Transform Your Business

My article is featured in CATS Recruit Section, page C30, of The Straits Times today, 17 June 2009. We have it reproduced here for your reading pleasure.

Businesses will need to manage the process of cost reduction well to ensure that they do not unwittingly compromise their product quality or service standards. Cost-cutting is a short-term strategy. It is far more important that companies take a long-term view to build and strengthen their organisation and its capabilities now, positioning themselves for the eventual economic recovery.

Over the years, businesses have worked hard to win customers to get to where they are today. To lose their customers now would be tragic indeed. Studies have shown that it costs up to six times more money to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. In the slow economy, it would probably cost even more to win a new account.

Businesses must have an unrelenting focus on delivering the best customer experience. There must be the line of sight from the top to the bottom of the organisation. Take care of that and you will enjoy customer loyalty – and revenues and profitability will follow. Many companies find that 20 per cent of their customers provide over 80 per cent of their revenue. Thus, high levels of repeat customers will lead to high levels of profit.

To achieve that, companies must remain constantly vigilant about the changing requirements of their customers, understand their business models and the markets they operate in, know what their customers want and deliver these to help their customers succeed.

Achieving excellence

To achieve business excellence, everyone in the organisation needs to focus on delivering customer satisfaction by taking personal responsibility for improving processes and be empowered to make changes.

Departments need to become self-managed teams; cross-functional teams are needed at the company level; and the organisation needs to be flatter and more efficient for faster decision-making and response. When the company finds a problem or an opportunity for improvement outside, they need to collaborate to find the solution.

For that to happen and for that change to be successful and sustainable, a holistically integrated approach to business excellence, which engages all parts and elements of the organisation and its leadership, is required.

Leadership for change

Executives must lead the change process, the thinking about productivity and quality to learning to create a company that consistently delivers high value and customer satisfaction.
They must establish a culture of continuous improvement that seeks to remove bottlenecks, eliminate sources of wastes and customer dissatisfaction, and become more efficient and more effective.

There must be a focus on reducing cycle time, rapidly transferring knowledge and delighting the customer – these help the company to maintain its competitive edge.

Management must also be able to spot changing customer preferences, be aware of the changing competitive landscape, harness advances in technology, seize opportunities and implement new solutions rapidly.

Product and service standards have to stretch from the top to the bottom of the organisation and need to cut across all departmental lines. The organisation’s own learning and development process must be structured, systematic and focused on building on its strength. Critical systems that support hiring, training, recognition, career advancement and information access need to be in place.

Employee engagement

Organisations can reorganise, downsize and streamline their way to efficiency. These approaches are necessary but often not sufficient to catapult organisations into high performance mode because they neglect one essential component of performance – engaging employees in their work.

To mobilise the entire organisation, leaders must ask for employees’ inputs and their involvement, especially in areas that need improvement. Unfortunately, in modern day continuous improvement process this step is often missed which causes communication and ownership problems that hinder success. Employees must be trained and equipped to go from “good to great”.

Total approach needed

For companies to be successful in their business, they need to be responsive to their customers’ needs at every step of the business process involving every function, employee and leader. Anything short of a total approach is unlikely to deliver the desired outcomes.

Organisational transformation is a long-term process requiring a fundamental change in management practices and culture – a paradigm shift.

Finally, the organisational direction that advocates the strategic intent has to be clear about the objectives that needs to be achieved, the type of values and capabilities that are needed and how all this is going to be implemented for successful change to occur.

If you like this article, please subscribe to our blog and get our FREE Report on “10 Secrets to Successful Employee Engagement”.

Written by Robert Chew
Principal Consultant and Corporate Trainer
Website: www.quartonmanagement.com

P.S. Register NOW for his powerful workshop on 29 and 30 June 2009 at ST701 Seminar and Workshop and enjoy early bird discounted fee. Please logon to www.jobs.st701.com. Hurry, limited seats left!

Transform Your Business

My article is featured in CATS Recruit Section, page C30, of The Straits Times today, 17 June 2009. We have it reproduced here for your reading pleasure.

Businesses will need to manage the process of cost reduction well to ensure that they do not unwittingly compromise their product quality or service standards. Cost-cutting is a short-term strategy. It is far more important that companies take a long-term view to build and strengthen their organisation and its capabilities now, positioning themselves for the eventual economic recovery.

Over the years, businesses have worked hard to win customers to get to where they are today. To lose their customers now would be tragic indeed. Studies have shown that it costs up to six times more money to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. In the slow economy, it would probably cost even more to win a new account.

Businesses must have an unrelenting focus on delivering the best customer experience. There must be the line of sight from the top to the bottom of the organisation. Take care of that and you will enjoy customer loyalty – and revenues and profitability will follow. Many companies find that 20 per cent of their customers provide over 80 per cent of their revenue. Thus, high levels of repeat customers will lead to high levels of profit.

To achieve that, companies must remain constantly vigilant about the changing requirements of their customers, understand their business models and the markets they operate in, know what their customers want and deliver these to help their customers succeed.

Achieving excellence

To achieve business excellence, everyone in the organisation needs to focus on delivering customer satisfaction by taking personal responsibility for improving processes and be empowered to make changes.

