Book description
The relentless pursuit of industrial efficiency no longer yields the
profits it once did because it requires a level of business
predictability that no longer exists. Instead, the Internet and global
video and telecom systems provide a massive and continuous flow of data
that causes the whole world to behave like a giant stock market, with
all the volatility and uncertainty that goes along with such markets.
Responsiveness now trumps efficiency
.
By being responsive to the evolving needs and desires of specific
groups of customers, companies can wrap their products and services in
a tailored blanket of value-added services to consistently earn an
additional four percent or more gross margin than they would otherwise
earn for the product or service alone. This customer and market
specialization is the most promising and the most sustainable source
of profits in our fluid, real-time economy.
Part of the Microsoft Executive Leadership Series, Sustainable
Prosperity discusses the three fundamental process loops that
drive an agile enterprise and how they work together to deliver the
responsiveness that generates profits in a high-change economy.
Providing strategies for innovative and pragmatic use of people,
process, and technology to drive operations in an agile enterprise,
this book reveals the principles of the agile enterprise, backed by
real-world case studies from the author's own experience.
Michael Hugos is a speaker, writer, and practitioner in IT and
business agility, and agile system development methods. He writes a
column for Computerworld and a blog titled "Doing Business
in Real Time" for CIO magazine.
Michael H. Hugos is a thinker, speaker, and practitioner
of business agility and agile IT system development methods. He spent
six years as chief information officer (CIO) for Network Services Co.,
a multibillion-dollar national distribution cooperative where he
developed a suite of supply chain and e-business systems that
transformed the company's business model from old-line distributor to
value-added provider of products and supply chain services. He is a
two-time winner of the CIO 100 Award, and a recipient of the
InformationWeek 500 Award and the Premier 100 Award for career
achievement. He is also author of Building the Real-Time Enterprise
and Essentials of Supply Chain Management, Second Edition, both
published by Wiley.
