多年來耐吉有力的「Just Do It」口號,一直是事業經營的寫照,一九九五年到一九九七年耐吉攻下美國運動鞋市場半壁江山,也積極將勢力拓展到全球各角落。憑著國際運動用品大廠耐吉(Nike)與美國高爾夫球好手老虎伍茲(Tiger Woods)簽下價值四千萬美元的合約,耐吉拍攝了他單桿玩弄高爾夫球的廣告,片中伍茲熟練地玩弄小白球,就像表演雜耍技藝般極為精彩,由於播出後刮起一陣旋風,耐吉於是再度邀請伍茲拍攝廣告,這回則需手持雙桿,以更高的難度來耍那顆小白球。
‧ 勾狀商標打下運動用品王國 耐吉的創業人菲力普‧奈特(Philip Knight),以希臘神話中的勝利女神Nike為名,其勾狀商標則是當初花了三十五美元,委請一位波特蘭州立大學設計系的學生所完成。奈特與他就讀奧勒岡大學時代的賽跑教練比爾‧包爾門(Bill Bowerman)合作投入運動鞋事業,這個念頭是奈特為了寫MBA作業而產生的靈感。
一九七五年的某個大清早,包爾門意外想到更好的點子,他把橡膠倒進鬆餅烤盤裡,出爐了一個全新式樣的鞋底,比當時市售的任何運動鞋更具彈性,日後證明頗受長跑選手歡迎,造成市場一陣騷動。從此耐吉知曉新款式研發的重要性,使它持續在運動鞋市場獨佔鰲頭,以每雙一百美元的鞋為例,利潤大約有二十至二十五美元。一九八二年年初,知名的「富比士雜誌」報導耐吉為全美持續五年利潤最高的企業,凌駕所有企業之冠。
‧ 銷售式微的階段 然而風雲易變,一九八○年代後期銳跑(Reebok)以新式軟皮氣墊鞋取代悶熱的傳統鞋,奪下逾30%的市場佔有率,迫使一九八七年耐吉業績下跌到18%的慘境。分析問題所在,耐吉一向以製造高品質球鞋為組織目標,但卻無明確行銷目標以迎合最新趨勢,銳跑能成功席捲運動鞋市場就在於顧及流行。
例如,當韻律舞蹈風行全美,且韻律鞋的需求隨著珍‧芳達等人所發行的韻律舞錄影帶而增加時,銳跑已然攻掠該市場,並成為第一家專門為女性設計的鞋商。反應遲鈍的耐吉,在一九八六年到一九八七年間,利潤下滑40%。 一九八八年耐吉力圖反攻,為了讓品質與行銷完美協同,除調查市場需求,並改良鞋體性能,進入一九九○年代後,耐吉勉強奪回市場領導權,但未來仍不被看好,隨著運動鞋市場日趨飽和,華爾街分析師開始質疑:這世界究竟需要多少雙運動鞋呢?
‧ 差異性是重生的秘訣 耐吉只得將焦點轉至其它方向上,倚重與運動有關的器材與服飾來拓展品牌知名度。諸如:從高爾夫球、舉重、棒球打擊的專用手套,以及大學足球隊、棒球校隊的服裝,耐吉均急欲將它們塑造成搶手貨,此外還為遠足、散步、騎自行車、啦啦隊活動與帆板衝浪製造專用配備,硬在銷售量扳回一成。奈特在力行重整計劃時說道:「我們要當一家運動公司,而不只是一家鞋業公司。」
此外,透過「娛樂氣氛」或「酷」的流行觀念,耐吉每一季推出數種新款式,例如:春天是棒球鞋、夏天是網球鞋、秋天是登山鞋,而籃球鞋和慢跑鞋則為每一季修改一次樣式,此招極能吸引消費者的目光,特別是那些年紀在三十歲以下的族群。
‧ 建構通路管理,廣設專賣店 在產銷流程上,耐吉不僅因向國外找尋代工廠而引發倫理議題,當一九九二年耐吉決定仰賴巨大的行銷威力,因應產品多樣性而設立另類銷售中心,開設十三座「耐吉超級商店」(Nike Town Superstore),也令原本的通路商反彈。尤其Venator集團旗下的Foot Locker連鎖店,與The Sports Authority等幾家大經銷商,害怕如此將演變成互相競爭的處境,因而忿怒不平。為紓解零售商的壓力,耐吉費了很多工夫安撫,並保證新增的通路將使耐吉產品知名度提升,原有通路的銷售額也將不減反增。
耐吉低調促銷自己的超級商店通路,小心翼翼地不去刺激原有的經銷商,甚至設法安撫它們。例如耐吉建立「未來式及時存貨制度」,允許下游提早半年訂貨,並保證90%的訂單以固定價格交貨;也特別設計了幾款鞋,包括Flight65及67委由Foot Locker獨家銷售。到了一九九九年,只剩下六成來自兩萬個傳統經銷商,但總營收卻上升了158%,傳統經銷商也撈到不少好處,七年間的銷售額每年平均成長10%。
‧ 爭逐運動用品的未來市場 不僅耐吉密切注意市場新走向,老牌的愛迪達也時時留心顧客反應,準備東山再起,例如雙方在一九九八年的世界杯足球賽裡,便已爆發了行銷爭奪戰,為搶得高達四十五億美元的球員運動服訂單而施展渾身解術,兩造並拿出新款產品進行角逐,愛迪達亮出它的新武器「掠奪者加速鞋」(Predator Accelerator),耐吉則以專為巴西足球明星羅納度量身設計的鞋種「水銀」(Mercurial)應戰。競爭激烈之餘,即使新秀New Balance也虎視眈眈這塊運動大餅,可見要想在市場上贏得勝利,業者均須對買方和對手的行為下一番功夫。
熱門文章
-
天明寺的後院有間雜物間,房間沒有鎖,平時用插銷插住房門,裡面沒有貴重物品,只是放置一些平日很少用的東西,很少有人進去,所以雜物房的門一般是關著的。 戒嗔住的地方也在後院,每天從住處去佛堂時,都會經過這個雜物間。有天早晨路過的時候,發現雜物間的門被人打開了,望望屋內,沒有異樣,只是...
-
“ The gifts possessed by the best performers are not at all what we think they are. They are certainly not enough to explain the achievement...
-
天才怎麼出現?莫札特真的只是天生好手嗎?其實有天賦還不夠,還牽涉環境。想成為運動明星,要看你幾月出生;數學好不好,要看祖先是不是種稻。環境之後,加上大量努力,才能造就天才。美國暢銷作家葛拉威爾,引用大量統計科學辯證,重新發現「出身」的意義。 「在漢堡,我們必須一連演唱八小時。」...
12/08/2008
向螞蟻學通路管理
(文/劉典嚴)
