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AMAZING CUSTOMER SERVICE @ AMAZON..

AMAZING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

“The most important single thing is to focus obsessively on the customer. Our goal is to be earth’s most customer-centric company.”

Jeff Bezos, CEO & President of Amazon.com

The dot com bubble that bust in the early 2000, took away a number of companies into the oblivion. But a few companies in the world like Apple, Google, Amazon, Ebay, Zappos have survived the bouts of recession and tough times and gre from strength to strength.

This is is because, despite growing so big and leaders in their respective spheres of operation, they never forgot the basics about what got them to existence in the first pace.

While Apple believed in delivering amazing experience to its customers through its products, Google empathise with its users to provide them the best possible user experience, redefining the way information is searched, consumed and put to use productively,

Amazon under Jeff Bezos, has come up as an amazing customer focused organization.

In the words of Jeff Bezos, ‘If you build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.”

One of the lessons which Jeff Bezos, learnt and implemented at Amazon is that, satisfied and delighted customers are the best advertisement & publicity, a company can invest in, as they not only give more businesses in their life-time association with the company, but also bring their friends to become the customers. Hence Amazon focuses heavily in providing an excellent service to all its customers and keeps them delighted.

A similar culture and attitude is seen at Zappos, a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon. At Zappos, the business model is developed around the goal of maximising the customer and employee happiness. While every call centre, measures its success by the number of successful calls handled in a given time, Zappos measures its success by the number of calls leading to excited customers. It celebrates the fact that customers love to spend more time talking to their call centres on an average call as, this in turn leads to more business per call and higher repeat order percentage as they satisfy their customers with best-fit solutions.

When we learn that the CEO of Amazon believes that each and every one of his global customers have be treated like a welcome guest to his party, by all his employees, we know the secret behind a vibrant & growing US$ 50 Billion, most admired global corporation!

LEAN MEAN & HUNGRY- GENERAL ELECTRIC

Lean Mean, Hungry and Agile at 120..
Lean, Mean and Hungry is the motto at GE, one of the finest brick and mortar businesses of the world.
Founded as Edison General Electric by Thomas Edison and later evolving into, General Electric by the 1892 merger of Edison General Electric of Schenectady, New York and Thomson-Houston Electric Company of Lynn, Massachusetts GE went on to become a Transnational Conglomerate, operating through four segments: Energy, Technology Infrastructure,Capital Finance and Consumer & Industrial.
Through a series of acquisitions, mergers, reorganizations and divestitures, Genera Electric became an industrial behemoth with a nine layered management structure which was slow to respond to the market dynamic.
GE made a phenomenal progress under Jack Welch who took over the reins of the company as its youngest Chairman and CEO in 1981.
Jack Welch delayered the organization, made it into a lean and hungry machine with an insatiable appetite for leader ship. He took a stand that, GE will operate in only those businesses, where GE is wither the 1st or the 2nd in market share. He rewarded the employees who figured in the top 20% of the performance list and fired those who were in the bottom 10%.
His carrot and stick policy of driving performance gave him the nick name of 'Neutron Jack' named after the Neutron Bomb, which destroys lives without damaging the structure of the buildings they are housed in.
Nevertheless, his leadership style kept the organization on its toes, nurtured execution excellence and led to the achievement of a phenomenal growth of 4000% during his tenure spanning 20 years.
Today, GE, under the leadership of  Jeffrey Immelt,  is one of the largest corporations in the world, with a turnover of over 147 Billion US Dollar and a net income of over 14Billion US dollar, employing over 3 lakh employees.

BENCHMARK FOR PROCESS EXCELLENCE- TOYOTA..

TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION:


TOYOTA =  OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE


The largest automobile company in the world today isToyota.  With over 255 Billion USDollar in annual revenue and having manufactured over 200 million automobiles, Toyota is an iconic organization that has revolutionised an entire industry with its revolutionary practices aimed at operational excellence. 
Incorporated in 1937, Toyota today manufactures a huge range of cars, Sports utility vehicles and  Luxury sedans across a wide price band through its factories across the globe.


Toyota pioneered the efforts to create process management models and methodologies to achieve operational excellence like  "Lean Manufacturing" and Just In Time Production that significantly improve productivity and profitability. Today, Lean Manufacturing and JIT methodologies are increasingly adapted by global  manufacturing organizations to cut down their operational expenses and drive down the manufacturing cost, thus increasing productivity drastically.
Toyota has become the global benchmark for best practices aimed at process & operational excellence. The Toyota Way, a set of principles and guidelines developed by the company embodies the outlook to be developed by global leader. 
The Toyota Way is supported by two main pillars: 
a) Respect for people and b) Continuous Improvement. 
Together, they define how the people of Toyota treat others and how they perform their work in order to deliver the company’s values to customers, shareholders, associates, business partners, and the global community.


