Performance Controller

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results"...WC Print

As the downturns kicked in last year for a while it seemed the music may stop. But then someone said ” Play it again, Sam?”. In our company this has seen some rapid growth in e-demand for our services. This is especially so in support area as customers had deferred investments in favor of making things work a bit longer while things were tough.

As one who literally works daily in 3 continents and in as many languages, I am a fan of the idea that I can collaborative simply with pervasive communicational tools. These days we can also all use then at an easily affordable cost.

For me and my colleagues was are able to do this using our versions of Beam Me Up Scotty communicator to keep in touch on a far wider surface than the conventional quarter mile of traditional business. Hence as the demand has changed we are always in touch and  contactable with this capability we now continue to service long standing customers often without the need to even leave home.

For 15 years and more we have been able to connect in some way like this. Both informally and formally alliances and colleagues do business this way and more recently we also do it directly with customers.

Even as they move around when I turn on our computers each morning I have maintained a strong presence that has kept me in touch personally with key contacts and customers on a daily basis.  Daily habits are also subliminal as people come and go online with an in touch awareness that keeps us connected. And once trust is established we are generally all happy to be available to each other at any old time.

But of course the face to face activity will never be totally replaced. For example selling  is a contact process that requires continual reinforcement of trust, and capability. These  credibility assurances are vital to maintain ongoing connections. The ability to listen and anticipate needs is the real key that provides the quality in the dynamics of business. This cannot be done without physical presence so salesman and supply chain players must continue waking around. And without that best laid plans for automated process supply will also fail as competitors exploit any gaps that appear and move in on your patch.

That is why, even though systems give us great contact presence online now, we must never forget to call in on our suppliers and customers from time to time.

Facebook Ping This Post

Here is part of a letter from India sent home to family and friends by Kate Wood. it was dated on April 26 2006. Since then Kate has gone on building her original design fashion house.  In the face adversity of  reduced consumer spending. she went against the odds to start her business The Dancing Feather.

Based around the unique of flavor of India, with its emerging high end “India” fashion tastes now highly sought after, her success to date is all to do with her determination to define and get in touch with her chosen market. In this crowded space she has sought a way for people to express themselves with quality distinctive fashion that is also very affordable.

Here is her letter around the time she was getting it all started:

‘Decision making has quite a different flavor here. It is not an orderly process of weighing up and considering; it’s a bombardment of bafflement and sudden clarity of capricious but authoritative intent’….

I saw this in book I’ve just finished reading, which sums up perfectly the way it is here.

Today here I am in Goa. Palolem. Yes, yes I’m aware that Goa is still not the real India,  especially with 1 foreigner to 9 Indians. But my living quarters tell a very different story. It is just off the beach again in the village. My shanti shack’….. with its Spanish green interiors has a pink patterned bedspread and a pillow that reads “Be Happy Always”

India screams affirmations at you wherever you go;  A cement alcove serves for a washroom with two buckets supplied for collecting water. Pigs, chooks, dogs and cows together with a family feel fortuned from a friend who invites me for my favorite ‘real Indian’ food each day for lunch.

On a hired a scooter the other day with a friend I went for a road trip a little north to Agonda- with its 3 kilometer stretch of lush white sand.  I counted just 8 people the whole time we were there. Yes there is space in India!!

Then onto another little piece of paradise where there was a semi fresh water lagoon that kissed the ocean. “5 star tikitaya” (which means the best “real indian” food and the cheapest- less than $1) delivered to us for dinner on the beach. Heaven! Papaya juice on the roadside, chai at shiva’s temple and ride back on sunset. Lovely.

In Goa at every corner, every turn I’m reminded of somewhere….but where, I have no idea? Fleeting moments of the familiar flood my thoughts yet I can’t put a finger on any of it. China, Thailand, Darwin, Byron, Victoria, St Andrews, Etham, my back yard, Everywhere I’ve ever known is here. To be honest it’s freaking me out a little, thinking I might have to move on as it’s creating a saddening feeling of home sickness.

But it brings me back to the passage at the top that I don’t know exactly where to next, monsoons only a few weeks away so until then I’m just kicking back beachside while I still can…..and mentally beginning to prepare for the real adventure…

 

Facebook Ping This Post

Yesterday with my colleague we headed for went for lunch near our office. As usual we ordered our food and then a drink which by habit is normally is a large ice coffee and a large coke.

Before we even start to order, the seller, knowing what we’ve order said “Sorry sir, we are out of large cups, will you accept a small one instead?” With no option we accepted and went back to our tables and talked about the customer service impact of this.

A similar case also happened a year ago when I remember going to a Dairy Queen shop for an ice-cream cone. “Sorry sir, we have no cones. We ran out a couple of days ago.” They also told me other stores in this area had the same problem.

Dairy Queen Thailand, a branded outlet chain of around 200 shops is owned and managed by Minor Food Group, who also distribute The Pizza Company. Sizzler, Burger King and Swensens

Minor were also a customer of ours some time back, so my concern sent me later to digging out my contacts there and I wrote them a letter to alert them to this flaw in their supply chain management.

I had estimated, based on my crude observation of traffic, the shop would potentially have lost sales of cone products, of around 8,000 Baht for the day. If all 200 shops had this problem, the daily loss would be 1.6 Million Baht ($50,000 USD/day). And if this continued, imagine the loss over an extended period.

By the end of the profit reporting period I’m sure some variances would start to appear and questions arise: Why the loss, will it happen again, and do they need how can we deal with it. I was also interested how their deployed reporting systems were now being used to alert then for early warring issues like this for timely corrective attention.

This may have been especially relevant in understanding the situations that were reported in the published management discussion and analysis of DQ’s sales growth some time back.  This showed a decline back in soft server products in 2007 when sales of DQ showed an overall improvement”.

As for me, I’m just a customer who doesn’t seem to be happy when I don’t get my cones when I want them.

-000-

Kitipan Kitbamroong is a Director of Sherwood Group Consulting based in Thailand and Technical Director Benox Co Ltd

Facebook Ping This Post