Here’s how you can manage your business like an F1 race car

This season’s Formula 1 competition is most definitely one of the most compelling in recent years.

One of F1’s greats: Alain Prost recently commented: “I was thinking that for Lewis, he’s very lucky to have Max at the moment pushing him…..What I’ve learnt in the past is when you have two [drivers] like this fighting as hard, you get the best of yourself, the best of your team.”

Competition is most certainly good – not just when it comes to F1, but also when it comes to business and ensuring your organisation is at the peak of its competitive powers. Where would Coca-Cola be without Pepsi, Microsoft without Apple or even Marvel without DC? Competition is what keeps these big firms on their toes, and a great by-product of rivalry is excellent customer service and value to consumers like me and you.

Business improvement
Whether you are racing against competition or your own business KPI’s, improvement plays a huge role in every organisation. Did you know that after every race, F1 engineers look through race and car data in order ascertain ways to improve the car? In fact, the F1 car that outright wins the first race of a season, without enhancement would come last by race 10. This is because all the competing F1 teams are constantly analysing the performance of their cars to continually seek ways to improve on previous race positions. In fact, an F1 car at the beginning of a season compared to the end is on average a 75 per cent different car based on its constitute components, due to the addition of improved parts.

The rate of improvement of an F1 car from race to race is incredibly fast! Business needs to also improve constantly. Just like F1 they need to continually analyse their operations to find ways to increase operational efficiency, which in turn will help to serve the customer better. In both F1 and business, it is safe to say that if you stand still, you will get overtaken by the competition.

Those of you that are proficient in the famous Toyota production system will be familiar with the word – ‘Kaizen’, which in simple terms means, ‘continuous improvement’. Kaizen translates from Japanese as ‘improvement’ (kai – ‘change’ – zen ‘good’), and is the ongoing effort to improve existing products, services, or processes by implementing smaller, rather than major changes.

Measuring performance
F1 Cars generate terabytes of data during a race. Equipped with 100’s of sensors, F1 cars provide a stream of data that’s analysed in real-time by engineers, searching for any adjustments that could be the difference between winning or losing a race. Savvy digital organisations also do the same; they use a multitude of technology to assess how they are performing, where the bottlenecks are, where the breakdowns in customer service occur. This data is then used to either provide immediate solutions to real-time customer-service lapses or drive future improvements initiatives to ensure peak performance & optimum customer experience.

The connected enterprise
In order to do this successfully enterprises have to be connected from a people, process, technology and things or devices perspective. Relevant data (no matter where it comes from) needs to be joined and displayed in a format that gives value to the recipient. Processes need to be constantly analysed to locate bottlenecks and improve customer service and performance.

This is no different to an F1 car competing in a race!

Vijay Jaswal is the CTO – Middle East and Turkey at Software AG