Operational excellence

• Reasoned decision on the value discipline for each customer segment
• Defined value criteria with points of differentiation and threshold values
• Derived requirements for processes, management systems and culture

For functionality, choice, time, quality, price, service, relationship and brand, the leadership team decides where it wants to differentiate and where the threshold value is sufficient. This includes decisions against things, such as customer-specific special solutions or exceptions to standard processes. These decisions become premises for day-to-day operations.

Operative excellence pursues effectiveness and efficiency through process management. It is an internal view aimed at lowering the company's own cost of value creation while maintaining quality, and it belongs to every strategy. Operational excellence, by contrast, focuses on the costs incurred by the customer: price, waiting times, maintenance and follow-on costs over the period of use. At the outset we clarify which of the two questions defines the assignment. Often it is both, at different levels.

Only one company in an industry can hold cost leadership in Porter's sense; the primary focus is on the competitor and on the price per unit. Several providers can pursue operational excellence at the same time. A combination of cost-optimised differentiating features protects a company from being exposed to every price war. Here the primary focus is on customer value, measured against the conditions of the industry concerned.