Coping with Environmental and Regulatory Issues

The environment today plays a more important role in every organization. The introduction of new standards and regulations for handling, recycling and disposal of materials will have a dramatic effect on all companies who deliver a product to a consumer. 

The advent of ISO 14000 will force many manufacturers to think about, and deal with the disposal of their product after the consumer has finished with it. In addition to new worldwide standards of enviromental protection, new regulations will continue to be adopted forcing changes in business practices to meet new community and stakeholder requirements. 

Managed Health Care is an example where the Voice of the Customer is having a huge impact on the sppliers of medical products and services. The enforced reduction in packaging materials is another area of huge potential impact on all organizations.

Assimilating New Technology
The rapid onslaught of technology has had a dramatic impact on many organizations. Companies that are created today are no longer constrained by geographical proximity the way that existing organizations were when they were first started. 

The recent advances in technology have impacted manufacturing processes and information systems. Today it is possible to set up an organization at home, advertise products and services worldwide through the World Wide Web. 

Organizational size is irrelevant. Companies that are hampered by old processes and information technology will be at a serious competitive disadvantage. More and more we are in the information age. Information is a commodity that can be traded just like everything else. 

There are three levels of informational value in this new age, raw transactional data itself which has the lowest level of value, information that has been extracted from the raw transactional data which has a higher level of value, and then intelligence which is extremely valuable because it represents information that has a distinct competitive advantage.