企管顧問邦納保(Eric Bonabeau)和梅耶(Christopher Meyer)在《哈佛商業評論》上分析,觀察螞蟻和蜜蜂的行徑,可以學到不少通路管理課程。舉例來說,螞蟻總能找出最短的路途,把食物搬回家。
當發現食物時,兩隻螞蟻若同時離開巢穴,較快扛回食物者,會在路線上釋放較多的化學外激素,讓聞到較重味道的同伴,選擇此較短的路線。
這種不需領導人監督,就能根據環境變動而「追蹤足跡」的特性,兩位學者稱之為「分群智慧」(swarm intelligence)。
‧ 西南航空的實例 通常螞蟻搬食物往回走時,會交給所碰到的螞蟻,自己再回頭,去承接上游螞蟻之物,雖說要在哪個位置換手並不一定,但可以確定的是,整套接力過程有固定的起點與終點。美國一家大型零售連鎖店就運用這種分工模式,來管理物流倉儲。
以前倉儲中心用區域方式(Zone approach)來檢貨,除非上手完成工作,否則下手不能接手,以飲料為例,負責為果汁裝箱與負責為酒類裝箱的人員,補充貨品的速度差距可能非常大,而訂單對每一種商品的需求差異也很大,於是訂單部門的人員經常得等待補貨人員完成後,才能接手與顧客接洽。該物流中心改採螞蟻動線,直到下游來接手後,人員才再回頭接手上游的工作,實證發現,應該將速度最快的員工放在最末端,速度最慢的放在起始處。透過此法,該倉儲中心的生產力較早先提高了30%。
千禧年初,美國西南航空(Southwestern Airline)的貨機平均只使用了7%的空間,但卻因某些機場產能不足,無法搬運規劃好的貨物,造成該航空公司運貨上的不協調。過去,西南航空與一般空運公司的作法類似,例如說要送往達拉斯的貨物,裝上直接飛往達拉斯的班機,但就因如此而耗費許多時間在搬移與裝卸貨物。
後來,西南航空也借用了螞蟻搬運食物食物的方法,重新組織運作,依照航空系統的繁忙程度,往北的貨物可能先置於往西的班機上,要比中途搬下來等著下一趟往北的航班有效率,因而估計一年可省下一千萬美元。
‧ 預測銷售,增強供貨效率 日本現存的8500家7-11便利商店,每天收集三次所有商店的銷售資料,並於20分鐘內完成資料分析,大幅提高瞭解顧客需求的速度,幫助公司即時調整售價、供貨及促銷活動等,此外,日本7-11也和合作廠商分享所收集的資料,供他們改進產品。例如:午餐、飯糰和三明治等食品,約佔每日銷售額的一半,這些商品銷售期短,販賣情形又和天氣息息相關,因此事先掌握天氣情況,是準備食物量的關鍵,日本7-11擁有每天收集氣象報告資料五次的系統,供各地商店參考,以免講求新鮮度的食物推出過多或過少。再者,日本各地的7-11於每天早上十點,會透過系統訂貨,7分鐘內資訊便傳到公司專屬的230個配貨中心,當天下午四點,各中心便會將貨品送到店面。每位送貨司機都配帶磁卡,送貨完成時,必須在商店內的電腦刷卡,假如一名司機常常送貨遲到,公司方面便能依此研究出改進之道,例如更改開車路線,或者加派貨車以減少卸貨時間等。
《經濟學人》雜誌(The Economist)認為,該公司之所以能在實體配銷上締造佳績,除了謹慎的管理作風外,善用先進的電子科技因應是成功主因。‧ 做好通路決策思考 目前的行銷競爭已經不是個別企業之間的競爭,實涉及行銷體系的爭霸戰,甚至是各企業彼此關係網路的角力,不但要與通路成員維持良好的關係,還得讓實體運配的過程深具彈性,好能隨時因應消費者愈趨不耐的性格,做出必要性的通路調整決策。
How an Order Views Your Company
Over a dozen years ago, HBS professors Ben Shapiro and Kash Rangan conducted research with colleague John J. Sviokla, focusing on the impact that a company's order management cycle (OMC) has on customers. Think of OMC as the process that manages the customer's order from the time it first comes into the business to the day the product departs the shipping dock. The researchers encouraged businesses to think of that order as the actual customer, and watched as they routed that person here and there among departments, perhaps ignored by an inattentive clerk or delayed by an administrative conflict. And then Shapiro, Rangan, and Sviokla took their own advice, following orders through eighteen companies to chart gaps in the OMC process.
Their article on the research, "Staple Yourself to an Order," was recently reprised as part of a Best of Harvard Business Review collection.
