Generic Model Tailoring Questions Copyright Patrick

Generic Enterprise Model Tailoring Questions
Description: You can learn many things about your organization by modeling its
business processes. With an enterprise-wide perspective, you can see the big picture of
what your organization does, for example, to develop and market products and services,
operate the business financially, deal with external groups, and manage your employees
and infrastructure. You can see how one process links into another and where
communication and coordination problems arise. You can identify business process
outsourcing (BPO) opportunities and correlate your processes to service providers to
understand who does what in producing value for the organization. Process models can
serve many useful purposes, including training new people on the organization, revealing
inter-dependencies, and clarifying use of information systems.
This questionnaire leads you through an examination of 16 fundamental business
processes, organized into four groupings, which encompass all aspects of a business
enterprise. Individuals from your organization who are expert in the underlying
processes should address the set of questions in each of the 16 areas. To assist you in
identifying the best person to deal with the questions, each set includes a description of
the business process, an explanation of the process’ importance to a business, and a
profile of the type of person who should be tasked with answering those questions.
OPERATE THE ENTERPRISE
Process 1: PROVIDE OVERALL DIRECTION
Description: Make sure your people know and can explain where the company
wants to go, encourage their participation in defining the core values of the
company and in formulating its direction, maintain enthusiasm and commitment
to the company’s goals, and make clear what the people need to do to help
achieve the shared vision.
Why this activity is important to a business: The ability of your people to
articulate the mission and values means they understand the larger context in
which they perform their work. The mission expresses the higher purpose of the
organization’s work while values provide guiding principles in how work is
conducted and decisions are made. Recent research clearly shows that
organizations with active values outperform, over time, those that don’t. Values
provide ethical constructs that guide behavior and decision-making whether an
individual is interacting with customers, partners or other members of the
organization. Studies in the fields of sociology and psychology have found that
people want to be part of an endeavor that is larger than the individual. A well-
defined mission statement creates the framework for people to see their work as
part of something greater than their individual tasks. In organizations where
people deeply understand the meaning behind the mission and value statements, a
powerful alignment across functions is created.
Page 1 of 12 Copyright © 2003-2006 Patrick

Profile of Preferred Respondent: Senior person in the organization, preferably a
founder or current CEO, intimately familiar with the history, culture, operations,
marketplace, customers, and plans of the company.
Questions:
1. What are the mission and core values of your company?
2. What do you hope to accomplish within three years?
3. What do you see as the biggest obstacle to accomplishing that?
4. How would you characterize your general marketplace and your market
focus?
5. Who are your main competitors?
6. What laws or federal/state/local regulations or union rules are particularly
important to your business?
7. What are your products and/or services?
8. How do you keep an eye on how your company is regarded in your market
space?
9. Describe the information you rely on regarding developments in your
market and how you track and anticipate changes.
10. Do you regularly review your current offerings and their effectiveness in
the market?
11. Do you get regular detailed feedback on how well your products and
services are delivered and how well the customer’s needs are satisfied?
12. Do you have a formal or standard method for developing your company’s
values, vision, goals, and strategies with your people?
13. Describe any means by which you communicate or interact with your
business community, such as industry associations, standards groups,
regulatory commissions, and business networking groups.
14. Name the people internal or external to your company who are involved in
your strategic planning.
Process 2: MAINTAIN ENTERPRISE RESOURCES
Description: Hire new employees and support new and current employees in a
positive work environment by providing competitive benefits and salary, treating
them decently and professionally, giving them opportunities for personal and
professional growth, and including them in the life of the company. Maintain and
improve the company’s physical plant and equipment to ensure that you will be
capable of delivering a higher volume of top-quality products and services as the
company’s business grows.
Why this activity is important to a business: Your people are the lifeblood of the
company. By providing them a positive work environment in which they are
clearly respected and valued, you can tap into their leadership capabilities,

