Commercial Awareness and Entrepreneurship

Mechanisms for monitoring and review

2008-03-16T18:19:00.006Z

Beasent Tidd and Pavitt suggest 3 main measures for monitoring and review, namely

Specific Output - especially useful when used to measure innovation that is designed to improve product innovation.

Operational - This would be used for measuring and demonstrating improvements in quality and flexibility.

Strategic Success - This would be used to measure overall business performance and to demonstrate that the innovation directly helped to achieve that improvement.

For my proposed innovation I would be using Operational and Strategic measure to evaluate and review the success of my innovation.

Implementation

2008-03-16T18:19:00.005Z

Implementation is obviously the most critical time during the entire process. A successful implementation doesn't guarantee a successful outcome at the end but it at least gives you the opportunity to progress the innovation further. A poor implementation will see the innovation fail before it ever really gets started.
The key to a successful implementation is to get the right people together to ensure that everything is progressing as planned and to discuss any issues that may arise in order to be able to deal with those issues quickly and effectively.
When we go on to discuss my proposed innovation it will become clear that at implementation stage I intend to initially use a smaller version of the proposed innovation to test it and receive feedback from key stakeholders.

Planning and resourcing changes required

2008-03-16T18:18:00.005Z

In order to proceed with my planned innovation, there needs to be a massive shift in the focus of Capita's current mindset of operating on a fragmented and contract by contract basis. A great deal of planning will need to be put in place for this to logistically work. In terms of resourcing, my proposed innovation is going to require a substantial number of staff from right across the Capita business, so in order for it to work there is going to need to be a great deal of planning and most importantly buy in from an executive level to show that we as an organisation are truly innovative in approach.

Market Research: primary, secondary

2008-03-16T18:18:00.004Z

In Capita's environment, both types of market research can be useful, Capita is constantly expanding and moving into other business's, therefore for this Secondary research is particularly useful given that Capita's main source of business is taking over the work of mainstream companies and taking over their staff. They can use a lot of the research and data already been completed by companies in the particular sector that they are looking to expand in, in my example that would be financial services.
For the purposes of my proposed innovation, primary research forms the back bone of the plan I wish to put in place. The very essence of my plan will be to involve directly the huge direct resource and marketing tool Capita has at it's disposal, namely 30000 employees.

Innovation: genesis screening and adoption

2008-03-16T18:17:00.004Z

In order to effectively use innovation in the work place, we must before we do anything else put a process in place to ensure that innovation is used in the best possible manner for the organisation. Bessant and Tidd have a simplified model for managing innovation and it is a model which will fit easily into any organisation.
The first steps according to this model are to empower your staff to generate innovative ideas and this is done through strategic leadership, direction and deployment from senior management team. I have already said in previous blogs that I feel this is an area that Capita struggles in due to it's fragmentation but hopefully with the small steps that I have already took to address this at least locally in Belfast and as you will see from my pod casts, I plan to propose an innovative solution to address this issue nationally within Capita.
Once we have what can be defined as an innovative organisation and we have that strategic leadership, we can move on to the selection process, for what innovative solutions we are going to progress to implementation stage. My proposed innovation will discuss in more detail how we progress this within Capita.

Ideas Generation: sources of innovation

2008-03-16T18:17:00.003Z

I have already discussed in a previous post about my confusion around Capita's approach to innovation. I feel this confusion arises from the fragmentation of Capita as a business which operates on a contract by contract basis.
In order to fully utilise the opportunities(and this is key to all of this, innovation MUST be seen as an opportunity rather than a threat), Capita must engage it's staff at all levels and on all contracts to not only communicate Capita's innovation strategy but also to engage those staff feel empower themselves to become the innovators and entrepreneurs to drive Capita's business forward.
I know that Peter Drucker's view is that many successful innovators come from the experienced proven managers within an organisation, I can see merit in this but I strongly believe that there is potential to expand this much further especially within Capita, there just needs to be a forum and platform for grassroots staff to share their thoughts and ideas on innovation within Capita group.