Thanks to the Internet, customer management software, and the success of Dell, the concept of order management and customer focus has proven profitable for those companies that have embraced it. They understand and can anticipate their customer needs better than their competitors, and can tune their organization's response to a fine degree. So why aren't more companies this customer-centric? We asked professors Shapiro and Rangan to view the changes in order management cycle that have evolved since their findings were first presented in 1992.
Sarah Jane Johnston: What led to your original study of the order management cycle?
Benson Shapiro: In the late 1970s, when I was teaching the Industrial Marketing course in the MBA program at Harvard, it began to become clear to me that to really manage many businesses, one needed to deal with order-level detail. Earlier, it had been sufficient to think about customers and products or services. But, because of increasingly intense competition, one now had to look at individual orders. My research assistant (at the time) and I wrote a case with such detail that it proved to be very popular and useful.
It is like having one's genetic code written into the birth certificate.— Kash Rangan
Through the '80s the importance of order-level detail became increasingly clear. In the late '80s, when I was teaching [a course on] Integrated Product Line Management, the need for order-level detail screamed. It was clear that this was much more than a marketing project. Kash Rangan had a strong interest in supply/demand chains, and thought the project presented some interesting opportunities. John Sviokla, with a powerful background in management information systems, joined the team. And, for a time, Janice Hammond was involved because of her interest in optimization of supply chains and logistics.
I think that for all of us, the order cycle provided a wonderful window through which to observe the intricate details of revenue management, cross-functional coordination, and profitability management. After a while, Jan Hammond left the team, but her impact stayed. Kash, John, and I worked very hard to capture our findings in a single document. Alan Weber, at the time the Editor of the Harvard Business Review, did a magnificent job of taking our manuscript and making it accessible to managers.
Our initial hunch about the importance of order cycle management and the need to look at order-level details proved correct. It was a highly leveraged approach that helped support trends in re-engineering, supply chain management, activity-based costing, and continuous improvement.
