Smart Data: Enterprise Performance Optimization Strategy

1.4 NEW TECHNOLOGIES

Critical to the success of enterprise-wide strategy is ownership by the CEO in private enterprise. Leaders in the top positions of any organization command, lead, and integrate with the following elements: power, time constraints, focus, attributes, and outcomes. These elements can be seen in the following two case studies. In one case, Netscape built a successful e-business—Anthill.com—was successful, and sold for a profit. The second case, Fannie Mae, is a case study in critical success factors gone wrong.

Power translates into value-setting, business rules, resource allocation, and balance of consequences—that is, making certain organizational participants clearly realize the difference between positive behavior and deficient performance. Power was abused at Fannie Mae and even though the company was successful in the short term, the corruption of power led to its downfall. Time constraints force the identification of milestones, metrics, and outcomes in a meaningful period with associated metrics such as rate and frequency.

Netscape identified these constraints successfully in Anthill.com. However, over time Fannie Mae ignored these time constraints and failed. They got away from the critical success factors (CSFs) that made them successful originally. Focus describes the domain in which change and improvements are to be realized, leading to the formation of themes. The domain for Netscape and its theme for Anthill.com stayed focused on building a successful ...