Alexandra Levits Water Cooler Wisdom Are Your Operations Lean

Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom Are Your Operations Lean The days of spending months strategizing the best path forward are over for most businesses. Imagine proudly presenting a 100-pagebusiness planto your stakeholders only to realize that half of your material was already outdated and your customers had moved on? Considering the current pace of change in todays marketplace, a lean business model has become more and more attractive. Traditionally, being “lean has meant doing more with less, but the concept has expanded. Today,a lean business model is a strategy that streamlines processes to rapidly address customer requirements. It involves fast cycles ofsurveying customers about their needs, developing and prototyping new products and services accordingly and adapting to shifts in demand. “To be lean, you need to make it a part of your companys DNA to prioritize ideas based on ROI as well as continuously test your assumptions and make adjustments based on the results, Lobo says. “For example, when we started out, we used several marketing channels, he continues, but eventually zeroed in on direct sales and in-house events based on our hypothesis of the potential ROI. Hosting large events has not only allowed us to generate new clients, it has also generated revenue via ticket sales and sponsors and helped us barter for business services with several vendors. A lean business model often rewards experimentation and can be more cost-effective because they avoid lengthy implementations of unproven strategies and investments. For the rest of the piece, head over to the AMEX OPENForum.