Business information is inconsistent, incomplete, and inaccurate in today's enterprise

Enterprises have much to gain by properly organizing and leveraging information to provide value. Information is not managed properly for support and utilization in today’s enterprise. The business is not organized and managed to capture information produced directly by the business and to apply information directly to the business. The categories of information are not supported as information capital to produce business results. There are no precisely-defined data entities to integrate information from the various systems into a business information base for consistent management information. Most direct business data is never captured, management information is reported in conflicting and inaccurate sets, and actual business management information remains unknown.

The information complexity and accuracy problems are addressed by additional information technology investments

Each management structure and information system defines the enterprise differently producing the information complexity and accuracy problem. Large information technology investments for data reconciliation, enterprise information management, IT architectures, specialized knowledge and records management, etc produce excessive enterprise overheads and never solve the problems.

The managed business integrates actual data, knowledge, records, and intelligence in one Business Information Base

The only solution is to manage the business directly to capture actual business data and produce information capital solutions needed to manage the business directly. Business management provides the proper support for information capital to provide information solutions, to utilize solutions to capture data and apply information directly for the business, and to integrate information on the business in one consistent and accurate Business Information Base for transparent management and good corporate governance. [more...]

20^th century enterprise management manages the enterprise, not the business

20^th century management used today manages the enterprise by laying organization and management structures over the business. We are familiar with the organization structure that requires periodic reorganization, and management structures in the corporate plans, business processes, information systems, account charts, and reporting structures used every day. These structures record a multitude of data entities and can report mountains of information, but do not record actual business data or report actual business management information.

21^st century business management manages the business to manage the enterprise

21^st century business management organizes and manages the enterprise business as one integrated business structure. The enterprise is managed by managing the business of the enterprise. Business is “investments in capital as solutions of worth utilized for costs and effectiveness of performance to produce value and quality in results”. 21^st century management manages the three entities that comprise the business: capital investments in the business, business performance in the utilization of the capital, and business results produced by performance. All business data is captured in one structure and one consistent, complete, and accurate set of business management information is reported.

There is only one source of knowledge for 21^st century business management

Result-performance Management (R-pM) provides the concepts and procedures for 21^st century business organization and management. The knowledge to manage any business is provided in the Business Management Toolkit. The toolkit is continually updated and expanded to guide 21^st century business management. [more...]

Conventions, definitions, and standards used in 20^th century enterprise management are inconsistent and confusing

20^th century enterprise management does not organize the natural business or apply common-sense management, as we do in our personal business. Arbitrary contrived structures are laid over the business. Each structure has its own set of conventions, definitions, and standards. Added together this produces an inconsistent hodge-podge of conventions, definitions, and standards that are applied separately for organization, planning, processes and systems, accounting, administration, IT architectures, performance management, reporting, and other parts of enterprise management.

Rule No 10 of 21^st century business management: Employ 21^st century business management conventions and standards

The 21^st century business must avoid the problems inherent in 20^th century enterprise management. This is done by organizing the business for 21^st century management. 21^st century business management uses one set of conventions, definitions, and standards that are applied to the actual business and used for all management organization, planning, directing, control, and reporting. Common conventions, definitions, and standards enable business collaboration and education, solutions, and services that can be applied to any business.

One consistent set of conventions, definitions, and standards define 21^st century business management

21^st century business management is guided by Result-performance Management (R-pM) knowledge and procedures. 21^st century business management conventions, definitions, and standards are defined, updated, and maintained in the R-pM Business Management Toolkit to support the organization and management of any business. The conventions, definitions, and standards can be followed by any education institution, solution developer, or service provider to meet the needs of any 21^st century business. [more...]

20^th century enterprise management we use today presents many unsolvable problems

21^st Century Management Magazine has produced many articles describing the 20^th century enterprise management with the unsolvable problems all business enterprises suffer from today. The enterprise is organized and managed instead of the business. Enterprise organization and management structures conflict with the business, so that all enterprises confront reorganizations, unknown costs, unknown value creation, unmanaged value chains, investments not required by the business, intangible assets, change management, corporate governance, inaccurate accounting and management information, excessive IT overheads, and other continuing problems that can never be solved by managing the enterprise.

21^st century business management manages the business directly

21^st century business management manages the business as one structure for all organization, planning, direction, control, reporting, and governance. The business is defined as “investments in capital as solutions of worth utilized for costs and effectiveness of performance to produce value and quality in results”. The business is organized as all capital invested in the business as specific solutions, economic output results required for business success, and the performance of the business in utilization of capital solutions to produce specific results. 21^st century business management provides the structures, principles, and rules to guide actual business management and eliminate the problems of 20^th century enterprise management. [more...]

Today's information systems do not capture and report actual business data

Today's enterprise uses a myriad of management structures and information systems creating enormous information complexity. Each structure and system defines its own set of data entities and reports separate information. Enterprise management information systems attempt to reconcile data and integrate information into meaningful reports for management. But, no system today captures actual business data and no management information system reports actual business management information.

The business must be managed to capture business data and report business management information

21^st century business management organizes the business in order to manage economic output results produced, capital investments implemented, and the utilization of capital to produce results, as complete data sets. The business is organized as one integrated business structure to capture data on the utilization of capital in specific solutions to produce economic outputs in business results. Business data is captured in an integrated Business Information Base to provide access to one complete set of comprehensive business management information.

Data is reported on all results produced, capital invested in solutions, and capital utilized to produce results

Data is captured on capital solution capacity, qualifications, worth, and return; performance capacity utilization, cost, and effectiveness; and the volume, value, and quality of results produced. Strategic results and the solutions needed are maintained in the strategic business structure with plans for time periods and updated strategic estimates. Complete and comprehensive management information is reported on the actual business for effective 21^st century business management and good corporate governance. [more...]

20^th century enterprise management problems can never be solved by conventional thinking

Unsolvable problems of 20^th century enterprise management with reorganization, alignment, costs, value, worth, investments, returns, intangible assets, complexity, etc are well known. What is not well known is the cause; the failure to manage the business. Solutions are prevented by conventional thinking that allows only incremental improvements in the way that enterprises have always been managed and prevents the thinking needed to manage the actual business to eliminate the problems.

Conventional thinking limits the worth of individual human capital

People need to go beyond conventional thinking to gain new capabilities and knowledge to increase their worth by producing higher value results. But conventional thinking prevents this, because the enterprise has never managed human personnel, capabilities, and knowledge as capital, never developed human capabilities as solutions to produce results, never managed result value created, and never managed the worth of human capital.

All the enterprise needs to do is to organize the business for a base of new conventional thinking in the 21^st century

But the enterprise cannot organize the business, defined as "the activity of providing goods and services", because it is not the way things have always been done. High-worth human capital must go beyond conventional thinking to learn the actual business and gain the breakthrough competitive advantages of 21^st century business management. If you can go beyond conventional thinking and increase your own human capital worth, look at organizing the activity of providing goods and services for 21^st century business management, and provide a new base for conventional business management thinking in the 21^st century. [more...]

Enterprises continue to waste funds on dead-end 20^th century management investments

20^th century management investments have created the maze of organization and management structures laid over the business that cause today’s unsolvable problems with alignment, change management, unknown costs and value, unknown capital worth and investment returns, business and information complexity, business collaboration, and on and on. New 20^th century management investments in reorganizations, enterprise information systems, process and performance improvements, IT architectures, etc are dead-ends that add to unsolvable problems.

It only requires a small alternative investment to organize the business for 21^st century management

The alternative is to invest in managing the actual business to eliminate unsolvable 20^th century management problems. The investment to organize and utilize existing capital to produce results along result value-quality chains and across the business is relatively small and one time. The big change is the change in thinking to understand and manage the actual business. Existing information systems can manage the business and existing processes and systems as solutions can be utilized to produce specific results. Once the business is organized all tangible and intangible capital invested in the business is organized as capital solutions of worth to be utilized in performance to incur costs and produce value in results. All structures laid over the business are cleared away to focus on business data collection and provision of information and other capital solutions needed for actual business management.

Once the business is managed, business change investments are minimized to new capital advances to produce valuable new results.

The only way to plan and develop capital for a planned and measured return on investment is to manage the business. Capital is managed to minimize investments to those essential to the actual business. Future investments are in capital solutions needed to produce specific new or improved results. The development costs are captured and amortized against results produced and return on investment in added result value-added is captured against the capital solution. [more...]

