Critical Success Factors

In today’s environment, with sudden changes in the business climate, competitors growing just about everywhere and changes in the market, business risks are greater than ever. An enterprise must create a certain distinction or a kind of individuality against other companies so as to gain the advantage and obtain more followers or customers than their competitors.

Some experts consider knowledge to be perhaps the only sustainable competitive advantage. With knowledge come better decisions, more efficient teams, and a commitment to learning. In some sources it is reported that having a healthy corporate culture that is conducive to knowledge sharing is perhaps the most important success factor. Unfortunately, changing culture is also one of the single-most difficult things to do. There are many barriers to why staffs are reluctant to share. These include lack of trust, lack of perceived value, or simple knowledge hoarding. Even without these barriers, there is the inertia of instituting any type of change. Companies must have individuals, teams and the organization as a whole believing that sharing knowledge is a healthy and normal way to do business. However, the high risk of failure is well documented which compels us to study why and then define critical success factors that are found within successful implementations.

But is knowledge the only edge one can have? What are these values and critical factors that will ensure success over other organizations especially with all the chaos in the foreign countries, banks and in the stock market itself, all of which are able to pull down a company aside from the company’s competitors?
Why don’t we start the formalities by defining what success is? Success is subject to individual interpretation based on upbringing, past experiences, role models, personal motivations and goals. Accomplishment of a goal (whether is be a long term or short term goal) or dream and the satisfaction one get through this is what success is about. What is Critical Success Factor then? Wikipedia defines Critical Success Factor to be business term for an element which is necessary for an organization or project to achieve its mission. They are the critical factors or activities required for ensuring the success your business. The term was initially used in the world of data analysis, and business analysis. Critical success factors may change over time, and may include items such as product quality, employee attitudes, manufacturing flexibility, and brand awareness. Critical success factors are elements that are vital for a strategy to be successful.

Critical Success Factors are tailored to a firm's or managers particular situation as different lead to different critical success factors. There are five key sources of Critical Success Factors’ namely: the industry, competitive strategy and industry position, environmental factors, temporal factors, and managerial position. Industry is the factor resulted from specific industry characteristics. These are the things that the organization must do to remain competitive. Environmental factors resulted from macro environmental influences on an organization. Things like the business climate, the economy, competitors, and technological advancements are included in this category.

Competitive Strategy results from the specific competitive strategy chosen by the organization. The way in which the company chooses to position themselves, market themselves, whether they are high volume low cost or low volume high cost producers. While temporal factors result from the organization's internal forces. A “good” CSF begins with an action verb and clearly and concisely conveys what is important and should attended to. Verbs that characterize actions: attract, perform, expand, monitor, manage, deploy, etc. After having developed a hierarchy of goals and their success factors, further analysis will lead to concrete requirements at the lowest level of detail. Some CSFs might influence other CSFs or factors such as markets, technologies, etc.
Such CSFs could be rephrased into “key influence factors” For example: “physical size” or “trained staff”.
When asking most business or technical people what Information Technology (IT) means, very likely one will get an answer that only involves technology. Somehow, the information element gets lost or subjugated. While technology is an important element, and arguably a CSF outright, the CSF more emphasized in research is recognizing that there is more to the solution than a technology component. Some of the efforts have learned this lesson the hard way, and it is now widely published that an implementation must involve people and processes. Specific barriers, challenges, directions, and influences will determine these Critical Success Factors.

The following are the steps to achieve Critical Success.
Step One: Establish your businesses or project's mission and strategic goals.
Ask yourself “What matters?” or “What do I want?” remember that nothing is impossible once one is set to the challenge. One should put one’s goals not only into thoughts but also in writing so as to have something tangible to hold on to at the time. Creating goals such as “To be an IT professional” isn’t enough, and it isn’t even right. One should be saying that I will be an IT professional, major in programming and working at Google after 3 years. One should be specific in every goal to avoid confusion and set a straight and certain path.


Step Two: For each strategic goal, ask yourself "what area of business or project activity is essential to achieve this goal?" Find the essence or reason to continue this train of thoughts. Do such actions necessary or not? Polish your goals.

Step Three: Identify essential elements and data.
Evaluate the list of candidate CSFs to find the absolute essential elements for achieving success - these are your Criticial Success Factors.Identify resources, assistance, information or anything else that might be needed to reach the goal. As you identify and evaluate candidate CSFs, you may uncover some new strategic objectives or more detailed objectives. So you may need to define your mission, objectives and CSFs iteratively. Deriving other data or information about the subject of your project or goal is also important.

Step Fourth: Analyzing Data
Extracting data from interviews, papers, reviews and data collected on observation is a must. A document review is a very effective means for obtaining an understanding of the focus and direction of an organization or operational unit. Most organizations document their purpose, vision, and values in a mission statement that is known to all employees. The most important data collection activity is conducting interviews with participants. In this activity, the participants have an opportunity to talk about their management challenges and their contributions to the organization and/or the operational unit’s successes and failures. The interactive nature of the interview process provides opportunities for clarification and for guiding the interview in areas that might expose particular barriers and obstacles to accomplishing the mission.

Step Five: Identify Obstacles and Create Solutions or Preventive Measures
List the obstacles one could face or expect on such goals or actions. Seeing or predicting the consequences of doing certain actions and devising solutions (cure or preventive measures) before facing the actual obstacles can save money, time and effort. Taking each obstacle one at a time, write one or more ways the obstacle could be overcome. These are tasks that will comprise your to-do list. Expect to have several tasks per obstacle. Don’t get discouraged by the obstacles– they’re absolutely necessary to help you with the next step in completing your plan.

Step Six: Assign Deadlines or Timelines
Assign a start and completion date to each task in the plan. It’s ok to be working on several different tasks at the same time, but don’t over do it. Setting time lines can help to monitor progress or inefficiency of the actions taken. Try to stick to the deadline. Be realistic.


Step Seven: Follow the Plan
Stick with what you have proposed unless changes are really inevitable. Trying to have an adaptive perspective might be unnecessary and time consuming. Focus on the plan.

Step Eight: Identify how you will monitor and measure each of the Critical Success Factors.
Identify ways, or devise strategies and plans on how to monitor progress and efficiency before and during the implementation or execution of the goals.

Step Nine: Communicate your Critical Success Factors along with the other important elements of your business or project's strategy.

Step Ten: Keep monitoring and reevaluating your Critical Success Factors to ensure you keep moving towards your aims. Indeed, whilst Critical Success Factors are sometimes less tangible than measurable goals, it is useful to identify as specifically as possible how you can measure or monitor each one.
A critical success factor starts with a vision:
Mission statement
Develop 5-6 high level goals
Develop hierarchy of goals and their success factors
Lists of requirements, problems, and assumptions
Leads to concrete requirements at the lowest level of decomposition (a single, implementable idea) Along the way, identify the problems being solved and the assumptions being made Cross-reference usage scenarios and problems with requirements
Analysis matrices
Problems vs. Requirements matrix
Usage scenarios vs. Requirements matrix
Solid usage scenarios
Relationship to Usage Scenarios
Usage scenarios or "use cases"; provide a means of determining:
Are the requirements aligned and self-consistent?
Are the needs of the user being met as well as those of the enterprise?
Are the requirements complete
Results of the Analysis