lead your team to deliver it. From understanding what strategy can do for you, through to creating a strategy and engaging others with strategy, this book offers practical guidance and expert tips. It is peppered with punchy, memorable examples from real leaders winning (and losing) with real world strategies. It can be read as a whole or you can dip into the easy-to-read, bite-size sections as and when you need to deal with a particular issue. The structure has been specially designed to make sections quick and easy to use – you’ll find yourself referring back to them again and again.