Customer Q & A

The following questions are from our customers. They represent the types of issues that they are grappling with everyday.

In our view, an important test of iTQP’s mission lies in our ability to offer our customers an organization that can respond to these topics, not simply with answers, but also with a set of field-proven processes and solutions that stimulates the creation of an operating and governance environment that can internally raise and answer these questions, naturally, as they run their operation.

Each question includes links to the particular iTQP offerings that have been designed to address the various management and leadership topics embodied within the question and to help our customers better understand what they must do to implement these answers in their organizations.

The issues embedded within these questions are applicable to all types of businesses, regardless of industry—large or small, single or multi-SBU entities. Moreover, they have been found to apply equally to managers and leaders of internal departmental units and corporate functions, as well.

What businesses should we be in?

This is perhaps the most critical question facing many business leaders. It speaks of fundamental issues surrounding who they are, what they stand for, and how they plan to deliver value to their customers ...

What markets are important in those businesses, and where is value migrating in those markets?

No industry is static. Successful, high performance companies understand that they must be continually connected with their customers and their evolving needs. Products and services that are no longer responsive are dead ends for both you and your customers ...

Who are our customers and which of their needs are we targeting?

This is probably the most fundamental question for every enterprise, yet it is surprising how little most organizations really know about who their customers really are, why they buy what they do, and even more importantly, who their non-customers are ...

What distinctive, sustainable capabilities (products, services, offerings) must we have to address our customers’ needs?

Sustainable competitive advantage is the cornerstone of profitable growth. Businesses, after all, exist to provide value to customers and returns to their shareholders. Accordingly, their goal is to position the business so that that it can achieve, over the long term ...

What factors drive our revenue and earnings growth?

With limited time, money, and resources, prioritizing management actions around those issues that actually drive success is essential. Complicating matters further, each chosen market segment has its own unique characteristics. Even segments that appear to be ...

What risk-return profile maximizes our long-term shareholder value?

In uncertain times it can be difficult to quantify how much risk is prudent, not to mention the difficulty in actually identifying risk, in all its various guises, in the first place. Yet it has been demonstrated repeatedly that a lack of attention to an organization’s portfolio ...

When do we need to fundamentally change the strategy of the business?

Strategic thinking should be a continuous process carried out across the organization, not just an annual board room exercise. Momentum style forecasting, stale ideas, and businesses that operate the way they do “because they always have” are often strong ...

What are our critical resources, assets, technologies, and competencies and how do we optimize their deployment to achieve our objectives?

Having the facts regarding where an organization truly excels, not just among its peer group, but also across industries, is essential. But, this is only part of the answer. Effective leadership also requires that the organization be mercilessly focused on the problems ...

How do we ensure that business unit goals are aligned with corporate targets?

Business unit and functional area synchronization with the overall corporate direction can be a daunting and frustrating mission. But, it is essential for maximizing an organization’s strategic value. This often involves much more than developing strategic plans or ...

How do we ensure that our technology and business strategies are aligned and focused?

In the last several years this topic has emerged s one of the key strategic challenges facing businesses, large and small. The power of information services and information technology to redefine the competitive landscape in almost every industry is yesterday’s news ...

How do we define value for the corporate center, and then leverage that value across the business units?

The corporate center (the collection of so-called staff functions, like finance, marketing, strategy, HR, IT, etc.) can be a source of great talent and competency, as well as great cost. Individual SBU managers legitimately complain that without direct control they can’t be ...

How do we use and manage information company-wide so that it is a strategic asset?

This is still a topic in transition for many companies. In far too many organizations, information is still held to be a zero sum game—the more someone tells you, the more diminished they become relative to you. This is a recipe for disaster, since open ...

How do we dramatically increase the learning rate among our employees?

It turns out that one of the most significant characteristics of high-performance companies is their ability to rapidly assimilate facts, feedback, and learning regarding everything they do, and then incorporating that learning into improved strategies, offerings, business ...

What business processes will most effectively support the capabilities needed by the business unit in the future?

Effective execution of an organization’s strategy requires that the operating model aggressively supports its mission, and nothing else. This tight, laser-like strategic focus is essential for sustainable profitability and growth. But, it cannot be static. Accordingly, ...

How does the business unit move from its present processes to those it will need while still maintaining and growing its business?

Strategic change is a tricky proposition. Often compared to replacing all four tires on your car while simultaneously driving down the expressway, changes to an enterprise certainly benefit from sound planning, but even more importantly, require a sense of shared ...

What is the optimal set of technology projects that will most directly advance our goals?

Managing the portfolio of technology projects is certainly a traditional CIO responsibility. But, even more important is the identification of that particular subset of projects whose success is essential if the organization is to achieve its strategic objectives. Understanding this ...

What are my biggest technology risks and how do we mitigate them?

Project management is essentially risk management. Effective project managers understand that the path to success is fraught with many obstacles, and the best way to navigate that path is armed with an objective understanding of exactly what those risks are and the ...

How do we deliver more value with less risk in our technology efforts?

Nothing reduces risk more than the simple idea of shifting to an approach of delivering smaller things rather than larger things. Size does matter. If large projects can be organized into smaller chunks of deliverable value, then not only is risk reduced, but customers ...

Where are the largest process improvement opportunities in my company?

Knowing where to spend your limited time so that it has the greatest return is a hallmark of effective managers. Root cause analysis can be an important tool in revealing these opportunities. But, frequently, the knowledge regarding the linkage between an ...

How do we incorporate continuous improvement in our operation?

History has shown that very few techniques have been as sustainably effective in improving an organization’s ability to perform as the idea of continuous improvement. Founded as it is on some very old and field-proven principles, continuous improvement may be ...

Why are my technology projects always late and over budget?

Predictable methods for reliably delivering technology remain elusive. Many factors, such as requirements flux, user expectation gaps, insufficient user involvement, inexperienced project management, incongruent toolsets, etc., interact in complex ways to subvert ...

When do we stop testing and just ship to production?

How does one ever really know when a software application has been sufficiently tested? How do you balance the need for “getting it right the first time” with the fact that until the technology is actually being used by its customers, it is not delivering any value? ...

Are production bugs and outages a way of life for my customers?

Shipping defects is always expensive. And, while zero defects remain a lofty standard, that nevertheless must be our goal. However, the more important question—and one that should be easily within our grasp—is whether the technology organization can ensure that the ...

Why can’t our application systems talk to each other?

The lack of an integrated business and technology architecture is at the heart of many persistent operational problems. This is particularly true when trying to stitch together new applications within the existing installed base. But, it is also increasingly a problem ...

Why does it take us years to effect simple changes in our basic computer applications?

One of the most common complaints about technology, despite all its legitimate success in blazing new trails in a variety of industries, is its stubborn resistance to all but the simplest, most localized types of change. The sources of this intransigence are clear: complexity, ...

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