As a supplier, do you understand or appreciate what it is that your customers are really buying?

Have you identified your market segment and have you profiled your ideal customer?

It’s so important to focus on what it is that you are delivering to your customers. What is the need that you are satisfying? Have you asked them? When was the last time you conducted an impartial survey of your customers? Have you ever surveyed your customers?

Customers today are more informed about products and services than at any time in the past. As such, it is most likely that they understand more about you and your product or service than you do about what their requirements are. As suppliers, we need to reach beyond fulfilling the obvious and aim to satisfy their real requirements.

The hospitality industry has generally been more adaptive in this area. They understand that in providing that meal to you, they need to match it with quality of service, ambiance of the environment, etc. Extending beyond this, they may provide access to entertainment, accommodation, or even transport services to and from your home. In this scenario, they are offering to provide a good night out, not just a nice meal.

When a customer purchases a new car, finance is invariably available at the point of sale, and it is not unusual to be provided with roadside assistance for the term of the warranty period. How about a mobile service van to come to you for the regular servicing? You are not just buying a car on the day, you are purchasing comfort and practical, reliable, personal transport for some years.

It’s easy to ignore the true motivations as to why customers purchase from us. If we can understand this, then we can be more effective in satisfying their needs. Widening our view to provide a more comprehensive solution for our customers is essential in today’s environment. In the cycle of continuous improvement, this is the next step in “raising the bar”, but to really achieve this, we need to place ourselves in our customer’s shoes.

What do you think?

Outside In – The Secret of the 21st Century Leading Companies
BP Group Press, 2010
www.outsideinthesecret.com

Steve Towers has once again put pen to paper to present us with strategies that organisations may adopt to achieve success in today’s ever-changing business landscape.

In suggesting that today’s businesses are working with new rules and within a new environment is no surprise to any of us who are over the age of 30. The question is how to mould organisations into a way of thinking that is aligned with today’s consumer to ensure “successful customer outcomes” in all business and consumer interactions – hence, an “outside-in” philosophy.

From the inside cover: “A seasoned practitioner with over 30 years of hands-on experience, Steve is one of industry’s noted experts in Enterprise BPM and Performance transformation. He heads the Research & Professional Services network within the BP Group. … A noted leader, Steve works as a mentor, coach and consultant and has helped pioneer through research and ‘hands-on’ exposure to the world’s leading companies, the evolution to Advanced BPM aka ‘Outside-In’. Recently recognised as a global thought leader in ‘Outside-In’ Steve continues to evolve process thinking towards a customer centric view of business.”

The book questions the approach of traditional business processes, noting that just because we’ve always done something a given way, doesn’t necessarily make it right. And even if we perceive that we may be doing things ‘right’, are they really the right things to be doing in the first place? While these concepts in themselves are not ground-breaking, the idea of fixing the causes of work instead of massaging a process to compensate for an outcome (effect), is one of the fundamental mind shifts that is presented.

We live in a world where consumers have access to more information than they can ever possibly desire. They can easily be, and quite often are, more informed than the customer service person who supplies them with whatever product or service they are sourcing. Steve suggests that, as suppliers, we need to step into the shoes of these ‘pro-sumers’, our customers, to understand their true need, rather than their perceived ‘want’. If we understand who our customers are, their expectations, the process they think they are involved with, that everything we do impacts the customer, and what their real needs are, then we are capable of delivering ‘successful customer outcomes’.

The book is an easy read, stepping us through a series of questions to make us look at things from our customer’s point of view. Beyond this, the framework presented provides a foundation for organisations to question their current approach to the way their business processes are implemented. It suggests that in using this framework, simultaneous improvements can be achieved in revenue, costs and customer service – something considered a lot more challenging to achieve using previous business process improvement strategies. After all, “we can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them” (Einstein).

The steps within the presented framework are backed up with many examples, some a little more contemporary than others. While the concept of a customer centric organisation is not new, the framework presented here is the first I’ve seen that is sound, logical, comprehensive and practical. The list of companies cited as taking an outside-in approach is impressive, with many well known brands mentioned. Most notably these are companies that survived and even grew during the global financial crisis.

