The Real-Time Enterprise: Competing on Time with the Revolutionary Business SEx Machine

Why is it that, given two companies with approximately the same assets and number of skilled employees, one struggles and the other grows profits? From where do those profits come? The answer is that they come from how work gets done: how companies 'do' what they do, how they operate. 

'Operational Transformation' is the next frontier of business advantage. Lacking growth markets, and facing global competition in uncertain times, companies must change the way they conduct business -- or competitors that reinvent their operations will run circles around them. This is a book about new sources of competitive advantage. It's about operational transformation, time-based competition, and flawless execution of business strategy. Drawing on years of front-line experience across many industries, Fingar and Bellini explore what GE, Wal-Mart, Virgin Group, Toyota, JetBlue, Dell, Progressive Insurance, Amazon, and other pioneers have done to change the game in their industries. The authors show that deep structural changes -- made possible by business process innovation -- have enabled these companies to reinvent the fundamental ways they operate their businesses. 

Most companies have plenty of innovative ideas for change, but they’ve lacked the capability to execute on those ideas -- until now. Companies that transform their operations by mastering the new competitive weapon, the "strategy-execution (SEx) machine," will prosper in the decades ahead.

Real-time enterprise represents a new way of competing that can help revitalize competitive advantage. But jargon and hype about it from software vendors, venture capitalists, management gurus, and trade publications are creating more fuzz than buzz for managers interested in the concept. Fingar (a business process management consultant) and Bellini (an executive in the semiconductor industry) promise to cut through the fog to make clear the practical facets of real-time enterprise and its implications for business strategy. They describe enabling technologies but write primarily for business people, not programmers or technologists seeking technical guidance. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR