Fernando Labastida, communications specialist

Continuing the series on fast growth companies or “gazelles,” in the previous post I discussed what a gazelle was and what three aspects of a company determined whether you are a gazelle or not.

In this post I continue to dissect Javier Murillo’s article to discuss the two axes of the gazelle “chart.”

How Does Your Company Compare to Others?

Technology companies have several resources to show them where they stand compared to others. For example, Gartner’s magic quadrant provides technology companies in dozens of industry sectors with a graphical display of where they are vis-a-vis their competitors.

How can you determine where you stand?

Murillo has devised a very useful tool that enables every small and medium-sized business to quickly determine where they stand vs. others in their industry and market. The above tool helps you determine where you are on the fast growth continuum.

From our previous article, “Are You a Fast Growth Company?“, we showed how a fast growth company, or gazelle, is determined according to how it’s doing on three fronts: revenues, profits, and sustained growth.

Each of these, in turn, can be measured along two axes.

1. The Structural Value Axis

Basic. The company possesses only the very basic structural value inherent in the fact that it is a company, but it’s not aware of the potential impact of formal processes on the business.

Established. The company understands the impact of business processes, but has not established planning in the areas of strategy, tactics, and metrics.

Advanced. The company understands the impact of business process, and has full dominion of these processes through proper planning in strategy, tactics, metrics and has given ownership of these processes to key personnel.

2. The Relational Value Axis

Information. At this stage the company has control of information, data, messaging to it’s internal and external audiences.

Relationships. This stages represents the next level, where information is optimized.  The company provides the tools to establish relationships that provide mutual value and trusted bonds between both internal and external audiences.

Collaboration. This stages represents the final level, where information and relationships are optimized. At this stage, two or more people or organizations can create alliances, both internally and externally, to achieve mutually agreed upon goals.

These are represented in the above graph on a vertical and horizontal axis. Companies that move upwards and outwards towards quadrant nine are those that are the most advanced in their growth towards being a fast growth company, or gazelle.

With this tool, Murillo hopes to help companies determine where they are exactly, relative to other companies in their industry and region, in their quest to become fast growth companies. As a result, they can isolate what they need to work on to get to quadrant nine.

In the next article, we’ll discuss a plan you can take to become a fast growth company.

Tags: fast growth company, gazelle

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 29th, 2009 at 10:16 pm and is filed under Business Intelligence, Enterprise Performance Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.