Toyota way, summarizes its values and guidelines as follows:


Respect for People:

• Respect – we make every effort to understand each other, take responsibility and build mutual trust
• Teamwork – we stimulate personal and professional growth, share development opportunities, and maximise individual and team performance.

Continuous Improvement:

• Challenge –long-term vision, meet challenges with courage and creativity to realise the dream
• Kaizen – improve business operations continuously , always drive innovation and evolution
• Genchi genbutsu – go to the source to find the facts, make correct decisions, build consensus, and achieve goals at best speed.

These prinicples have led Toyota to be and be known as a true leader in Manufacturing Processes and Production techniques and Methodologies across the world.
Known for its proactive concern for Environmental preservation, Toyota has been a leader in environmentally friendly vehicle technologies. Toyota's R&D engineers are consistently focused on improving the  performance of Toyota's products on various aspects like fuel efficiency, emissions and noise during vehicle use, the disposal recovery rate, the reduction of substances of environmental concern, and CO2 emissions throughout the life cycle of the vehicle from production to disposal.

The United States EPA has awarded Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America, Inc (TEMA) with a ENERGY STAR Sustained Excellence Award in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

Toyota has proved to the world, the positive impact of being an environmentally friendly 

ethical corporate with sound manufacturing methodologies and process excellence.

INNOVATION LED GROWTH..@ 3M

3M = INNOVATION

If there is one company in the word that personifies innovation in the world, it is 3M.
Started as Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing company in USA in 1902, 3M, came to be strongly associated as one of the pioneers of innovation catalysts in the world today. With a turnover of 29 Billion US Dollar in 2011 and a net income of over 4 Billion US Dollars, 3M has shown that innovation pays rich dividends in establishing a highly profitable global enterprises, while allowing it to touch the lives of people it serves in  a number of ways, very fondly.
Started as an unsuccessful stone mining company, 3M encouraged its employees to come out with new ideas  by offering its employees to spend 15% of their time at work to come out with innovative products. The products developed through this strategy, have now become the core of its product portfolio. Known globally for its Post-It Note, a revolutionary, yet simple product that has generated huge sales, 3M today has over 55,000 products, including adhesives, abrasives, laminates, passive fire protection, dental products, electronic materials, medical products, car care products (such as sun films, polish, wax, car shampoo, treatment for the exterior, interior and the under chassis rust protection), electronic circuits and optical films.
3M aims to achieve 33% of its turnover from new launches every year and all its innovations that have been taken to market, are showcased in its corporate office at Minnesota.
3M doesn't believe in innovation for innovation sake. It believes in operationalizing innovation through efficient and profitable manufacturing, leading to launch of unique products that positively impact the lives of its target audience.
3M is truly a global company with its products being available in over 200 companies. It has manufacturing operations and innovation laboratories in over 60 countries, employing over 80000 people, mostly local residents of respective countries.

SUCCESSION PLANNING & LEADERSHIP PIPELINE..

Successful Organizations survive for ages. There are over 60 organization in the world today who are more than 100 years old and thriving, contributing to over US$5 trillion revenue to the global economy.
While initially the passion from the promoters takes forward the organization and sets in  a growth path, it is not possible for the promoters to be with the organizations for ever. Hence to survive and thrive for a long period of time, the organizations need to find new leaders who may not be from the family of founders many a time.
In 1985, Apple Computers, after 9 years of existence, threw out its promoter Steve Jobs and brought in a new management under John Sculley. But the new leadership that has come from outside the company could not resonate with the original vision of the promoters and the dynamics of the market place and drove the company to disaster. This led to the recall of the original founders who led the company to unprecedented heights till the death of Steve Jobs in October 2011. What followed this time was a totally different scenario. The company carried forward the legacy with many more successes in the market place and became the most valued companies globally with a market capitalisation of over 500 Billion US Dollars, far ahead of the 2nd best in the word. This was possible due to well crated and executed succession plan.
Cisco, one of the finest companies in the world flourished after the exit of the promoters due to well crafted succession plan. John Chambers, the current chairman of Cisco who has taken the company from a small organization to a global leader with 40 Billion US Dollars is a product of an excellently executed succession planning effort at Cisco, that aimed to create a pipeline of leaders for the future.

In some family led companies the scions of the promoters take forward the agenda of the promoters successfully, provided they are well groomed to lead the business into the future. Classic examples like that of Reliance Industries ( Mukesh Ambani & Anil Ambani taking forward the mantel from Dhirubhai Ambani), Bajaj Auto ( Sanjeev Bajaj and Rajiv Bajaj taking over from Rahul Bajaj) and Kumara Mangalam Birla
( taking over from Aditya Vikram Birla ) are excellent cases of successful transition of leadership to the next generation of the family.
When the further generations do not share the passion of the founders are not in a position to take over successfully, organizations have to lan well ahead, separate the promoters from the leadership and carve out an succession planning strategy leading to the creation of a pipeline of leaders for the future.
Multinational organizations like Unilever, Infosys, Wipro, Tata Group, ICICI  have in place well planned and managed programs to develop the leaders to take over the mantle, whenever any gaps arise or when the organizations experience growth.
HCL group successfully transitioned the executive leadership from its charismatic promoters to professional leadership successfully that future proofs its business and ensure continuity.
Developing a well crafted Succession planning an creation of a strong pipeline of capable leaders who re oriented well to take the organization into the future is a must for the 21st century organizations who wish to last for ever.

BENCHMARK FOR BUSINESS ETHICS- INFOSYS & & TATA GROUP

Infosys and the Tata enterprises are the living examples for highest level of ethical conduct and no compromise approach to integrity in the pursuit of corporate excellence.

Infosys:

Infosys one of the pioneers in the Information technology industry in India, is a corporation which always stood for ethical and responsible approach to business.
It has been consistently viewed as the most transparent and ethical organization by the customers, employees, society and the investor community. Infosys's founder and Chairman Emeritus, N.R.Narayanamurthy, has always been a great  follower and advocate of ethics in business. 
Infosys's top management always championed the case of ethics in each and every one of its actions and messages, both within the company and outside as well.


“Professionalism and ethics are becoming more and more relevant in our quest to become better professionals, in our quest to make this country a better place and this world a better place. And that exactly is the background that we have set out with,”  Narayana Murthy.


Narayanamurthy, through his simplicity, approach to business, honesty, integrity and professional excellence proved to the world that, ethical conduct, transparency and business acumen are not at variance with each other and are indeed interrelated.
He along with his co-founders of Infosys, created perhaps the world's most ethical organization in the world with an incredible ascent on transparency, responsible behaviour and ethical conduct. This has created an organization with a distinctive value system and culture focused on integrity, transparency and responsible approach while pursuing excellence.


While a number of organizations today are engaged in window dressing their accounts and also are trying to communicate a performance far better than the actuals, with a view to inflating their valuation, Infosys always followed the policy of naked transparency in front of the investing community, through their ' When in doubt, disclose' approach.

In addition to complying to the laws of the land where ever it operates, Infosys  ensures transparency and accountability through the adoption of a Code of Conduct and Ethics and a Whistle-blower policy. Infosys ensures that every one of the employees is thoroughly oriented with the code of ethical conduct, by incorporating orientation modules on the same in the employee induction programs and also regularly updates all the employees worldwide, through online and offline training & awaremenrss programmes through the 'Do you know your ethics' series of events.

Through the internal TV channel Infy TV, Sparsh the corporate intranet, direct lectures and training programmes, the CEO & leaders at Infosys regularly talk to their employees about the importance of ethical conduct. An uncompromising stand on ethics is followed by strict actions are taken against the transgressors of the code of conduct, though they are few and far between.

Infosys has been consistently rated at the highest level of CGR ( Corporate Governance Rating) by all the rating organizations and agencies.

No wonder, Infosys has been consistently enjoying not only financial success but also a very high price-equity ratio that gives it an excellent valuation on the stock markets and a blue chip status.

Tata Group:


Tatas under the leadership of Ratan Tata have grown to be the largest corporate group operating out of India with a global presence.With an annual  turnover of over US$80 Billion, dominating presence across the world in a number of businesses and millions of employees,  Tata Group is an epitome of success. Ratan Tata's uncompromising approach to bend to the whims and fancies of those in power and compromise on ethical business conduct may have won him a number of enemies. But, this is what has earned him and his group an amazing respect across the globe as Tatas spread their footprint in to the developed markets through strategic acquisitions of world leaders like Corus Steel, JLR etc. The high valuation of the Tata Group companies and the willingness of the financial firms to lend money to the group without any limitations, has its roots in the respectability Tatas earned through their ethical conduct.

Ratan Tata and Narayana Murthy have established benchmark for ethical conduct and also proved unequivocally that long term business success and ethical behaviour are intertwined and inseparable.