The inability to manage capital worth is a large problem that contributes to the economic crisis

Many financial institutions and corporations cite the inability to know and manage "asset value", which is actually capital worth, as a contributor to the economic crisis. Usually, capital worth is not managed until it comes time to sell or liquidate the asset, when the actual worth turns out to be much less than worth in the books causing large and sudden write-downs. In other cases, corporations are forced to state the worth according to an arbitrary rule like "mark to market", which may not reflect the plan for utilization of the asset in the business.

The business must be managed to manage capital solution worth as part of the business

Corporations do not manage the business today, so capital worth cannot be managed as part of the business. Capital is not managed as specific solutions utilized to produce results of known value, with many solutions unknown or labeled as intangible assets. Results are not managed as a set to determine the costs absorbed and value-added in the utilization to produce the result and value-added in the disposal of the solution, which determines the worth of the solution.

Total capital worth and result value-added must be managed to manage total business worth

Since capital solutions and results are not defined and managed as data sets today, actual business data cannot be captured and actual business information cannot be reported to management. This includes the positive worth of asset and negative worth of liability solutions utilized by the business, which adds up to the total business worth. The total business worth is also assessed by the total result value-added to be produced by the business over the future business payback period at the cost of capital or other return desired. This again can only be estimated in an unmanaged business. [more...]

The current financial crisis shows the need for actual best business management practices

After every corporate financial, management, or governance crisis or scandal the call arises for best business management practices. However, nobody knows what real best business management practices are, since no one has any experience in actually organizing and managing a business. The practices installed are never actual best business management practices, but are a collections of rules and regulations or methods to better manage structures that hide the business and prevent actual business management.

20^th century best practices are the best of bad business practices

20^th century best business practices are a collection of organization, process, system, and administration structures laid over the business for a particular purpose, which have proven effective elsewhere. All 20^th century best business practices are bad business practices, because they add to enterprise overheads and costs, and do not help the enterprise to operate or manage the actual business.

R-pM provides the business definitions and structure for good best practices

Result-performance Management (R-pM) instills best practices across the business for 21^st Century Management. R-pM manages the business by managing the capacity, investment, qualifications, reliability, return, and worth of capital solutions; utilization, cost, effectiveness, uncertainty, and value-added of each capital solution in guided performance; and the volume, total cost, quality, risk, value, and value-added of each result produced. The set of solutions deployed and utilized to produce a result is defined as a capital module. The capital module that produces the best value-quality result can be defined as a best practice. All best practices are then built into the business structure to operate and manage the actual business.

The only way to prevent future corporate financial, management, and governance problems is to use R-pM to organize and manage the businesses. Governments that want to improve local business competitiveness significantly and prevent future crises, must investigate R-pM. [more...]

Past and current financial crises have been caused by failure to manage the actual business

All financial crises, corporate governance problems, and other problems due to inadequate corporate or financial institution management have roots in one fundamental problem, the failure to organize and manage the actual business. 20^th century management lays many structures for organization, strategies, account charts, processes, scorecards, etc over the business to manage the enterprise. The actual business in the cash expenditures for specific capital investments, performance costs from capital utilization, value created in results, and value added providing profits, capital returns, and capital worth is hidden under overlaid structures and never reported to management.

Enormous sums of money are used to cover up actual problems and restore confidence

No attention is being paid to eliminating the pervasive financial institution and corporate management problems that led to the crisis. The funds are used to pay a higher worth for the currently worthless and unsellable assets of those who mismanaged corporate and personal funds, and transfer the potential further losses and gains to taxpayers. In effect, we keep covering up the unsolvable problems of 20^th century management that have never been solved and can never be solved by more 20^th century management.

Governments should help enterprises manage their actual businesses to eliminate 20^th century management problems

The big change is the change in thinking required to put aside the lifetimes of misleading teachings and experience and visualize and understand the business as “investments in capital as solutions of worth utilized for costs and effectiveness of performance to produce value and quality in results”. Managing the business is common sense used by all to manage their personal businesses. The investment in managing the actual business is very small and recovered quickly in the added value-added of a managed business.

The cost of a government investment program to assist local enterprises to organize their businesses for 21^st Century Management is insignificant compared with the cost of bailing out companies and covering up the failures of 20^th century management. The program will provide transparent reporting of the business for management, shareholders, and regulatory authorities. The program will provide real economic boost in the new value created by organized and managed businesses. [more...]