Departments need to become self-managed teams; cross-functional teams are needed at the company level; and the organisation needs to be flatter and more efficient for faster decision-making and response. When the company finds a problem or an opportunity for improvement outside, they need to collaborate to find the solution.

For that to happen and for that change to be successful and sustainable, a holistically integrated approach to business excellence, which engages all parts and elements of the organisation and its leadership, is required.

Leadership for change

Executives must lead the change process, the thinking about productivity and quality to learning to create a company that consistently delivers high value and customer satisfaction.
They must establish a culture of continuous improvement that seeks to remove bottlenecks, eliminate sources of wastes and customer dissatisfaction, and become more efficient and more effective.

There must be a focus on reducing cycle time, rapidly transferring knowledge and delighting the customer – these help the company to maintain its competitive edge.

Management must also be able to spot changing customer preferences, be aware of the changing competitive landscape, harness advances in technology, seize opportunities and implement new solutions rapidly.

Product and service standards have to stretch from the top to the bottom of the organisation and need to cut across all departmental lines. The organisation’s own learning and development process must be structured, systematic and focused on building on its strength. Critical systems that support hiring, training, recognition, career advancement and information access need to be in place.

Employee engagement

Organisations can reorganise, downsize and streamline their way to efficiency. These approaches are necessary but often not sufficient to catapult organisations into high performance mode because they neglect one essential component of performance – engaging employees in their work.

To mobilise the entire organisation, leaders must ask for employees’ inputs and their involvement, especially in areas that need improvement. Unfortunately, in modern day continuous improvement process this step is often missed which causes communication and ownership problems that hinder success. Employees must be trained and equipped to go from “good to great”.

Total approach needed

For companies to be successful in their business, they need to be responsive to their customers’ needs at every step of the business process involving every function, employee and leader. Anything short of a total approach is unlikely to deliver the desired outcomes.

Organisational transformation is a long-term process requiring a fundamental change in management practices and culture – a paradigm shift.

Finally, the organisational direction that advocates the strategic intent has to be clear about the objectives that needs to be achieved, the type of values and capabilities that are needed and how all this is going to be implemented for successful change to occur.

If you like this article, please subscribe to our blog and get our FREE Report on “10 Secrets to Successful Employee Engagement”.

Written by Robert Chew
Principal Consultant and Corporate Trainer
Website: www.quartonmanagement.com

P.S. Register NOW for his powerful workshop on 29 and 30 June 2009 at ST701 Seminar and Workshop and enjoy early bird discounted fee. Please logon to www.jobs.st701.com. Hurry, limited seats left!

Beware The Silent Customer

Most of us are living lives in the fast lane. Just as technology is rapidly changing, so is our lifestyle. The way we do things are a whole lot different than we used to, we walk and talk a lot faster, always in a hurry, and even our tastes and preferences are changing. 

Our expectations are at an all-time high. We are more demanding than ever with growing affluence. We are spoilt for choice. Ask yourself as a customer, do you bother to take time to tell people exactly what you want? The answer is most probably “No”. You would expect the quality or service you want for whatever it is you’re buying and you expect the other party to know. 

I was with a close buddy recently who wanted steak for dinner. We went to this restaurant in mid town and ordered a rib-eye and sirloin steak complete with soup, salad, red wine, and dessert and coffee to end off. He preferred his steak done medium-well while I like mine well-done as usual. 

When our soup was served, it wasn’t hot. In fact, it tasted like it was mass produced and left on the kitchen stove for some time. The garlic bread that accompanied it was no better. It wasn’t freshly toasted and soaked of melted butter.  Twenty minutes later, our steaks arrived. Mine was almost burned (I could tell even with the brown mushroom sauce over it) while his was clearly rare when he cut it. Meanwhile, the waiters were busily serving other diners. I suggested we have his steak sent back to the kitchen but he said to forget about it. 

Thirty minutes later, we asked for the bill. The restaurant manager presented us the check and enquired if everything was to our satisfaction. My buddy simply replied, “Fine, thanks” and the manager happily moved on. 

“Fine! Why didn’t you tell him your steak was served practically raw fit for the lions? They messed up your steak and you said fine?” I protested. “Oh, I can’t be bothered. I’ll just make sure I don’t come back,” he replied with certainty. 

Here is the scary situation. The manager thinks everybody is happy while the customers are thinking, “We are not ever going to come back here again!” My friend did not even register his dissatisfaction on the customary customer satisfaction form located at each table. 

So how do you know what your customers are thinking about you? Just because they are silent does not necessarily mean they are happy. 

What can you do? 

• 1. Openly and habitually seek feedback from your customers – good or bad.
• 2. Even if your customer should reply that everything is fine, still ask “If there is one thing we can do better, what would it be?”
• 3. In the feedback card, use words like “Please give us your honest comment. We love feedback as it will help us serve you better.”
• 4. Then go to work on improvements based on the feedback received or your customers will know sooner or later that you are insincere about improving. 

And finally, if you do get customers who complain, remember to thank them. They are probably speaking on behalf of many dozen other customers who thought similarly but didn’t tell you. Learn from it and make sure you win them over and keep them coming back. 

If you like this article, please subscribe to our blog and get our Free Report on “10 Secrets to Successful Employee Engagement”.  

Written by Robert Chew

Principal Consultant & Corporate Trainer 

Website: www.quartonmanagement.com