Q: How much has changed in this area since your research was first published?
Kash Rangan: A lot has changed since the research was first published over ten years ago. With the proliferation of computing power and availability of powerful software, much of what we called the Order Management Cycle has been easier to track. In other words, data from the time a customer places an order to the time the order leaves for the customer location are now being captured routinely at many businesses. We could ship a packet at any U.S. post office, and get a tracking number to find out what is happening to its delivery. Dell Computer, of course, goes beyond that—you can track where your order is in the assembly process, even before it is ready for shipment.
What we have learned from a host of these new applications is indeed important. When we first did the research study, our focus was on customer satisfaction. We had argued that the order is a surrogate for the customer, and so by tracking its "smooth" or "bumpy" ride, we would be able to mirror how the customer would feel. But what we did not realize at that time was the enormous second-order impact of the OMC concept. Because the customer is identified and connected to the OMC when the product is being put together, it has been possible for manufacturers to leave those identification markers in the product. So later on when the same customer calls with an inquiry or a complaint, it is now so easy to go back to the database and pull out the product's history. It is like having one's genetic code written into the birth certificate. As a result, problem diagnosis after the product has been in the field has not only become easier, but also so much cheaper for manufacturers. Customer satisfaction over the life of the product has increased as a result.
Q: For companies that changed with the times, what improvements, if any, have they experienced in customer satisfaction and financial performance?
Shapiro: Unfortunately, we did not formally maintain relationships with the many companies that we used as field sites for the initial research. But, we have certainly watched many similar companies move from segment-and-account or product-and-service-level analysis into the greater detail offered at the order level. By and large, those companies that devoted themselves to the effort were richly rewarded. The order cycle gave them the opportunity to focus on the most profitable parts of their business. It also enabled them to segment different types of order to improve their efficiency. Taken together, the improvements in efficiency and the greater focus on highly profitable orders lowered costs and improved gross margins.
In addition, the emphasis on order cycle management provided a new tool to increase customer satisfaction. Because the order is an extension of the customer, it needed to be treated particularly well. The focus on order cycle management enabled companies to become much more tangible about "market orientation" or "customer driven." No longer were these vague philosophies or vacuous words. Now we could improve customer satisfaction by managing orders better.
Order cycle management also enabled executives to better understand the value they were providing with each order for each customer. As the value became clearer, executives were able to better price their products and services. It was now possible to price each transaction based on the value it created for the customer, as well as on its cost. As activity-based costing became more popular, it melded well with order cycle management to create greater precision in marketing, operations, and pricing. This led to greater profitability as well as to a tighter competitive focus and greater differentiation.
Thus, order cycle management contributed to cost optimization, revenue improvement, and better pricing. Each of these positively interacted with the others for the companies that did the best job of order cycle management.
Despite the overwhelming data, some companies just do not take the customer orientation seriously.— Benson Shapiro
Finally, order cycle management helped to enable the supply chain revolution, which has improved return on inventory assets. Once people understood the need to deal with order cycle details, they were able to process more orders with greater satisfaction with less inventory. This significantly improved return on investment.
Taken together, these changes all led to significant increases in customer satisfaction and financial performance.
Q: What are the biggest obstacles for companies attempting to implement this strategy?
Rangan: The biggest obstacles remain exactly as they were ten years ago. While technology has enabled widespread application, fundamentally the core implementation problems remain. Some companies have done a great job, and some have not. To take advantage of the information and effect OMC changes, one has to coordinate across functions, disciplines, and departments. A company has to address issues of organization, incentives, and compensation.
Moreover, the people who can affect the changes are human beings and so the psychology and sociology of change and who wins and who loses has to be designed into the system. Simply put, our concept of OMC is not simply a tool or methodology to measure customer satisfaction shortfalls. It also is a diagnostic to set in motion the wheels of customer orientation across an organization. That involves senior leadership.
Q: Has technology or the advent of the Web had an impact on the order management cycle?
Rangan: No question. Software vendors Seibel, Oracle, and others have made a $25 billion market out of CRM. Some of their key modules offer order management solutions and the corresponding efficiency that can then be gained by reallocating sales investments. Some small innovative firms like Comergent have taken it a step further. They offer an integrated demand chain management solution that gets as close to our OMC concept as one can. It links customer demand into backend ERP systems. It is impressive to see how technology has actually enabled the application of the OMC concept right from the entry point—a Web interface all the way to the factory. As I said in my previous answer, the potential is huge, but the application requires much careful thinking and management initiative.
Q: Do you see the current trend of intense customer focus continuing?
Shapiro: We believe that an increasing focus on customers is absolutely critical for companies to survive and prosper in these times of intense competition.
For a variety of reasons, there's considerably less differentiation across products and services than in the past. One way the companies can compete in this harsh environment is to provide better customer service by utilizing more detailed order management cycle approaches. But, despite the opportunities, many companies still do not understand the strong relationships among customer satisfaction, customer retention, profitability; as well as the relationships among order analysis, selection and management, and profitability.
The companies who seriously focus on customers inevitably do better. The interesting thing is that despite the overwhelming data, as well as a plethora of startling anecdotes, some companies just do not take the customer orientation seriously. On the other hand, companies such as Dell Computer have built whole businesses around the order cycle. In essence, Michael Dell's original concept was that all personal computers were alike because they depended upon Intel processors and Microsoft software. The only possible differentiation in running a personal computer company, he posited, was to provide better service and to make more money by leveraging order cycle management. The rest has been history. And, he is successfully applying that same approach to servers, printers, and perhaps even to other items as well. Order cycle management, combined with a careful focus on selected customers and needs, can indeed bring success now and in the future.
Their article on the research, "Staple Yourself to an Order," was recently reprised as part of a Best of Harvard Business Review collection.
Thanks to the Internet, customer management software, and the success of Dell, the concept of order management and customer focus has proven profitable for those companies that have embraced it. They understand and can anticipate their customer needs better than their competitors, and can tune their organization's response to a fine degree. So why aren't more companies this customer-centric? We asked professors Shapiro and Rangan to view the changes in order management cycle that have evolved since their findings were first presented in 1992.
Sarah Jane Johnston: What led to your original study of the order management cycle?
Benson Shapiro: In the late 1970s, when I was teaching the Industrial Marketing course in the MBA program at Harvard, it began to become clear to me that to really manage many businesses, one needed to deal with order-level detail. Earlier, it had been sufficient to think about customers and products or services. But, because of increasingly intense competition, one now had to look at individual orders. My research assistant (at the time) and I wrote a case with such detail that it proved to be very popular and useful.
It is like having one's genetic code written into the birth certificate.— Kash Rangan
Through the '80s the importance of order-level detail became increasingly clear. In the late '80s, when I was teaching [a course on] Integrated Product Line Management, the need for order-level detail screamed. It was clear that this was much more than a marketing project. Kash Rangan had a strong interest in supply/demand chains, and thought the project presented some interesting opportunities. John Sviokla, with a powerful background in management information systems, joined the team. And, for a time, Janice Hammond was involved because of her interest in optimization of supply chains and logistics.
I think that for all of us, the order cycle provided a wonderful window through which to observe the intricate details of revenue management, cross-functional coordination, and profitability management. After a while, Jan Hammond left the team, but her impact stayed. Kash, John, and I worked very hard to capture our findings in a single document. Alan Weber, at the time the Editor of the Harvard Business Review, did a magnificent job of taking our manuscript and making it accessible to managers.
Our initial hunch about the importance of order cycle management and the need to look at order-level details proved correct. It was a highly leveraged approach that helped support trends in re-engineering, supply chain management, activity-based costing, and continuous improvement.
Q: How much has changed in this area since your research was first published?
Kash Rangan: A lot has changed since the research was first published over ten years ago. With the proliferation of computing power and availability of powerful software, much of what we called the Order Management Cycle has been easier to track. In other words, data from the time a customer places an order to the time the order leaves for the customer location are now being captured routinely at many businesses. We could ship a packet at any U.S. post office, and get a tracking number to find out what is happening to its delivery. Dell Computer, of course, goes beyond that—you can track where your order is in the assembly process, even before it is ready for shipment.
What we have learned from a host of these new applications is indeed important. When we first did the research study, our focus was on customer satisfaction. We had argued that the order is a surrogate for the customer, and so by tracking its "smooth" or "bumpy" ride, we would be able to mirror how the customer would feel. But what we did not realize at that time was the enormous second-order impact of the OMC concept. Because the customer is identified and connected to the OMC when the product is being put together, it has been possible for manufacturers to leave those identification markers in the product. So later on when the same customer calls with an inquiry or a complaint, it is now so easy to go back to the database and pull out the product's history. It is like having one's genetic code written into the birth certificate. As a result, problem diagnosis after the product has been in the field has not only become easier, but also so much cheaper for manufacturers. Customer satisfaction over the life of the product has increased as a result.
