Just yesterday the small team of us present at office got together while the systems were getting serviced and I grabbed the opportunity of discussing with them, how post these times, the business scenario will change for ever. Like it is pretty much clear the rules of business process will and have transitioned to a much more pragmatic approach. The team appeared to agree that we had to leverage our expertise in managing process, its transactional sequence, the multiplicity of priorities, anticipating and preparing for trouble, and proactively approaching opportunities with not so much dependence on domain expertise or what we have done so far. I have always believed that domain expertise can be learned and the time it requires to learn the process is inversely proportional to the willingness of the individual or the team engaged in it.

I read Seth Godin regularly and he inspires confidence in troubled times and it just felt great that he happened to mention just what we discussed in his post, http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/01/what-are-you-good-at.html

While we have been seeing a frightful drop in the business margins since August 2007, our business process has shown a steady increase in the top lines. We have managed to keep our neck out of the flooding waters primarily due to our earnest efforts to follow process and ensure that we are one up on the critical deliverable. The future belongs to proactive approach on business processes and being able to deliver value to clients over and above the transactional part of the deal. This approach applies significantly and critically to small enterprises and entrepreneurs, which in turn signifies the shift in outlook of team members of these enterprises to be aware of this challenge and adapt to it.