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Amazon Book Review

Transforming Corporations provides business and civic leaders concrete strategies on how to elevate their performance along every step of the organizational chain.

The book might aptly be subtitled, "It’s takes an enlightened village," because of its strong emphasis on integrating customers, suppliers, manufacturers and distributors into a newly defined operational team.

"It not enough anymore to simply manage your own employees," says Dan Balan, a nationally recognized supply chain expert and the book’s author.

In a well-aligned organization, management has an unobstructed view of its customers, its market, its product and every transaction from the time an order is placed until the customer receives it and is fully satisfied," he notes.

With Transforming Corporations as their road map, leaders will be empowered to not only better manage their own organizations, but to accurately forecast which publicly held businesses are most likely to contract the "supply chain flu."

"One need look no further than Kmart or Bristol-Myers to understand that an infection at a single point along the organizational chain will quickly spread throughout the entire corporate body," Balan says. A major cause of Kmart’s collapse, he notes, was the debt it accumulated to suppliers for goods that Kmart was unable to sell to customers. In the case of Bristol-Myers, the company force fed it wholesalers with more pharmaceuticals than they could use and hence Bristol-Myers had to "unsell" sold inventories.

Transforming Corporations utilizes case studies of name-brand corporations that have thrived or wilted depending upon their adherence to four core performance criteria:

· Innovation: The ability to bring the right products to market at the optimal time.

· Rationalization: The symphonic alignment of products with markets, customers and value.

· Integration: The leveraging of information gathered perpetually from customers, suppliers, distributors, manufacturers and every other key player along the supply chain.

· Orchestration: The management on a daily basis of supply and demand in a cost-effective manner.

The book is a tool for managers seeking to better understand their own companies and industries as well as for investors seeking advance indicators of a company’s financial performance.

"The evidence is overwhelming that companies that fail consistently at any one of the four performance criteria are an investment disaster in the making," Balan says. Among the companies cited in his book for their failure to recognize the warning signs are: Xerox, Motorola, Ford, Cisco and General Motors.

Among the companies Balan most admires for their adherence to the four performance attributes are: Frito Lay, Tropicana, Steelcase, Ralph Lauren Polo, and Industrie Natuzzi SpA.

In his consulting practice, Balan applies the lessons of Transforming Corporations to a variety of globally recognized organizations. Often, Balan can correct major dysfunctions in less than two months.

Endorsements

Terry Murphy-President-Rockwell First Point Contact
"Transforming Corporations is an invaluable resource for managers with a sincere desire to "take action now"! ."

David Waller-Managing Partner Supply Chain Practice, KPMG Consulting
"Thought provoking. The ideas presented and the checklist of questions provides a framework for companies to assess their operations."

Jeff Saperstein- marketing consultant and lecturer at San Francisco State University Graduate School of Business and co- author of “Creating Regional Wealth in the Innovation Economy”
"Balan presents a holistic approach to business transformation that encompasses almost all strategic & operational components of any business..."

Dr. Richard Bandler- Co-developer of Neuro Linguistic Programming
"This guy has done his homework. Read and learn something worth doing."

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