innovative ideas, willingness to go the extra mile for a customer, and other factors
that will help the company thrive. Regarding infrastructure, failure to maintain
and develop your physical workspace and equipment can introduce practical
barriers to growth and can lead to employee frustration and dissatisfaction.
Profile of Preferred Respondent: Person who is very knowledgeable of the
company’s culture, hiring practices, performance and salary review, benefits,
employee policies, training programs, labor laws, union regulations and practices,
termination procedures, physical facilities and equipment, and other matters
related to the company’s employees and their working environment.
Questions:
1. How do you identify potential employees?
2. What are the skills of your employees that are key to their work?
3. Describe your current facilities and major equipment.
4. Do you get regular detailed feedback on how well your employees do their
work, how they are perceived by your customers, and the adequacy of
your facilities and equipment?
5. What laws or federal/state/local regulations or union rules are particularly
important to how you manage your people and maintain your facilities and
equipment?
6. What do you expect from your employees and what do they expect from
the company with regard to improvement of their education, skills,
attitudes, and professional advancement?
7. In what ways do you upgrade your facilities and equipment?
8. How do you specify your needs in the future for people, facilities, and
equipment?
9. Who in your company deals with personnel and facilities?
Process 3: ACQUIRE EXTERNAL RESOURCES
Description: Ensure that the company has the financial resources and external
supporting relationships that will allow the company to execute its strategic plans,
for example, to enter new markets, acquire companies, carry out critical research
and development, and roll out new products.
Why this activity is important to a business: While growing a company based
solely on cash flow can and has been done, the modern rapidly changing
marketplace requires that a company be able to move fast to exploit an advantage
or innovative idea. Linking a company’s strategic plan to a capital investment
plan allows a company to put financial and other resources in place properly
timed with its strategic intentions, enabling it to take fast action at the right time.

Profile of Preferred Respondent: Person (not necessarily internal to the company)
who is regularly engaged with the investment community and understands the
company’s strategic direction and capital requirements.
Questions:
1. How do you interact with prospective or current investors, if you do?
2. Do you have a long-term view of the level and timing of capital
investments you will need to sustain your company’s growth?
3. Are you well informed regarding laws and regulations associated with
securing capital investments?
4. Do you have an up-to-date business plan available to potential investors?
5. Describe relations with current investors, if any.
6. Who in your company deals with investors?
Process 4: ADMINISTER BUSINESS OPERATIONS
Description: Carry out your essential internal “back office” business processes
efficiently, outsourcing those that can be done more economically by specialists.
Why this activity is important to a business: While internal business processes
may appear to be mundane, they are essential to the company being able to
perform on contracts, protect its intellectual property, determine its profitability,
protect its cash flow, and maintain itself as a viable business entity of integrity.
Improprieties, inefficiencies, or errors on the business side can have serious
repercussions on customer and investor confidence in the company and on its
financial survival.
Profile of Preferred Respondent: Person who manages the business operations of
the company and has personal experience in performing them.
Questions:
1. List the business documents that your company receives, such as purchase
orders, invoices, payments, payroll records, tax statements, legal
notifications, etc.
2. What are your “back office” functions that you carry out internally, such
as payroll, benefits administration, accounting, contracting, legal, accounts
payable, accounts receivable, etc.?
3. What functions have you outsourced?
4. How do you grow your capacity to support your company’s expected
growth in business?
5. Are you well informed regarding laws and regulations associated with
running a business, such as GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting

Principles), Federal Acquisition Regulations, ERISA (Employee
Retirement Income Security Act), and so on?
6. List the business documents that your company produces, such as
purchase orders, invoices, payments, pay checks, W-2s, legal notifications,
tax filings, etc.
7. List the people who carry out your company’s business support functions.
MARKET PRODUCTS & SERVICES
Process 5: MAINTAIN MARKETING STRATEGY
Description: Decide the best way to condition the marketplace, attract customers,
and sell your products and services consistent with the company’s strategic and
financial objectives.
Why this activity is important to a business: The world will not beat a path to
your door just because you have, or think you have, the best mousetrap. A
company needs to carefully consider the means and content of communications
directed toward potential customers, the positioning of its products and services
relative to those of competitors, and sales approaches. Failure to think these
matters through and to adapt your methods based on feedback from the
marketplace can lead to poor sales and eventually can threaten the survival of the
company.
Profile of Preferred Respondent: A person who has a background in sales and
marketing for the company, knows the company’s customers, its products and
services, and its marketplace, and understands the company’s strategic goals.
Questions:
1. Describe the information by which you understand what your customers
need from you.
2. What is the profile of a typical customer of yours?
3. Describe the types of “big picture” information provided by the
company’s executives that helps guide marketing directions and strategies.
4. Describe your sources of information regarding developments in your
market and how you track and anticipate changes.
5. How do you keep in touch with customers and prospects and take into
account their perceptions of your company and offerings?
6. Do you regularly assess the effectiveness of your sales process?
7. In what ways do you influence the overall direction of the company?
8. What marketing and sales literature or web-based information do you
make available to people in your market?
9. In what form are marketing decisions communicated to sales personnel?
10. List the people who carry out marketing (not sales) for the company.