In a time when we are overloaded with information and complex challenges, I find the concepts of “Outside In” both pragmatic and refreshing. More than anything, it suggests that we need to remove our blinkers, unlearn our understanding of customer satisfaction and widen our horizon to encompass a much more comprehensive total customer experience.

Every organisation only exists to serve its customers. If you work in an organisation, and particularly if you are in a position to shape the processes within an organisation, then I would recommend that you read “Outside-In”.

“In business, there’s no such thing as a perfect 10″

In this article, Richard Branson talks about his success and why it’s important to “look at your business or brand from the outside in”.

There’s always room for improvement in product and service offerings. By placing ourselves in our customer’s shoes, we can understand their experience and optimise our product delivery from their point of view; leading to an improved outcome for our customers.

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/after_hours/opinions/article.jsp?content=20100510_10003_10003

Last month I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the BP Group Certified Process Process Professional program in Brisbane. For me, this was the opportunity to follow up the three day program I attended in Melbourne late last year.

As expected, there were a great group of attendees, from diverse backgrounds. Despite the various experiences, everyone present was tied to the one goal of improving business processes.
How to:
- increase revenue;
- reduce costs; and
- improve customer service.

Steve Towers demonstrated proven, practical methods and tools for advanced business process improvement and realising the above benefits by refocusing on successful customer outcomes (SCOs) using an “Outside In” strategy.

As one of the attendees in Brisbane has commented -
“I still find it incredible that in this conventional information and process rich world we live in that we can look at what we do in a slightly different but totally logical way and the picture changes (so) dramatically.” Charles Bennett, Managing Partner & Project Director at IBS Publishing

Many companies say that they are “customer focused”, but most fail to really put themselves in their customers’ shoes and deliver real solutions for their customers’ needs. This is where the methods and tools of the Certified Process Professional (CPP) Program can make a tangible difference to how you look at the business processes in your organisation.

If you are looking to improve your own professional skills in business process management and business process improvement, then I would recommend the Advanced Business Process Methods and Techniques of the Business Process Professional program by BP Group.

Stephen Nicholson
Certified Process Professional – Master

Search for other BPM and Outside In postings on this site.

If you are unaware, there is a groundswell occurring in the business process management arena. Business analysts and business process management practitioners are leading us in a new direction – one of “customer centricity” or “outside-in”.

Particularly since the 1980s, businesses have been bombarded with various methods of business process improvement and quality management, including Six Sigma, Total Quality Management (TQM), Business Process Re-engineering (BPR), Lean, Business Process Management (BPM), etc. And now we are presented with “Advanced BPM (ABPM)”, “Outside-In” and “Customer Expectation Management (CEM)”.

Do we really need yet another new strategy in business process management and performance improvement? Is this just another fad? Why should we adopt yet another strategy or set of tools to manage our businesses?

When we first tried to impose structure and strategy to our businesses and workflow, the world was a much simpler place. We focused on just getting the work done and doing as much of it as possible. The volume of output was often seen as the measure of business success.

Today, the difference is that we, as consumers, have changed. We now have more choice, are more informed and have greater expectations than ever before.

The way we conduct our business, along with the changes in customer expectations, are the reasons why we need to change the way we manage our business processes. We no longer have the luxury of just “telling them and they will buy”. Companies are differentiating themselves by placing themselves in their customer’s shoes. In doing so, they are opening their businesses to greater success through reductions in cost, increases in revenue, and improvements in customer service.

Does this mean that the old process management tools are no longer valid? Do we have to scrap them and start again? I don’t think so. They still hold value and many remain very necessary within our businesses.

What we do need to review is the focus of our businesses, and therefore the tools we use in business process improvement.

What do you think?

In an interview in February 2010 with Harvard Business School, Ranjay Gulati discusses his recent book release and the need for companies to focus in creatively delivering value to customers. He highlights the requirement for placing the customer first and provides a roadmap of stages that companies pass through in the journey to reach customer centricity.

Read this article here:

The Outside-In Approach To Customer Service