11. März 13

Operational Excellence in Hyderabad

Our meeting at Amazon could have happened anywhere in the world. We faced three top managers of that U.S.-based enterprise as in a global spaceship –a strongly dynamic conversation in perfect English, with highly structured answers focusing on statistics and figures. The fact that they were Indian was merely “coincidental”.

Amazon organizes four global processes in India: Finance, human resources, software development, and service management. Due to an annual growth of 40% there are now four locations with a total staff of 9.500 – and an average age 24!

One of the two strategic approaches described by Treacy and Wirsema in their book “The discipline of the market leader” is called „operational excellence“. In our meeting in we experienced that approach as a live demonstration: Highly standardized IT processes, custom-tailored to Amazon’s needs with permanent monitoring of process results. Speed-driven, decision-oriented managers with strong personal presence and low emphasis on status made us experience the benchmark of global „operational excellence“.

 

Is this the future “global village”?

Do we have a chance in Europe to keep up in this game?

What do our children need to learn, in order to be globally competitive?

These questions remain with us for further reflection after our encounter in the spaceship „Amazon“ in orbit over India .