Professional Services

First coined in 2001 by Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs, the acronym BRIC, referring to the countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China, is today an almost universally recognised entry in the economic dictionary. While the fact that the four countries account for over a quarter of the world’s land mass and are home to more than 40 percent of the world’s population cannot be denied, projections of the future power of the BRIC nations have always differed widely.

Innovation has always been essential for any organisation wanting to grow. The importance of sustained innovation however, has been less widely recognised up until recently, but is taking on more significance as a result of two key factors.

1. The seven year economic cycle is a dead concept

The $19.5 billion it made topped the $14.8 billion achieved in 2012, with growth in the company’s book value coming it at 18.2 percent. "On the operating front, just about everything turned out well for us last year - in some cases very well," Mr Buffett wrote to shareholders.

We’ve all been in settings over the years, from locker rooms to auto plants in China, in which motivational signs were prominently displayed to ensure that key lessons were not forgotten.

Whichever side of the C-Suite you look at, senior management is seeing its isolation ebbing away. This is a positive development. It creates a more agile business that can maintain its competitive advantage in the face of a quickly shifting marketplace.

The CFO can no longer ignore the CIO. They must work together on transformative projects to ensure return on investment and long-term value. COOs and heads of HR need to unite across change projects, otherwise new processes and procedures fall on deaf ears and impact staff morale.

Great customer service is something that everyone expects but not everyone receives. A 2013 Forrester report, Navigate the Future of Customer Service, states that customer service is “moving from being a cost center to a being a differentiator.” And a report on call center efficiency from the International Computer Management Institute found that superior customer service creates real value for clients in efficiency and customer satisfaction, as well as business unit and strategic value.

According to a recent study by security firm McAfee and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIC), The Economic Impact of Cyber Crime and Cyber Espionage the USA, the world's largest economy, loses about £65bn from cybercrimes every year including loss of key business data and intellectual property. The report also states that cybercrime costs the global economy $500bn annually and is a main contributor for dragging down economic growth across the world.

One of my clients was recently honored as the “Supplier of the Year” by one of their major customers, a relationship that was barely four years old. In discussing this achievement, a senior executive from the supplier organization cited famed artist Andy Warhol’s observation that “In the future, everyone will be world famous for fifteen minutes”. This executive’s comments were insightful along several dimensions: