Ever taken a medicine that tasted good and therefore suspected it wouldn’t work? I’m having that sensation in business at the moment – let me explain. Recently, we’ve had clients coming to us with some big questions, about how best to tackle business transformation in these tougher times. What’s interesting is that the way I answer these questions has changed so much in the last 12 months or so. The questions include:
- How do I retain my customers who are increasingly shopping on price, or using local aggregators and overseas competitors?
- How do I keep my staff engaged in a time when the business needs to make tough decisions?
- How do I consistently deliver good service, but more cost effectively?
- How do I change my organisation at a time where risk-taking and innovation is generally not rewarded in middle management?
- How do I setup and manage the governance around the transformation?
Sounds familiar? The chances are that execs in all service companies and many others are asking these kinds of questions at the moment. However, what I believe and what I’m increasingly seeing in the market is the refreshing view that the way out of these questions is not just the traditional hunt for operational efficiencies, reduced costs and hard-nosed sales/marketing. The more sustainable and successful way is what I term ‘customer-centric business transformation’. This is not some program bolt-on called customer experience, but is driven from the understanding that really aligning to customers in everything from marketing to back office, allows organisations to develop better products and services, market them at less cost, sell more, service more efficiently and grow faster. All this while giving employees and staff a positive rallying call, not a depressing ‘let’s cut costs’ message.
It’s not easy to traceably link customer strategy to the successful execution of transformation, but we are working with quite a few large corporates now who really get this, and who are getting very positive outcomes as a result. It’s good to find a medicine that tastes so good!
