Enterprise Environmental Factors and Organizational Process Assets

Table of Content

What are the enterprise environmental factors?

What are the organizational process assets?

Organizational culture, policies, and procedures

Organizational infrastructure

Market conditions

Organizational knowledge base

Corporate lessons learned from databases

Conclusion

What are the enterprise environmental factors?

Enterprise environmental factors are the external conditions that affect the organization. These factors include:

Economic Factors: Economic factors include the availability of capital, fluctuations in the business cycle, and changes in government policy.

Technological Factors: Technological factors include technological advances, new products and services, and competitors' use of technology to create new markets.

Social Factors: Social factors include changes in demographics (changes in population age groups), cultural influences on individual behavior, and government regulations on business practices.

Political Factors: Political factors include changes in laws and regulations affecting an organization's operations or profitability.

What are the organizational process assets?

The organizational process assets are the organization's knowledge, information, and experience. They include processes and procedures, policies, work instructions, standards, guidelines, and other similar documents.

The assets exist at all levels within an organization — from strategic planning to day-to-day operations — and comprise a large percentage of the total value of any company.

Organizational process assets provide a competitive advantage to any business because they enable companies to perform their work more efficiently and effectively than their competitors.

Organizational culture, policies, and procedures

The organizational culture, policies, and procedures result from the corporate environment. They exist because the environment needs to be supported by them. The organization aims to create an environment where employees can do their jobs effectively.

For an organization to accomplish its goals, it must support the people who work in it. It does this in many ways:

• By creating a workplace that is safe and secure.
• By providing tools and resources that help employees get their job done.
• By offering training so employees can learn new skills and so on.

Organizational infrastructure

The organizational infrastructure is the foundation of the organization. It includes the human, physical, and technological resources used to support the organization's activities. The corporate infrastructure may be divided into two major components:

Process assets refer to the knowledge and expertise used by an organization in its daily processes. Process assets include training manuals, procedures, or checklists required to perform specific tasks. Process assets may also include computer software programs that allow employees to perform their jobs more effectively or efficiently.

For example, a company might have a process manual that describes how to operate their cash registers properly or a software program that allows workers to enter data into their computer systems faster than they could be using paper records.

Physical assets refer to equipment, buildings, furniture, and other tangible items an organization uses for day-to-day operations.

An example of physical support would be a water tap inside an office building where employees could fill up their water bottles on hot summer days before returning to work.

Organizational knowledge base

The organizational knowledge base is the accumulated body of information that describes the steps and procedures used to perform tasks. This includes experience, corporate knowledge, and best practices.

The organizational knowledge base can be internal (company-owned) or external (public domain).

Knowledge management is an area of research and practice devoted to increasing the value of an organization's intellectual assets.

The field has been studied for more than two decades. Still, it wasn't until the 1990s that organizations realized the value of their intellectual assets (intellectual capital).

Knowledge management can be defined as "the identification, creation, accumulation, and dissemination of knowledge to generate wealth through innovation and action.

Corporate lessons learned from databases

The use of databases has become an essential part of the work environment for many organizations. There are several characteristics of databases that can provide businesses with a competitive advantage. These include:

Reliability: Reliability is the ability of a database to be up-to-date, accurate, and consistent at all times. When a business relies on its database for critical information, it must be able to trust its accuracy at all times.

Accessibility: A database should be accessible by authorized users anywhere at any time. This allows employees to make decisions based on the latest information available in the system.

Efficiency: A good database will make it easier for employees to store, retrieve, and manage information. The more efficient employees use the system, the less time they spend on tasks that don't directly contribute to their jobs, and the higher productivity rates will be for each employee.

Conclusion

As you can see, EEFs and OPAFs are only two of many different aspects that need to be considered to create a practical process map. Creating a meaningful process map is not as simple as simply drawing some boxes, connecting them with arrows, and deeming your work done. To be truly effective, a process map must be developed considering the various factors affecting the success of the processes being mapped—internal and external.