The Science of Creating Sustainable Value

The Science of Creating Sustainable Value By Professor Nicholas Rich, Creating Sustainable Value lecturer

Creating value for customers is critical for all businesses. It does not matter if you operate a small professional service organisation (such as an accountancy practice) or you are the Chief Executive Officer of a multinational manufacturing business, your single most important priority is to understand the marketplace for your business, to market your services and to build the capability for your business to deliver outstanding products and services that command customer loyalty.

Even where profit is not the motivation for an organisation, such as health and care services, local or national government, the delivery of value is equally important so it is critical that the modern effective business leader and manager understands value creation, delivery and the sustainability of value provision to meet the future expectations of customers. This is at the core of the MBA programme at Swansea University.

The design and implementation of a “value adding” process which satisfies a customer’s, patient’s, or service users ‘needs’ is vitally important and the foundation upon which all high performance businesses and highly reliable organisations operate. Many businesses around the world have used their value-generating capabilities to dominate customer expectations and dictate the rate of change in the markets in which they operate (just think about Toyota, Tesco Stores, Apple, Zara, and MoonPig.com). Not just that, this passion to deliver value and to design processes that exceed the levels that others can provide is a capability that allows such businesses to diversify and enter new markets almost at ease. It will not take most people long to list the “great value” organisations that they have experienced and equally to name those that have failed to meet expectations.

So, in a competitive world  where customers and users can provide online feedback immediately after they have received their goods and services, learning the science and foundations of an effective and efficient business is at a premium.

The key to delivering value, learning to improve and using this knowledge to sustain high performance is to take a process view of the organisation and to focus on what the business needs to deliver and how it does so. The quality, speed, delivery effectiveness, flexibility to bespoke services and the costs of a product/service are all key processes that determine customer value, they are the means of satisfying customers, they generate a positive brand image, they generate customer loyalty, they generate profit (or optimise a budget in a not-for-profit organisation) and they must be designed.

Designing and managing a closely-aligned operations and marketing team seamlessly links customer needs and the means of satisfying customers effectively. Understanding the science behind high performance process organisational designs is a skill that all modern managers must possess. It is a skill that will provide benefits to the manager, the employer organisation and the customer when seeking to sustain the highest levels of profitable customer service. There are also Darwinian overtones to harnessing value creation (the primary purpose of any organisation) and to sustaining it, those organisations that develop this capability will survive and prosper. Those organisations that do not master this capability, or remain committed to outdated models, face a less-certain future when servicing existing or seeking new customers.

Find out about the MBA at School of Management, Swansea University