From commercial silos to commercial integration

This paper provides effective solutions for removing silos between commercial teams in order to improve in-market performance. The proposed steps are: (1) Single-sourcing the reporting commercial structure into the marketing officer or commercial officer; this consolidates the commercial responsibilities within the organisation while establishing a common set of performance metrics across the different commercial teams. (2) Shifting focus from ‘path to purchase’ to ‘path to market’; this addresses the incomplete knowledge about the path the product takes from the vendor to the customer. (3) ‘Sense–Make Sense–Respond’; this step demonstrates the need for a common construct that allows the organisation to access information quickly, understand that information, and take actions to maximise its performance in the marketplace. (4) Disrupting inertia; this final step requires the change agent to be patient with company and/or individual willingness to disrupt the inertia inherent in most mature organisations. Having awareness about what it takes to remove silos yet choosing to do nothing will only cause a company to underperform in the marketplace. Ignorance is only bliss when it is truly a lack of knowledge — but this will never lead to improvements within the organisation.