How do you harness Non-Market factors? Anyone in Ontario taking advantage of the province’s “Feed-in Tariff” has an answer.
But while most people can name a host of Market Factors that shape business strategy, including saturation, maturity, fragmentation, etc., the mention of Non-Market Factors (regulation, public pressure, etc.) often draws blank stares.
Market Factor Strategies are built on maximizing offense-oriented business line priorities. Conversely, Non-Market Factor Strategies focus on minimizing negative impacts and liabilities. As a result, responses to Non-Market factors (led by governance, compliance and risk management functions among others) are all too often treated as boxes to be routinely checked off.
The checklist approach can be dangerous, as Non-Market factors can often be a source of Black Swan events. But a strategic plan that fails to integrate your organization’s approach to market and non-market factors also risks missing real opportunities.
Prof. Richard Rumelt of UCLA points out that every change or innovation uncovers (one might add, creates) new value denials. By value denials, Rumelt means missed opportunities. When it comes to Non-Market factors, these opportunities are frequently driven by institutions and constituencies that often treat regulatory and environmental directives as a cost that must be borne and often minimized.
However, some organizations are re-thinking Non-Market Factors as a way to capture opportunities. One way to do this is to rework your risk management plans. This often requires a strategic pivot by the whole organization. A key reason this strategic pivot is not made is that while every organization must manage risk, and many of those risks are on Non-Market fronts, most organizations do not treat risk management as a core line of business.
Three Strategic Planning Approaches that consider both Non-Market and Market Factors
Some of OPTIMUS | SBR’s most daring clients are seeking aggressive ways to retain risk, and harness the opportunities that go along with it. In so doing they are able to create new benefits to stakeholders and customers upstream.
The key to this emerging practice is to balance the capabilities you need to build to meet Non-Market factors such as compliance with ones that also enhance market competiveness. Three key approaches are emerging—
1. Turn Trash into Treasure: Some organizations are developing new, creative ways of finding value hidden in assets abandoned, underused or devalued because of their associated risk. A good example of this is the growing industry of recycling solution providers with ISO and Ministry of the Environment certification that assume others’ ‘risk’, process it and as a result are able to extract valuable material that can be repurposed.
2. Influence the Agenda: partnering with regulatory bodies that are tasked with regulatory oversight has two key benefits: First, you ensure optimal alignment between your organization’s offerings and activities to the regulator’s mandate to achieve social improvements. Second, you position yourself in the marketplace as an adoption leader, effectively minimizing any perceived pass-along risk to your clients. Corporations building corruption-busting partnerships in developing economic zones are an example.
3. Set the Benchmark: By cultivating your mandate and strategy work where stable benchmarks and comparator data do not exist, you could potentially prevent the need for Non-Market factors to be created. The more dynamic utilities and banks are finding ways to partner with their oversight stakeholders to shape the regulatory environment and pre-empt regulation by improving their self-assurance.
Complex and onerous regulatory obligations (think the new Basel III rules, or the EPA’s broadened regulatory efforts under the Clean Air Act) are heating the crucible, forcing —or enticing— both large and mid-size organizations to see factors such as regulatory and environmental risk the way public-sector entities do: as a top-tier success factor. Look for the trend to gather momentum, but in unpredictable ways.

Business Intelligence Road Map to Smarter Decisions
If your organization is having difficulty deriving greater insight, understanding, and intelligence from your data, you are not alone. Data is everywhere. But accessing, organizing, and making sense of it can be daunting.

Power BI vs Tableau – Which is Better?
Although Tableau and Power BI are similar business intelligence tools, there are key differences that organizations should be aware of when considering analytical requirement

6 Essential Data Visualization Best Practices
We have identified 6 Essential Data Visualization Best Practices. Adhering to these best practices makes it easier and faster for users to gain insight from large volumes of data and thereby make the best decisions for their business.

Optimus SBR Named as 2021 Great Place to Work
Optimus SBR has been named as Great Place to Work for a third consecutive year.

Executing on Round 2 of Municipal Modernization Program Reviews in Ontario: Should You Approach Them as a Marathon or a Sprint?
Our overview of areas of focus for the second round of the Municipal Modernization Program, Service Delivery Reviews themes, and advice on how to execute with the funds made available for this investment.

Optimus SBR named to the Growth List for 8th Consecutive Year!
Canadian Business named Optimus SBR on the 32nd annual Growth List!

Adapting in a New Era of Corporate Travel
Travel is one of the most impacted sectors hit this year due to COVID-19. Organizations need to begin to take a critical look at what corporate travel will look like in a post-COVID world.

Optimus SBR Named as 2020 Great Place to Work
For the second consecutive year, Optimus SBR is thrilled and honoured to be named on the 2020 list of Best Workplaces in Professional Services, and as one of this year’s Best Workplaces™ in Canada. This year, we’ve also been named to the inaugural list of Best Workplaces in Ontario.

The Driving Need to Reassess Processes & Controls Related to COVID-19 Responses
COVID-19 has thrust a massive amount of change onto financial institutions. Conducting a review of the processes and controls put in place during these unprecedented times is critical as financial institutions face an increasingly complex risk environment.

Pivoting When the World Changes: Getting the Most Out of Municipal Service Delivery Reviews in the New COVID-19 Reality
Municipal services matter, and not just the ones that people see. The ones that keep things humming behind the scenes matter too. And never has that been more apparent than during the COVID-19 pandemic.

How to Improve Analytics Capabilities and AAIM for Success
With technological advancement rapidly reshaping how we do business, a company’s ability to leverage data to make more informed decisions is the key to staying competitive in today’s market.
Whether your organization is beginning their analytics journey or is further along in its analytics maturity, an objective analytics capabilities assessment focused on using data to make better decisions is an important first step to achieve your analytics goals.

Optimus SBR Named 2022 Most Admired Corporate Cultures™ Winner!
What a thrill it is to be honoured as a 2022 Most Admired Corporate Cultures™ Winner! This award celebrates the Bold Attitude and Entrepreneurial Spirit each of us embodies.