Importance of Location in Operating Model Design
Guide to the Operating Model Canvas
Explore how location decisions impact value delivery, resource efficiency, and organizational success, with insights from the Operating Model Canvas.
Overview
Introduction
Despite the recent profound changes in globalisation reach, management science and cultural awareness, location is perhaps one of the very few business issues where common sense may be far from common practice in effective and efficient operating model design and implementation.
In many instances, location is driven by personal views and preferences, as opposed to business logic – where directors live or prefer to live, for example.
For these businesses location is a so called “given” and this results in description of where functions operate and no more.
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Understanding the Operating Model Canvas location quadrant
The location quadrant of the Operating Model Canvas is there to challenge the status quo and check the reasons why particular business locations exist and ask if they still make sense.
It poses one important question: Are the original drivers that placed the operation here still valid or has this now become outdated and threatens strategic survival?
There are many things to consider when reviewing existing or potential locations:
1
Are we here because the directors live here?
2
Is our location iconic with our brand and marketing?
3
Are our historic inputs no longer required has our technology and processing changed?
4
Are we here because our customers are here?
5
Are we here because the skills we need are part of the local employment culture pool?
6
Has supply and demand of labour changed the main reason we came here in the first place?
Essential options when considering location
Once clarity emerges around what should stay where it is and what can and should be relocated elsewhere, four essential options become available:
Resources/inputs
Markets
Knowledge
Structural optimisation
The well-established industrial economic location theory gives us two of those by stating that the operation ought to be located either close to its resources/inputs (supply side) or to its markets (demand side), depending on the nature of those resources or markets.
A classic example is aluminium production, a process that uses large amounts of electricity meaning plants are sited near to hydro-electric sources and to ports for the import of bauxite.
In the industrial revolution, where coal as an energy source was required in bulk being heavy to transport, the smelting of metals like copper, iron and steel tended to be located on coal field and near sea/river ports: Swansea in South Wales and the Ruhr in Germany being good examples.
Later theories added two more location options – knowledge availability (e.g. industry clusters such as Silicon Valley in California or Science and Technology Parks near Cambridge in the United Kingdom) and structural optimisation (e.g. for tax or legal reasons).
All these options are well known and should require little additional explanation. Experience also tells us that these four options are as valid for service companies as for manufacturing firms.
The impact of location choice
What is crucial in contemporary Operating Model Design, however, is the potential impact of choosing any of the above options on the value delivery chains to intended beneficiaries and on finances of the organisation.
In other words, there will be a trade-off between these options – sometimes considerable – which needs to be well understood and modelled for impact.
The graphic illustrates likely impacts for each location option:
Market proximity versus resource proximity
Unsurprisingly, the two original economic theory options of market and resource proximity are likely to have most impact (positive or negative) on company financials. However, whereas market proximity is likely to produce more impact on the delivery of the value proposition to its intended beneficiaries, resource proximity being less visible to final consumers is likely to have a less decisive effect.
In fact, excessive focus on resource proximity for service companies can have a pronounced detrimental effect on successful value delivery, as the UK’s Financial Services industry discovered (see the Spotlight callout box).
Knowledge proximity
The other two location options – knowledge proximity and structure optimisation are likely to have lesser overall financial impact.
Of the two, knowledge proximity can ensure greater value delivery advantaåge because of the latest thinking and creative sparks being available earlier due to cross-pollination.
This is especially true in the case of digital businesses, where, despite common perception of their virtuality, there are still real people involved in making things happen.
In most cases, HR resource cost is not a consideration here simply because they are rapidly equalising across the globe; it is access to centres of excellence and associated clusters that matters, thus prompting companies to centralise knowledge in a few chosen locations.
Spotlight
Excessive focus on resource proximity
Is location important to service organisations? Where the operations serve the customer directly like in hospitality then obviously yes, but where the service is provided at arm’s length via voice or data communication what then?
The location question in these environments is a balance between staff costs and service quality. In the nineties a drive towards cost leadership in many financial services volume driven organisations led to extensive off shoring of customer service and back-office functions.
The arbitrage of cheap labour costs, in places like Chennai and Bangalore, resulted in major operating model changes and subsequent job losses in developed western economies. The strategic choices made by organisations to leverage the cost leadership model resulted in mergers and acquisitions to seek scale supported by this location dominant operating model.
“Big and bland” became the norm and as time progressed labour costs increased in these locations minimising savings and the customers rebelled against cultural misalignment between their needs and the providers cost focused approach.
Today we see a reversal in this approach, with many organisations bringing these operations back home close to their markets and their customers.
Structure optimisation
Structure optimisation is usually more important from the internal overhead and/or taxation reduction standpoints and, while increasingly relevant at a certain stage in corporate development, contributes little – if anything – to value delivery process.
Although this article is limited to selection of geographic locations in Operating Model design, the principles discussed here would apply equally well to team or department placing and even workshop floor organisation.
For example, where to place Sales, Finance or HR teams is often a matter of heated debate in many organisations, with the loudest or more influential getting their picks. In reality, placing these teams with due consideration to their role in the overall value delivery chains will better contribute to the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the live operating model.
Conclusion
To conclude, many companies today are located where they are for ‘historic’, rather than business logic reasons. While there exist several location options, and optimising corporate locations based solely on standard management theories would be a step in the right direction, doing so would be less effective without also considering their role in firm’s value delivery chains.
As a leading operational design methodology, the Operating Model Canvas toolbox ensures that this issue is given due attention and analysis.
Finally, one other rationale for changing locations beyond hard financial or value delivery logic must be mentioned. Many companies are increasingly asking themselves: “Is our culture and history holding us back?
Would a fresh start with new open-minded workers allow us to rebuild a reinvigorated operation?” and choose to shed their ‘old skin’ by moving away and starting afresh. This is perhaps extreme but must be acknowledged.
In any case, redrawing organisation lines when properly executed is instrumental in successful operating model design and implementation. We shall attempt to investigate opportunities that such a step provides in a subsequent article.
About the author
David Winders BSc (Hons), DTLLS
David is a strategic partner of The Sixsess Consultancy an organisation specialising in Business Architecture and the development of effective business change.
David has worked in business design and business transformation for over three decades with many large organisations including Centrica, Barclays Bank, Dell Financial Services and AXA.
David Winders
Business Architect - Principal Target Operating Model Course Facilitator.
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