Q: For companies that changed with the times, what improvements, if any, have they experienced in customer satisfaction and financial performance?
Shapiro: Unfortunately, we did not formally maintain relationships with the many companies that we used as field sites for the initial research. But, we have certainly watched many similar companies move from segment-and-account or product-and-service-level analysis into the greater detail offered at the order level. By and large, those companies that devoted themselves to the effort were richly rewarded. The order cycle gave them the opportunity to focus on the most profitable parts of their business. It also enabled them to segment different types of order to improve their efficiency. Taken together, the improvements in efficiency and the greater focus on highly profitable orders lowered costs and improved gross margins.
In addition, the emphasis on order cycle management provided a new tool to increase customer satisfaction. Because the order is an extension of the customer, it needed to be treated particularly well. The focus on order cycle management enabled companies to become much more tangible about "market orientation" or "customer driven." No longer were these vague philosophies or vacuous words. Now we could improve customer satisfaction by managing orders better.
Order cycle management also enabled executives to better understand the value they were providing with each order for each customer. As the value became clearer, executives were able to better price their products and services. It was now possible to price each transaction based on the value it created for the customer, as well as on its cost. As activity-based costing became more popular, it melded well with order cycle management to create greater precision in marketing, operations, and pricing. This led to greater profitability as well as to a tighter competitive focus and greater differentiation.
Thus, order cycle management contributed to cost optimization, revenue improvement, and better pricing. Each of these positively interacted with the others for the companies that did the best job of order cycle management.
Despite the overwhelming data, some companies just do not take the customer orientation seriously.— Benson Shapiro
Finally, order cycle management helped to enable the supply chain revolution, which has improved return on inventory assets. Once people understood the need to deal with order cycle details, they were able to process more orders with greater satisfaction with less inventory. This significantly improved return on investment.
Taken together, these changes all led to significant increases in customer satisfaction and financial performance.
Q: What are the biggest obstacles for companies attempting to implement this strategy?
Rangan: The biggest obstacles remain exactly as they were ten years ago. While technology has enabled widespread application, fundamentally the core implementation problems remain. Some companies have done a great job, and some have not. To take advantage of the information and effect OMC changes, one has to coordinate across functions, disciplines, and departments. A company has to address issues of organization, incentives, and compensation.
Moreover, the people who can affect the changes are human beings and so the psychology and sociology of change and who wins and who loses has to be designed into the system. Simply put, our concept of OMC is not simply a tool or methodology to measure customer satisfaction shortfalls. It also is a diagnostic to set in motion the wheels of customer orientation across an organization. That involves senior leadership.
Q: Has technology or the advent of the Web had an impact on the order management cycle?
Rangan: No question. Software vendors Seibel, Oracle, and others have made a $25 billion market out of CRM. Some of their key modules offer order management solutions and the corresponding efficiency that can then be gained by reallocating sales investments. Some small innovative firms like Comergent have taken it a step further. They offer an integrated demand chain management solution that gets as close to our OMC concept as one can. It links customer demand into backend ERP systems. It is impressive to see how technology has actually enabled the application of the OMC concept right from the entry point—a Web interface all the way to the factory. As I said in my previous answer, the potential is huge, but the application requires much careful thinking and management initiative.
Q: Do you see the current trend of intense customer focus continuing?
Shapiro: We believe that an increasing focus on customers is absolutely critical for companies to survive and prosper in these times of intense competition.
For a variety of reasons, there's considerably less differentiation across products and services than in the past. One way the companies can compete in this harsh environment is to provide better customer service by utilizing more detailed order management cycle approaches. But, despite the opportunities, many companies still do not understand the strong relationships among customer satisfaction, customer retention, profitability; as well as the relationships among order analysis, selection and management, and profitability.
The companies who seriously focus on customers inevitably do better. The interesting thing is that despite the overwhelming data, as well as a plethora of startling anecdotes, some companies just do not take the customer orientation seriously. On the other hand, companies such as Dell Computer have built whole businesses around the order cycle. In essence, Michael Dell's original concept was that all personal computers were alike because they depended upon Intel processors and Microsoft software. The only possible differentiation in running a personal computer company, he posited, was to provide better service and to make more money by leveraging order cycle management. The rest has been history. And, he is successfully applying that same approach to servers, printers, and perhaps even to other items as well. Order cycle management, combined with a careful focus on selected customers and needs, can indeed bring success now and in the future.
訂閱:
文章 (Atom)