The translation of various corporate strategies into real actions requires one to come up with a set of definitive strategies. In most cases, it is essential that whatever strategies a company chooses to implement become fruitful in the long-run. However, the attainment of these factors is dependent upon a certain management criterion that is applied within the entire organization. In the case of Nike, critical success factors are vital if it has to remain as a leader in the footwear and apparel industry. These factors will allow Nike to take full advantage of its strengths, decrease its weaknesses, take advantage of the opportunities and eradicate or evade any identified threats. Nonetheless, it is the duty of the management to steer the organization towards attaining the CSFs and this can only be achieved by using the finest management technique that will ensure all the organization’s stakeholders are moving towards one direction. In this case, the top management technique for Nike is the Business Process Improvement (BPI).
Business Process Improvement
The contemporary business environment is marred by increasing rates of technological advancement and globalization. This is an indication that the rates of changes within business environment are occurring at a much faster rate as compared to some decades ago. It is a result of this factor that a business must ensure it is not left behind as others adapt to the ever-increasingly dynamic environment by managing its business processes (Yarmohammadian, Ebrahimipour & Doosty, 2014). BPI can be defined as an assortment of undertakings that takes one or more types of input to generate an output that is of significance to the consumer. In order for a process to become efficacious, it must undergo a principled flow of phases with a target of accomplishing a task. Therefore, the enhancement of a business efficiency unswervingly relates to improving the principal business processes.
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It is from this that the Business Process Improvement technique emerges. The origin of BPI dates back to about three decades ago whereby it was seen as being the subsequent great thing after the workflow wave. Nonetheless, in the contemporary business environment, BPI has taken over various business concepts with its main focus being an improvement of the business processes (Yarmohammadian et al., 2014). The implementation of BPI will not only provide a platform for execution, deployment, design, and discovery of business process but also a fastidious development that allows for optimization, analysis, control, and interaction of the processes. As organizations become more distributed and open, their processes continue to become more complex, and to deal with these complexities and adapt to the new environments, it becomes an obligation for them to focus on BPI.
Through BPI, an organization will have the ability to employ a variety of approaches in identifying and analyzing areas whereby they can improve efficiency, effectiveness and or accuracy (Abreu et al., 2013). This will be by way of redesigning the processes into new and enhanced ones thus bringing about an improvement that allows a company to achieves its set goals. The onset of BPI encompasses the identification of various employee skills or business operations that can be improved resulting into smoother processes, an efficient flow of work and thus bringing about general growth and development of a business. From this, it is only right to state that, the sole purpose of BPI is to reduce the time taken in accomplishing any task, elimination of waste and friction in those processes and/or improving the superiority of products or services created by way of these processes. The end results of BPI will allow for an improvement in customer experience and satisfaction because of meeting their demands on time and achieving any set business strategies more efficiently and effectively (Yarmohammadian et al., 2014).
The BPI methodologies vary depending on the firm’s business operations or management decisions. Nevertheless, the sole aim of these process improvement methodologies is to ensure they tweak the various business processes and prevent an organization from floundering or failing during its adjustment stage. Additionally, each methodology has its individual measure of effectiveness through the superlative ones include; ISO 9000, Lean, Kaizen, Six Sigma, Rummler, Global 8-D and Theory of Constraints. Despite having different effectiveness outputs, they promote similar process improvement cycles with a varying number of phases. The BPI must undergo a process improvement cycle and not remain stagnant after achieving the expected results and for this to become a success, change management is a key element that the management must take into consideration. This is due to the fact that, the entire process will involve a methodical approach to permitting change and growth within an organization at the individual levels.
Implementation Process
The mandate of improving the business processes continues to intensify as opportunities change, fresh technologies arise and competition intensifies. An effective means to formulate an incessant enhancement within one’s organization is to carry out consistent business process improvements. If fruitfully implemented, the results are easily measurable using various factors such as an increased customer satisfaction rate, customer numbers, customer loyalty, product quality, increased revenues and increased productivity. The following phases are vital towards implementing a successful BPI;
Identification of the Need for Change
The first step in implementing the BPI is mapping out all the processes so as to get a birds-eye view of the entire organization (Bahramnejad et al., 2015). Through this, it will allow the management to have a clear understanding of how the business works and locate anything that is inefficient or weak. The best way for one to determine the various improvement opportunities from the identified processes is by carrying out a process audit. This will allow one in determining whether the various outputs allocated to a certain process are being utilized in an efficient and effective manner. Furthermore, the audit will play a central role in bringing forward any current issues or potential risks to the organization.
