Nikhil's Wild Guide to Business Intelligence

In the wild, the competition is for survival and growth and winners usually are those that practice three simple steps time and again regardless of intrinsic advantages such as size, strength, speed etc.
- Know precisely what Survival Boosters (Right Food) and Survival Challengers (Competition including adverse climatic conditions) can increase/decrease chances of their survival and growth
- Look out for those Survival Boosters and Challengers in changing conditions of habitat to make survival and growth more predictable
- Constanly seek to choose to move/ live in habitats that have Maximum Survival Boosters and Minimum Survival Challengers

Winners implement these very effectively in the wild to not just survive but grow their species. Those who dont, do not survive their term! This is the Lifeline Strategy and Intelligence in the wild!

Lets look at a parallel of the Lifeline Strategy and Intelligence in the Business World. Obviously, Survival and Growth means the elusive Profitable Revenue Growth in business.

This is what the principles would have to look like:

A. Knowing the Survival Boosters and Challengers

Survival Boosters are in two forms :
a. Risk free, Profitable, Long term customers that promote your business
b. Your weak competitors!
Survival Challengers are in two direct forms:
a. High risk, Unprofitable customers, one time customers that damage your profits and brand
b. Your Strong competitors

and one indirect form - Your wonderful organization culture!

Businesses need to know them extremely well. In my view, "Business Profit is directly proportional to currency of knowledge about customers and competition"

The second aspect is to make profit predictable in various scenarios. Hence, businesses need to look at complete set of data - past and current to make a meaningful prediction of future. Most businesses do not view it this way.

B. Know How to Apply it for Winning

Discover patterns for success. Asking tough questions like "Why is my current customer with me?"; "What are the top three things I should not do to lose this customer?"

Any business that is struggling under current economic scenario to make more money than the competition even after spending more, needs to very clinically investigate if it is implementing the "Life Strategy and Intelligence" principle objectively. It represents a fundamental review of how business is organized to survive and grow. This is what I call the foundation of Business Strategy and Intelligence and would strongly urge all Business Leaders to instill this into their businesses. Here are four simple tips to consider:

1. Proactively remove all organization silos. This is one of the biggest survival challenger manufactured by and sold into your oragnization and only you have the authority to change that permanently. See how several information silos falling apart can result in immediate wins for your business.

2. Deep Dive into your Survival Boosters and Challengers. Investigate all data about the Boosters and Challengers; it is usually lurking in people's heads waiting for you to declare "sharing as a mandate" or in many cases outside of your organization and ofcourse in your internal application assets. Get working on it right now or you will become a Booster (a weak competitor) for your competition now and even more when the climate changes!
3. Align efforts and resources to beat Challengers and Maximize Boosters. Get tough and real. Not about reducing costs to mathematically maintain a margin, but by aligning process and people (hence costs!) where they are usually most effective - Revenue Generation!

4. Prepare now for next logical Revenue cycle. Think of decline in your revenues from your current capacities as a logical indicator that your customers' world is likely to change. Think proactively about next wave of consumption, invest and be ready for your customer; ofcourse way before your competition!

And a wild final idea (Probably a new paradigm) - How about organizing your business around customer segments rather than functions and products? Maybe people will start working for marketshare outside the organization rather than inside!!!!!