Surviving the recession: a Quocirca series

Part 9: Creating and using Windows of Opportunity

The marketing department often uses the phrase "window of opportunity", but what does it mean? It's an abused term, often being used to rush through some campaign or budget request on the basis of "if we don't have/do this now, we'll miss the window of opportunity". That the "this" is then done, and no-one actually seems to do a great deal better is neither here nor there. The "window" identified is not fully targeted, the "opportunity" is not maximised, and the expected value to the company does not happen.

In reality, a window of opportunity is the period of time in which a chosen approach has any validity in the market. In olden days (say, five years ago), these windows could be many months long. However, the increasing use of e-solutions and the collapse of product lifecycles have led to most windows being measured in weeks if not days. Therefore, the use of windows of opportunity as an underlying basis for producing a project proposal can be fallacious and misleading. The general length of time required to implement any solution will automatically mean that the window of opportunity is missed - therefore the project should never have been instigated in the first place.

But, the use of these windows is actually what differentiates the winners and losers out there in the real world. Therefore, a solution which provides the flexibility for the management and control of future windows can be a major point in the favour of a project proposal. This is the aim to set yourself - having the capability of provide the business with a system that supports the need to maximise the windows through minimising the time to capability (see http://www.silicon.com/a50908 ) and optimising the business processes.

But (and it's a big but), how do you identify what the windows of opportunities are available to your company and how do you ensure that the solution you are proposing will help?

Well, from a continuing thread which (I hope) is apparent from these articles, the major part of this is to enlist the help of the lines of business (LOB) and act as a translator between business speak and technology jargon. Again, the LOB says "Our competitor beat us to the market again" and becomes "Our time to capability (and therefore time to market) is too long". "We had the right product, but we ended up with too much inventory after the bubble had burst" becomes "We mis-read the window of opportunity - we were probably too late to the market and over-produced."

So, having identified the sorts of problems that are making it difficult for your company to manage and utilise Windows of Opportunity, what's you next move? You need to understand the bottle-necks that are causing these problem. Is it that marketing are creating too much product demand and that the manufacturing line cannot keep up? Is it a slack supply chain, where you have to wait for long periods to receive basic sub-components? Is your marketing/campaign management software integrated into your customer service system and into your supply chain?

This requires a deeper understanding of your company and the chains of communication that should be in place. Don't count on these chains actually being in place - since when has marketing liked talking to the sales force? An idealistic view is required here, but by taking a full view from the higher levels of the business requirements, it should be relatively easy to create a simplistic chain based on what needs to happen to provide your customers with a seamless order-to-delivery service.

From these, we can look at the priorities (see www.silicon.com/a49901), and so ensure that any proposal we put forward provides the maximum "bang per buck". As we will see in a future article, this is now getting us towards the preparation of our "Total Value Proposition", with which we will be wooing those who will be paying for the project. We are preparing ourselves to be able to create an argument that is a "no-brainer" for getting sign off - the proposal will not discuss technologies, but will be business-focused.

It will detail how issues need to be prioritised, how solving each of the issues will add value to the business, how the solution will help foster the correct use of windows of opportunity, how the proposal plays in the competitive market along with the effects of not doing the proposal and how you will be providing value-add to the company from an early stage.

With this style of approach, we are truly preparing our company to survive not only the recession, but also to thrive once the market upturn happens.

Next week: In-house or hosted? - The outsourcing question

**Quocirca is a leading, user-facing analyst house known for its focus on the 'big picture'. For a full summary of its activities see www.quocirca.com, or reach the company's founding directors by emailing quocirca@silicon.com.

Previous Surviving the Recession columns:
Part 8. Time to Capability
http://www.silicon.com/a50908
Part 7. The use of Game Theory
http://www.silicon.com/a50677
Part 6. Creating a basic Total Value Proposition
http://www.silicon.com/a50475
Part 5. Supply and demand - managing expectations
http://www.silicon.com/a50295
Part 4. The mobile factor - preparing for the deluge
http://www.silicon.com/a50159
Part 3. Knowing the customer
http://www.silicon.com/a50052