Where do we start?

The philosophy of business and operations excellence must start at the top.  Identify the needs of your company with a systematic but open book approach.  By this I mean baseline the position of the company and also the competition.  Outline where and on what level the competition lies.  Outline those factors that are key attributes of your industry and eliminate those that are valued by your intended customer as well as by your non-customers.  I'm in the process of reading a book called BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY and will convey my interpretation in the next few weeks.  The basic premise however is to figure out what differentiates your business from the competition.