The Culture for Innovation

2008-03-16T18:16:00.008Z

I struggle somewhat with the concept of innovation in relation to the environment in which I work in. As I have mentioned earlier there is very little joined up thinking that happens in Capita. It seems to operate very much on a contract by contract basis. I probably wouldn't have even began to think about innovation if it wasn't for the thoughts prevoked from completing this module.
I have arranged with the senior manager responsible for the Capita site in Belfast, for a member of the Senior executive team within Capita to come and give a talk to the managers completing this course, about the culture for innovation within the broader Capita Group.
When you think about it, the organisation must have an innovative approach due to the very nature of it's business, the problem for me is being able to understand that innovation and how I as an employee of Capita can help and shape that Innovation process.

The Micro Environment

2008-03-16T18:16:00.007Z

In order to understand the Micro Environment within Capita I have chosen to use a Swot Analysis. Swot analysis is particularily useful when looking at an organisations micro-environment as it gets us to focus on an organisations, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Swot Analysis - Micro Organisation Capita

Strengths

Geographical Location i.e. huge presence in most Major cities in the UK and India.

Experienced workforce as Capita specialize in TUPE transfer of existing staff from the Organizations that they provide out sourced solutions to.

Tried and tested product to sell to other organizations to gain new contracts.

Weaknesses

Fragmented business no joined up thinking between different contracts.

Competitive market, many bpo’s currently operating in the UK

No long term security due to operating on a contract basis.

Hard to recruit and retain market leading staff due to the nature of the business.

Opportunities

Substantial joined up thinking between different Contracts within the Capita organization.

Cost becoming the key driver for most businesses within the UK, Capita can use its size and scale to provide high quality low cost solutions for these company’s.

Threats

Losing contracts to other BPO’s.

Lack of central IT infrastructure driving costs up.

UK legislation clamping down on out sourcing and off shoring.

Growing more rapidly than the organization can control.

The Macro Environment

2008-03-16T13:47:00.011Z

In order to understand the Macro environment within Capita, I have decided to do a pestle analysis of the business. The pestle analysis consists 6 different categories, political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental.

PESTLE Analysis Table*

Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Environmental.

‘Thing’ which may change	Short, Medium or Long term ?	Importance or Impact & Relevance? V. High, High, Medium, Low V. Low	Internal or External ?	Action I intend to take or Possible action I could take
Governments attitude to out sourcing and off shoring	Short/Medium	V. High	External	Identify and prove economic and social benefit that out sourcing and off shoring provides
IT infrastructure	Short / Medium	High	Both	Create one IT platform for entire Capita group
Out of Control Growth	Medium	Medium	Internal	Enter a period of consolidation rather than growth
Lose Contracts or suffer from In Sourcing.	Medium / Long	High	Both	Deliver on all SLA's, deliver best service at lowest price make it impossible for clients to want to change from Capita

*Source http://www.hull.ac.uk/workbasedlearning/documents/PESTLE.doc

The Organisation

2008-03-16T13:29:00.004Z

I am a customer services manager for the leading provider of out sourced solutions within the UK, Capita.
Capita currently employs close to 30000 people in the UK and is expanding its business in India with the transfer on 1 April 2008 of close to 1000 staff from Prudential's Indian operation, Prudential Process Management Services.
Capita is a very diverse and fragmented organisation having interests in businesses ranging from TV Licencing, HR administration, Congestion Charging and Financial Services.
Capita is a faceless entity in that whilst Capita as an organisation touches the lives of millions of people in the UK everyday, almost all of those people will have no idea that they have just interacted with Capita, for example in the work that I do, our customers will believe that they are talking to an employee of Prudential and not an employee of Capita.
My concern with Capita is the fragmentation of the business in that every area operates as it's own entity and there is no joined up thinking between the different business units. This is is something that I will go into a lot more detail on when I deliver my pod cast on my proposed innovation.

Introduction

2008-03-16T13:12:00.003Z

Through this blog I will demonstrate my learning and understanding from the module Commercial Awareness and Entrepreneurship that I completed as part of the Advanced Diploma in Management Practice.
The opportunity to use an e-platform to complete this module is a credit to the approach of the University of Ulster in that it is taking into consideration the differing learning styles that individual students have.
I believe that throughout the blogs and the pod casts I will demonstrate how I can implement innovation within my work place and apply the learning from this module to a fast paced, ever evolving work environment.