Analyzing the Business Process
After carefully mapping out the various business processes, one can now begin to analyze each individual process (Bahramnejad et al., 2015). This can include focusing on the steps within the process that are consuming more time than expected thus bringing about delays in delivery of the final product. In case one finds any delays or missed deadlines, it is crucial for the management to determine what the causative factors are. Similarly, one must also determine the various process steps that result in improved product quality and whether there are other means of making them more efficient and effective. From this, it will give an individual the ability to understand an entire process from start to finish and thus having all the facts that can be used in setting realistic improvement objectives.
Redesign
This is the most vital step of the entire BPI process. Using the identified inefficiencies from the old processes, one must now determine how to change it (Review, 2014). However, one must be aware of the fact that there is no one-size fit for all solution and depending on the situation, the preeminent solution is chosen. Furthermore, one must have in mind how the implemented change will have an impact on the entire organization. This result from the fact that some employees might resist the need for change for a variety of reasons. As such, it is essential to factor in a lot of useful facts that willed ensure the redesign of the process is not marred by other external factors that might derail or even collapse it entirely before achieving the excepted goals.
Implementation and Change Communication.
After an analysis of the processes, the management must, therefore, manage and plan the careful rolling out of the new processes (Review, 2014). This phase is also important for in case something goes wrong, the company can end up losing more than whatever the inefficient process was costing the firm. It is of uttermost importance that the management carries out a pilot project before fully implementing the actual plans in the entire firm. Communication is a vital factor during this stage to ensure that any form of resistance from employees is managed. Furthermore, an evaluation of the new processes on a weekly or monthly basis is essential to ensure that the process is working as expected.
Reflection and Benchmarking
In most cases, plans do not go as expected. It is therefore important to ensure that once the changes are implemented, a continuous monitoring of the new processes is crucial to make sure they are going as expected. Furthermore, the business environment is dynamic in nature and thus a need to have processes that will match the customer needs at a specific time. More importantly, BPI is a continuous process and this makes it the best tool for testing the new challenges when they arise.
Application by Other Organizations
As earlier indicated, BPI involves the improvement of the various business processes marred by inefficiencies that lead to wastes translating to low revenue generation and client satisfaction rates by a company. The BPI process can take a variety of methodologies depending on the firm such as Six Sigma, Lean ISO 9000, agile management, Kaizen among others. The implementation of various BPI methodologies occurs in various organizations ranging from manufacturing, health education, food, and beverages among others. A good example of the implementation of BPI is advanced from Toyota, which decided to use the lean methodology (Sisson & Elshennawy, 2015). At the time of its implementation, the manufacturing industry was marred by an increased decline in capital and resources after the Second World War. The founder of Toyota at the time Eiji Toyoda encouraged his employees to begin eliminating waste and this included time, space, material and equipment that was vital in adding value to the final product. Following this, the company went ahead and adopted a new manufacturing system referred to as the Toyota Production System that allowed the company to overtake other large manufactures even in the USA. As a result of this, an International Motor Vehicle Benchmark Program was conducted by the Europe and USA firms which saw them adopting the TPS to compete with the Japanese car manufacturer that had taken over the automobile industry (Sisson & Elshennawy, 2015).
Additionally, in 2000, the Institute of Medicine published a report on the increased number of deaths resulting from medical errors. The IoM began pushing for the healthcare industry to adopt better and efficient health care system. At the time, the manufacturing sector had developed BPI methodologies to increase process efficiency with the Six Sigma being used by Motorola and General Motors in the 1980s and 1990s respectively ( Ha et al.,2016). The six sigma allows one to improve the process by determining the affiliation between errors and outputs in the process puts. The health care industry in the USA began using this methodology and by 2009, more than 150 projects had been published using six sigma (Ha et al., 2016). From the analysis of the processes, immunization delays and low staffing were the main cause of the increased deaths and after using the methodologies, the immunization lead time had reduced by 79% while the staffing by about 10% (Ha et al.,2016).
Applicability to Nike
According to Cavaleri and Shabana (2018), Nike is one of the leading footwear and Apparel Company in the globe with revenues exceeding $24.1 billion. Nonetheless, over the years, the company has been fighting off stiff competition from other firms that have ventured in its line of business. Moreover, marred by weakness such as having about 46% of its entire revenue being generated from the USA and increased overhead and marketing costs, the firm is highly susceptible to its rivals (Pandey, 2017). Furthermore, a strong dollar, high legal pressures and increasing human resource and marketing expenses can also negatively impact the firm (Pandey, 2017) As a result of this, there is a need for the firm to focus on the critical success factors that will allow it to remain competitive such as its strong brand name, financial power, product innovation, and corporate social responsibility. The most common factor between all these factors is that they are part of the entire large businesses processes.