Process 6: ESTABLISH STRATEGIC MARKETING RELATIONSHIPS
Description: Enter into agreements with companies and individuals who can
assist your company in developing new business through their own market
presence, offerings, and relationships.
Why this activity is important to a business: The traditional concept of the “value
chain” of companies, narrowly viewed as a company, its suppliers, its value added
resellers, and its customers, is no longer adequate to maintain a company’s
competitiveness in the modern rapidly-changing market. Companies today need
to establish many partnering relationships with companies and individuals that
can be called upon to help the company adapt quickly to changing market
circumstances and bring more robust and innovative offerings to their customers.
The company that isolates itself in a static set of traditional relationships runs the
risk of being left behind as more nimble and well-connected competitors and their
partners run away with the market.
Profile of Preferred Respondent: A person experienced in assessing the strengths
and weaknesses of other companies, in building relationships, and negotiating
creative partnering agreements.
Questions:
1. What kinds of companies or individuals do you or could you collaborate
with in a partnering relationship to do your business better?
2. What guidance do you receive regarding the types of partners that should
be sought after?
3. Describe agreements you have in place with partners.
4. List the people who are involved in finding and signing business partners.
Process 7: PURSUE NEW BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES
Description: Generate and screen prospects, understand qualified prospects’
requirements, convince prospects to purchase the company’s products and
services to meet their needs, and close the deals.
Why this activity is important to a business: Successful selling is fundamental to
the success of a company. Convincing customers to buy and obtaining their legal
commitment to buy are essential to revenue generation and the life of the
company.
Profile of Preferred Respondent: Person experienced in face-to-face contact with
prospects and responsible for meeting personal sales quotas.

Questions:
1. Describe the sources of information by which you understand what your
customers need from you.
2. What is the profile of a typical customer of yours?
3. In what form do you receive sales leads (other than those you generate
internally)?
4. What guidance do you receive regarding how to land new business?
5. How do you communicate to marketing people your experiences with
prospects, both good and bad?
6. What legal forms of agreement do you enter into with your customers?
Process 8: PLAN NEW PRODUCT/ SERVICE OFFERINGS
Description: Anticipate products and services that will sell successfully in the
future and develop specifications for their development.
Why this activity is important to a business: Products and services can become
obsolete very rapidly in today’s marketplace, with decreasing sales immediately
affecting the financial health of the company. Companies must keep in close
touch with customer’s changing needs and advancements made by competitors in
order to maintain and grow market share.
Profile of Preferred Respondent: Person experienced in product/service
development and life cycle management, with experience bringing products and
services to market.
Questions:
1. What aspects of your current offerings include some end product or
service supplied by another company?
2. Describe the sources of information by which you understand what your
customers need from you.
3. What guidance do you receive regarding the needs of customers?
4. Do you get feedback on quality issues concerning delivered products and
services?
5. How do you maintain a product/service succession plan?
6. How do you communicate specifications of new products and services to
developers?
7. List individuals in the company involved in product and service
management.

BUILD PRODUCTS & SERVICES
Process 9: DESIGN
Description: Specify the characteristics of a new product or service intended to
meet market requirements to a level of detail sufficient for a developer to produce
it.
Why this activity is important to a business: The translation of perceived needs in
the marketplace into specifications of a product or service represents an essential
bridge to future success by the company. If market needs are understood but not
expressed in actionable form that will lead to development of a competitive
offering, the company will waste money on market introduction of an
unsuccessful offering and will fall behind as more attractive competitors’ products
are embraced by its customers.
Profile of Preferred Respondent: Experienced designer of products and services
who has launched new products and services.
Questions:
1. How do you accommodate partners’ products and designs in the design of
your products and services?
2. What guidance do you receive regarding the specifications of a new
offering?
3. What guidance do you receive regarding the market context for launching
a new product or service?
4. How do you work with product or service testers to ensure that a product
or service will be viable?
5. In what form do you communicate a design to the people who will
produce the offering?
6. List designers in your company.
Process 10: PRODUCE & MAINTAIN
Description: Physically develop and maintain a product or service in fully
deliverable form, including all documentation.
Why this activity is important to a business: Products and services are
fundamental to a company’s ability to generate revenue. Failure to produce and
maintain them in a timely fashion will cripple a company’s success.

Profile of Preferred Respondent: Person who has experience in all facets of
product and service development and maintenance.
Questions:
1. Do you receive feedback from customers in terms of returned products
and complaints?
2. Describe any basic materials or inventory that you acquire externally that
you need in order to produce your product or service.
3. How do you physically integrate partners’ products and designs into your
products and services?
4. In what form do you receive design specifications suitable to drive
production processes?
5. What guidance do you receive regarding coordination of production with
other related activities of the company?
6. How do you work with product or service testers to address problems they
identify with a product or service attributable to production issues?
7. In what form do you communicate issues you discover with the design of
a product or service?
8. Describe the form and components of a product or service when you
provide it to a test group.
9. List people considered production personnel.
Process 11: TEST
Description: Ensure the a new product or service satisfy the requirements it is
intended to satisfy and that customers will be able to use it properly in the real
world.
Why this activity is important to a business: Products and services that do not
work properly will lead to an image of poor quality, a loss of confidence in the
company by the market, and decreased sales.
Profile of Preferred Respondent: Person experienced in quality assurance and
testing and in dealing directly with customers in a help desk context.
Questions:
1. Do you receive feedback from customers in terms of returned products
and complaints?
2. Describe the form and components of a product or service when you
receive it from the group who produces it.
3. What form of specifications do you use to construct tests?
4. What guidance do you receive regarding coordination of testing with other
related activities of the company?

