Infographic: Breaking down the four pillars of successful business
A recent white paper by Telstra Wholesale, Powering your business through relentless change, showed that many Australian businesses are ineffective at achieving positive business outcomes. The research went a step further to assess the contribution of four business model pillars.
Understanding the pace of technology and the effects it has on the business world is the first step to future proofing your business. However, by resisting change and trying to ignore disruption, businesses can find themselves on the wrong side of history – missing a key piece of technology and lagging behind the competition.
Looking at the literature
A 2015 paper in the Harvard Business review looked at digital transformation in the context of adoption of four key new media technologies:
- Cloud
- Mobile
- Social
- Big data
The paper highlighted how businesses that embrace these new technologies can find new ways of working with staff, and more importantly new ways of servicing clients. The study also looked at the theory that business leaders don’t need to master each of these channels, but need to understand how they can use them to improve areas that the business may be struggling.
By applying the Business Effectiveness Scoring System (BESS), Telstra Wholesale’s research breaks Australian businesses into three camps: ‘Traditional’ businesses that are grappling with changes to their industry and looking for a solution; ‘Transitional’ businesses that are in the process of change and gearing towards an update; and ‘Transformational’ businesses are agile businesses leading change and disrupting their industries.
To understand the points of change and the key elements of disruption, we can look at the four pillars of these business models to better understand the individual challenges of each business area.
These pillars are:
- The business mindset; to help understand how staff and leaders work within the business, how they approach challenges and how they feel about work.
- The structure; looking at the platforms, processes and structures that keep the business running.
- The platform or technology that keeps the business running in the day to day and,
- The ecosystem, which looks at the business network, partners and connections that could help or hinder disruption.
By focusing on key business areas and treating each business pillar as an opportunity to improve, we can pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses of a business structure and highlight the areas in which each business can be more effective.
To understand how the Business Effectiveness Score is calculated, we’ve broken down the four pillars below:
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:
- Australian businesses are struggling to get the four key pillars of modern business right – mindset, platform, structure and ecosystem right.
- Each of the pillars is crucial to developing an agile business model, which can thrive against digital disruption.
- The value and impact of fine-tuning these four areas of your business is explained in our infographic.
Learn more and download the whitepaper