Nike’s brand name is known all over the globe and this is what has allowed it to become a leader form one generation to the other. However, various processes have to be put in place by a company if it is to retain such a strong brand name. This means being able to maximally deliver value to its clients in a consistent manner. Additionally, this will indicate the company’s employees must have increased job productivity and the suppliers should provide the required raw materials on time. An efficient and effective brand rests on three factors, the business strategy, communication of promise to customers and implementation. It is at the implementation process that things tend to go wrong resulting from inefficient suppliers to poorly productive employees. Through the BPI, the management will have an ability to determine the various processes within the implementation phase that are derailing its ability to deliver its services in a timely manner. It is these processes that the firm will work towards improving them and also further improve those that seem to work effectively thus allowing it to continue having a vibrant and strong brand.
Financial resources are a crucial necessity for any business. The finances are used in managing the administrative and operational expenses that will allow a company to fully deliver services and products to its customers. As seen from the case of Nike, it should acquire a strong financial foundation that will enable it to confront its weakness. However, to guarantee the firm works within the right budget, it should have a thorough analysis of all its financial usage. It will enable it to eliminate any unnecessary financial uses from its operations. Also, the firm will also determine the processes that require a lot of funds and allocate them thus boosting its overall productivity. According to a study by, a typical company that has revenues of about $1 billion annually will end up losing about $27 million on inefficient processing functions and unwarranted working capital (Khalid, 2013). A look at Nike’s over $24 billion revenue is an indication it is bound to lose hundreds of millions and once the processes involved in these losses are determined, it will allow the firm to have the financial power it needs.
Product innovation is vital for the success of Nike. Being an apparel and footwear firm, it is likely to face increased rates of market changes. Therefore, it is important that the firm ensures it keeps up with customer preferences by conducting in-depth market research. Correspondingly, the company must also ensure it gets all its raw material on timely manner s as to produce the trending apparels and footwear. Using the BPI, the firm will eliminate any factors that derail the raw materials from arriving on time, the production of the products a final delivery of products t clients. Likewise BPI will enable Nike to eliminate any factors that hinder its market research capabilities. CSR is another core undertaking Nike must engage in. However, to ensure that its CSR activities math the community needs, there is a need to carefully study its operational environment and not wait for catastrophes to occur so as to engage in CSR . Its CSR department can use BPI to eliminate any hindrances towards its CSR study and implementation.
Implementation Plan
The BPI process is one that calls for the participation of an entire organization’s stakeholders. However, the launching of the entire process requires the sponsorship and active support of the top management. The company will call form a meeting which is to be attended by the directors, senior management and various business units’ managers who will ultimately own the entire business process improvement process. In the meeting, this individual will discuss the following; an overview of the entire business process improvement idea, the importance of the BPI to the company at the current time, an establishment and the possible processes that require improvement basing on the four identified critical success factors and the overall benefits of the entire process. In addition, the meeting will also see them discuss the various change management techniques that will be employed to guarantee there is minimal to no employee resistance. Moreover, the meeting will see the top management appointing a task force that will initiate, implement and monitor the entire BPI process basing on the four factors indicating there will be four Business Unite Managers. The conclusion of this meeting will see an approval of the BPI. Once the BPI implementation commences, the Business Unit Managers will oversee the entire process until the firm attains the expected goals. Nonetheless, there will be a need to conduct meetings between the Business Unit Managers and Senior Management after every six months to determine the progress of the entire process. In case there are setbacks, the management will redraft new strategies and this will be based on a continuous basis until the firm attains its CSFs.
References
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Bahramnejad, P., Sharafi, S. M., & Nabiollahi, A. (2015). A method for business process re-engineering based on enterprise ontology. I nternational Journal of Software Engineering & Applications. 6(1), 25-39.
Cavaleri, S., & Shabana, K. (2018). Rethinking sustainability strategies. Journal of Strategy and Management, 11(1), 2-17.
Ha, C., McCoy, D. A., Taylor, C. B., Kirk, K. D., Fry, R. S., & Modi, J. R. (2016). Using lean six sigma methodology to improve a mass immunizations process at the United States Naval Academy. Military medicine , 181 (6), 582-588.
Khalid, Z. (2013). Optimizing back-office operations: Best practices to maximize profitability . Hoboken, N.J: Wiley.
Pandey, B. C. (2017). Nike Inc-complete analysis: SWOT, PESTLE, and marketing strategy . BookRix.
Review, H. B. (2014). Improving business processes . Boston: Harvard Business Review Press.
Sisson, J., & Elshennawy, A. (2015). Achieving success with lean: An analysis of key factors in Lean transformation at Toyota and beyond. International Journal of Lean six sigma , 6 (3), 263-280.
Yarmohammadian, M. H., Ebrahimipour, H., & Doosty, F. (2014). Improvement of hospital processes through business process management in Qaem Teaching Hospital: A work in progress. Journal of education and health promotion , 3 .