5. How and to whom do you communicate issues you discover with a
product or service?
6. Under what conditions do you consider a product or service ready for
release to customers?
7. List people considered testers.
Process 12: STORE PHYSICAL INVENTORY
Description: Maintain products in a secure facility so they retain their viability
until needed for delivery.
Why this activity is important to a business: A company’s stock of products
represents a significant asset and potential revenue, and must be protected until
needed for sale to customers.
Profile of Preferred Respondent: Person experienced in warehousing and product
inventory management.
Questions:
1. In what form and by what means are products put into inventory?
2. What guidance do you receive regarding coordination of inventory
management with other related activities of the company?
3. Through what form of instruction are products released from inventory?
4. What information is associated with products released from inventory?
5. List people involved in maintaining inventory and warehouses.
DELIVER PRODUCTS & SERVICES
Process 13: PHYSICALLY MOVE TANGIBLE ITEMS
Description: Transport products from inventory to a point at which customers can
take possession of the products.
Why this activity is important to a business: Products must be delivered into the
hands of customers before revenue can be claimed. Transportation inefficiencies
or damage occurring to products in transit can negatively affect cash flow and
profit margins.
Profile of Preferred Respondent: Person experienced in establishing product
delivery systems and dealing with various modes of transportation and
transportation issues.

Questions:
1. In what form and by what means are products made available for
transport?
2. What form of instruction authorizes products to be transported?
3. What guidance do you receive regarding coordination of product transport
with other related activities of the company?
4. How and to whom do you report issues or problems involved in
transporting products?
5. What constitutes receipt of a product by a customer?
6. List people who are considered transporters.
Process 14: INSTALL PRODUCTS
Description: Put products into usable condition and final position so a customer
can derive the expected benefits from the product.
Why this activity is important to a business: The success of the company will ride
on the ability of the customer to use the product as intended and to obtain value
from the investment made in acquiring the product.
Profile of Preferred Respondent: Person experienced in installing the company’s
products and working with customers to help them understand how to properly
use the products.
Questions:
1. By what means and in what form does a product arrive at the customer
site?
2. Through what form of instruction are products authorized to be installed?
3. What guidance do you receive regarding coordination of product
installation with other related activities of the company?
4. How and to whom do you report issues or problems involved in installing
products?
5. What constitutes completed installation of a product?
6. List people who install the company’s products.
Process 15: PERFORM SERVICES
Description: Deliver value-added know how to the customer in the form of
services performed by company experts.
Why this activity is important to a business: The success of the company will ride
on the ability of the customer to receive desired services and to obtain value from
the investment made in acquiring the service.

Profile of Preferred Respondent: Person experienced in delivering the services of
the company and working with customers to ensure that they benefit from the
services.
Questions:
1. Do your products require specific services to be provided in support of the
products?
2. What form of instruction authorizes services to be delivered?
3. What guidance do you receive regarding coordination of service delivery
with other related activities of the company?
4. How and to whom do you report issues or problems involved in delivering
services?
5. What conditions constitute completion of service delivery?
6. List people who deliver the company’s services.
Process 16: ASSESS CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
Description: Determine whether customers are ecstatic, pleased, neutral,
disappointed, or outraged as a result of their experience with the company.
Why this activity is important to a business: The reputation of a company is a
primary determinant of its long-term success. A company must pay close
attention to the reaction of customers. There are many ways the marketplace and
future customers hear about a company, its products, and how the company treats
customers. If problems arise, the company that has put mechanisms into place to
understand and fix each problem will reap great benefits in customer satisfaction
and future business.
Profile of Preferred Respondent: Person with extensive experience in dealing
with post-sales problems and internal customer logistics issues such as ordering or
billing errors and help desk facilities.
Questions:
1. Does the company maintain statistics on customers’ problems with
products and services?
2. Is quality assurance built into product and service management
procedures?
3. Does the company administer customer-satisfaction surveys to customers?
4. How and to whom do you report issues or problems involved in customer
satisfaction?
5. List people responsible for tracking and ensuring customer satisfaction.

Generic Model Tailoring Questions Copyright Patrick

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