Analyzing Your Business System Structure

Earlier I demonstrated that your company is conceptually similar to a fighter aircraft. And like an aircraft, to operate at its highest performance (and sometimes simply to be able to fly), it has to have a complete and comprehensive set of corporate objects. No missing objects, no redundant objects; just the ones necessary and sufficient to maximize your aggregate corporate performance.

Building and optimal corporate system structure from scratch in a startup business is called business engineering (or corporate engineering). Optimizing existing corporate structure is called business reengineering.

To build a high-performance fighter aircraft, one will need to develop the right blueprints – using the right methodology, process and tools – and then use them to actually build the plane. Likewise, to build a high-performance business, you will need to develop the right blueprints – using the right methodology, process and tools – and then use them to actually build your organization.

This guide offers a ‘corporate cockpit’ methodology for engineering, evaluating and optimizing corporate structure and corporate performance. ‘Corporate Cockpit’ is based on the object-oriented Business Description Language (BDL). Key BDL components are corporate objects maps (key business management diagram and decomposition diagrams), Aggregate Performance Scorecards (APS) and KPI Scorecards (KPIS). 

Object-oriented approach has been very successfully used for many decades for software development and later for information systems analysis and design. In corporate cockpit, it is no less successfully used for analysis, engineering/reengineering and optimization of complex corporate systems.

The key advantage of ‘corporate cockpit’ methodology is that it offers a comprehensive, uniform and natural (our world consists of objects) approach to visualizing, structuring, analyzing and optimizing individual corporate objects (products, brands, clients, assets, etc.) and processes. Which makes the corporate analysis and engineering/reengineering project much faster and substantially less risky.

You can find more information on corporate cockpit advantages in Corporate Cockpit White Paper.

To design and build a high-performance fighter aircraft, one will need to use the services of a highly competent aircraft engineer. To design and build a high-performance organization, you will need to use the services of a highly competent business engineer. Preferably an outside consultant – to eliminate potentially disastrous conflicts of interest.

We are not the makers, we are the takers, It means, that in order to always operate at the highest possible performance, your company and its corporate structure must be highly adaptable to changes in its external environment. Which requires a highly efficient corporate process of such adaptation.

It is very important that every decision maker (in fact, every employee) in your company has these corporate blueprints in front of him/her (i.e. on her PC/notebook/tablet screen) at all times.

Seeing this picture while making and executing corporate decision is vital because it makes the employee in question always think how his/her decisions and actions will influence other employees and departments. And seek cooperation of all parties (his/her stakeholders) influenced by his/her decisions and actions. Which radically improves vertical and horizontal in your company and thus its synergy, aggregate performance and shareholders’ value.