2.4.6 The Dot Points Of Success - Why This Company Is So Successful
I have just completed the highest rating customer feedback survey that bpi has undertaken. The Company is a textbook operation but one that reflects the combined enthusiasm and commitment that the CEO and all his staff bring to the business rather than the dispassionate study of every business book on this well-worn topic. Nevertheless, whilst I doubt whether the Company analyses its success this way, it is possible to distil the reasons for it into a relatively short list of dot points.
I’ve divided the list into two - doing the right thing and doing things right.
Doing the right thing
No matter how expert the crew, if you are sailing the yacht in the wrong direction, you are never going to win the race. So doing the right thing is about having a business vision and working out how that vision is going to be realised.
- Does your company have a vision?
This Company is in the service industry and the vision was simply to deliver the highest standards of customer service to a segment of the market that was prepared to pay for them.
- Does your company have a competitive strategy?
This Company has - it’s called Best Total Cost. Best Total Cost is much more than the price. Best Total Cost is the sum of the Price (in this case higher than that charged by its competitors) plus Convenience (this Company is very easy to do business with) plus Risk reduction (this Company is highly reliable). As one of their customers put it to me: “Before I started doing business with them, I reckon that 40% of incoming calls were from my customers with delivery inquiries - now I can focus on gaining new accounts not servicing existing ones”.
- Does your company have focus?
Do you attempt to be all things to all customers or are you different and better to a select group? This Company is highly focused. If potential customers do not value convenience and risk reduction, they don’t pay the premium - they go somewhere else where they get less but pay less.
Doing things right
It’s one thing having vision, focus and a competitive strategy - it’s quite another to implement it - that’s the hard part. As someone said - a vision without a task is but a dream.
- Leadership
I don’t just mean leadership at the top - I mean leadership at all levels - where everyone is prepared to take responsibility for servicing the customer whether that customer is internal or external. Nevertheless, leadership starts at the top. This Company is no exception. The CEO can be sometimes difficult and always demanding and he tends to see things in black and white and to hell with the shades of grey. But no one doubts his enthusiasm and commitment to his vision and so he inspires his staff to feel likewise.
- Alignment
This is the key to successful implementation. Everyone understands where the organisation is now; everyone understands the destination and the journey, and everyone understands his or her role in getting there.
- Teamwork
I’m always somewhat sceptical about organisations that appoint “team leaders” Too often it leads to a focus on form rather than substance. This Company has no team leaders by title but it does have small groups of highly communicative people working closely together to achieve common goals. Those are the fundamentals of teamwork.
- Collaboration
One of the many questions in the feedback survey that was put to their clients was whether they regarded the Company as “just another supplier” or as an invaluable business partner. The great majority viewed the Company as an extension to their own business. As a consequence there is a great deal of transparency - sharing of information - and trust.
How do your customers measure your performance? Simple quantitative measures such as quantity and delivery-on-time? These are “hard” measures that ignore the business relationships between people. Such relationships are the glue that holds partnerships together. There is plenty of glue between this Company and its customers.
- Customer service - IT and people
One of the characteristics of organisations that practice Best Total Cost is that they invest heavily in IT and infrastructure. This Company has an e-business system that is highly impressive. It’s an in-house system and its architect is the CEO. BUT - what is just as impressive is the team of people that complement the system.
Every customer has an account manager - one single point of contact to whom each of them can turn to answer questions and provide the flexibility that even the best IT systems cannot display. The account manager is mainly concerned with day-to-day operational issues so to complement that role, there is a small team of people whose role it is to conduct, in conjunction with the customer decision-makers, regular reviews of every aspect of the business relationship.
In one respect, of course, this Company is no different from any other. It has the usual run of issues to address and decisions to make. However, unlike many companies, it has time. Time to gather data, time for analysis, time to make choices, time to plan, time to set goals, time to communicate.
Businesses, particularly service businesses, are like the old music hall act of plate spinning. Each plate represents a customer and the role of the supplier is to keep each plate spinning in an even horizontal plane. As a business grows the ratio of plates to plate spinners increases and it’s inevitable that issues will arise that will cause a particular plate to wobble and lose equilibrium.
In companies that do not have the above success factors in place, a domino effect takes place. Resources are diverted from the plates that are spinning well to the plates that have already lost momentum. Denied a regular spin-up, even the former will eventually fall off their canes.
In contrast, companies like the one in question can both address the issues of the odd problem plate and keep the vast majority spinning smoothly at the same time.
This Company is out there, beyond the shore break, surfing the waves of its own choosing. It has control of its destiny.