Innovation has been on many executives minds for quite a number of months, as various business magazines highlight the need to innovate to allow businesses to thrive in today's economic landscape. But none of these magazines highlight that innovation is only relevant if it addresses real operational challenges.
Innovation is not only the "sexy" new technologies or customer products, but starts at the core of your organisation. Many executives believe that you can introduce innovative solutions through the traditional solution development process. But when you really aim to adopt innovation, then it starts with changing behaviours in your organisation. It often starts with the organisational culture and adaptability of the people.
By using operational innovation specialists, your able to "quickly" start the early steps in your innovation journey. However, it often starts with addressing your project methodologies. Only when you introduce new project methodologies, e.g. operational innovation, ideation techniques, iterative solution desigh with proof of concept and test/ try reviews, you'll be able to transform towards adopting innovative behaviours in your business.
So, where and how do you start?
I have seen that even though Procure to Pay or Purchase to Pay (P2P) is a core process in many organisations, not many senior executives see this end-to-end process and cross-functional impact across their supply chain, operations and finance functions as an area where innovation should be introduced. However, many P2P process are inefficient, ineffective or broken, which have therefore a direct impact on other operational and back-office functions.
This is why this is a perfect process to start introducing operational innovation. By understanding the core challenges and issues within this end-to-end process and use cross-functional teams to come up with potential solutions, you're able validate your innovative people behaviours in your business. As there are many participants in this process, there are also numerous views, experiences, creating a high level of innovative knowledge.
So... just start with selecting a trusted Operational Innovation Specialist to guide you on this journey, allowing you to deliver the operational benefits and achieve your growth, revenue and cost targets...