Building and sustaining competitive advantage is the goal of companies. We see that sourcing capabilities lead to creation of Shared Services Units. Redesign usually caters to demand which is a response to supply that is created. GE as an example created this supply. This in turn brought down the costs.
Further demand for efficiency is driven by the likes of Adidas. Adidas was the first to drive efficiency of suppliers. More about this later in the post.
Target, in order to battle with Amazon, understood that technology was brought in house and completely overhauled shipping operations.
Decisions and outcomes are weakly related. Many unhighlighted great stories are unhighlighted because they run opposite to the current logic.
Shared services and building competency through a multi business firm:
The term to really use should be enterprise and not really firm because it is a collective of multiple business units. The question in point is how do we build competitive advantage at the enterprise level. Once you have a shared services unit, then it becomes a decision for Buy vs Make.
Nth Blog 