Transparency challenges companies by making information about products and pricing, as well as corporate practices around labor, environment, healthcare and other issues, instantly available to potential customers. Empowered by YouTube and other new media, consumers have the power to reframe, even shatter, the reputations of products, services and companies. As transparency washes the windows of corporate headquarters, leaders of retail and consumer product companies will have to ask themselves:

* How will information technology increase transparency in the industry?
* How will transparency impact consumer behaviors, retailer strategies and producer strategies?
* How can we capture value and mitigate the challenges of transparency in terms of price, reputation and other drivers of purchase behaviors?
* How should we react to empowered stakeholders — from consumers to third parties like environmental lobbies — who can impact the reputation of the firm?

Competition in the glass house of transparency will require CPGs and
retailers to focus on:

* Creating customer trust and avoiding lapses that destroy reputations
* Co-opting customers to co-create value with the company
* Increasing responsiveness to customers by improving their abilities to sense needs, interpret requirements, frame responses, act to deliver, and learn from outcomes
* Competing on design and brand
* Strategically and proactively using information to define demand

Effectively executing the above strategies will depend on retailers’ and CPGs’ abilities to strategically ‘push’ and ‘pull’ key information to and from stakeholders.

Risk management has become an area of significant concern for numerous companies in today's volatile marketplace. However, a number of executives are still grappling with what needs to be done to protect their organizations.

A logical starting point is to gain a better understanding of the true risks facing companies. To accomplish this, Deloitte & Touche LLP and Deloitte Research, a part of Deloitte Services LP, analyzed the possible causes of major loss of share value experienced by hundreds of the largest international companies over the last 10 years. Some of the results were expected, such as the major negative impact of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Yet other results yielded some surprises, which have been compiled into a new Deloitte Research white paper, "Disarming the Value Killers."

The research found that risks may lurk in unexpected places, and that certain events can have such devastating effects that many organizations never recover from the losses. In the paper, Deloitte identifies which factors potentially became "value killers" and explains what might be done to address such threats.

An Accenture survey of Chief Executive magazine readers determined that the majority of CEOs feel innovation-in everything from products and services to business models-is one of the five most important factors required for competitive advantage. The research suggests that companies can improve their efforts by focusing on two fronts that are critical for innovation to flourish. They can build the context within their organizations by creating well-defined strategies and processes-including the staff to evaluate ideas, a system for rewarding risk and methods for measuring success. And they can rely on effective partnering-with outsourcing organizations and other external resources-to boost innovation execution capabilities.

Once an academic toy, idea markets are increasingly becoming a practicable business tool. Today software for idea markets is available from several vendors, and some firms and researchers have substantial experience in designing and running these markets. Corporations in Europe and the U.S. are beginning to apply these markets, from forecasting industry trends to picking merchandise categories that will be most popular with consumers.

Frequently varying online prices in response to changing market conditions can maximize returns and create a potential new source of competitive advantage. So why are so few companies putting this strategy to use?

Next generation Auto-ID technologies promise a range of business benefits in many industries. This paper from the Accenture Institute for Strategic Change discusses the potential benefits across the value chain, and business models for deploying Auto-ID.

Adam Smith's ideas about the competitive marketplace can work inside companies as well. Internal electronic markets can convert the widely dispersed knowledge, preferences and beliefs of people within an organization into decisions that can improve resource allocation, predictive abilities-and the bottom line.

After-sale parts and services are the new frontier of competitive differentiation and profit enhancement, offering nearly double the profit potential of first-time product sales. Of course, capitalizing on this opportunity is not simple, since comprehensive service management can complicate the typical company's supply chain. However, new strategies, infrastructures and tools-combined with informed oversight-make it possible to create and deliver after-sale support more profitably than ever before. In this Supply Chain Perspectives paper, Accenture authors Michael Dennis and Ajit Kambil explore the challenges, opportunities and approaches that define world-class service management capabilities.

Editor's Note: see related article, "How to make after-sales services pay off"
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