Somewhere in the deserts of Nevada there is a very different billionaire. Is he wealthy because he is weird or weird because he is wealthy? You decide…
Join us to learn the Secrets of Apples, Googles, Zara, Zappos and Amazons success
Certified Process Professional Masters & Champions (CPP-Master) Program
An internationally recognized program with proven track record delivered by been there and done it coaches more than 150 times, in 57 cities with delegates from 108 countries. The program, now in its tenth year, utilizes the BP Groups approaches and framework to help you and your organization win the triple crown – simultaneously reduce costs, grow revenues and enhance service. Producing Immediate and sustainable business results across any industry and sector.
The Annual Australia PEX conference continues to evolve with several excellent presentations. I delivered a number of workshops and coaching, with day 2 seeing me head the track with a quirky and short presentation… (there is a complimentary book going begging also – $200 value)
An internationally recognized program with proven track record delivered by been there and done it coaches more than 150 times, in 57 cities with delegates from 108 countries. The program, now in its tenth year, utilizes the BP Groups approaches and framework to help you and your organization win the triple crown – simultaneously reduce costs, grow revenues and enhance service. Producing Immediate and sustainable business results across any industry and sector.
At Virgin it is all about a great customer experience. OutsideIn provides the discipline to turn that thinking into successful business. Paul Sands, Director of Customer Experience, Virgin.
Everyday brings a new challenge. There are however a only few fundamental truths when it comes to working and being with others. Integrity, that is everything.
Join us to learn the Secrets of Apples, Googles, Zara, Zappos and Amazons success
Certified Process Professional Masters (CPP-Master) Program
An internationally recognized program with proven track record delivered by been there and done it coaches more than 130 times, in 52 cities with delegates from 105 countries. The program, now in its tenth year, utilizes the BP Groups approaches and framework to help you and your organization win the triple crown – simultaneously reduce costs, grow revenues and enhance service. Producing Immediate and sustainable business results across any industry and sector.
Traditionally, process excellence has focused on improving productivity, efficiency and effectiveness. Methods and approaches have evolved over time to help organisations streamline, remove waste and standardise processes, driving economic success in many countries around the world.
But times have changed. And we must change with them. The rise of digital and changing customer expectations is changing the very nature of business improvement. Organisations must now look for new approaches and strategies which place the customer at the centre of processes, to remain relevant and competitive in a dynamic market.
Ahead of Process Excellence Week Australia 2015, Steve Towers, Lead Coach and Co-Founder of the BP Group (UK) interviewed by the PEX team reviews the biggest factors currently transforming the process excellence landscape and the steps Australian organisations can take to successfully link process to customer outcomes.
What types of new approaches and techniques are changing the way companies approach business improvement?
Steve: We need to ask ourselves the question – what is driving change? And at a fundamental level we are seeing the ascendance of what I like to call the digital native. These are folks who have little patience for assembly line factory thinking with its rigid rules and structures. In fact as customers the digital native demands immediacy and attention.
Swinging back to the original question organisations now need to embrace approaches that meet the high expectations and promiscuity of this digital native. Otherwise they will not survive the decade – witness the demise of companies such as Nokia, Kodak, Blockbuster, and Blackberry. The new approaches and techniques emphasize the customer, front and centre. And I don’t mean in an arbitrary ‘voice of the customer’ way. I mean as a central focus for everything – strategy, operations, technology and process.
The book I wrote in 2010 referred to the overall concept of Outside-In, shifting the way work gets done by understanding needs and aligning everything an organisation does to achieving successful customer outcomes. In the five years since we reviewed the pioneers such as Virgin, Amazon and Zara the customer centric philosophy has become mainstream and accessible to all. So business improvement itself has shifted from getting better at what we do to redefining what it is we do and ensuring the delivery works for the new order.
How might companies go about linking process improvement with their customer centric strategy? What are the benefits?
Steve: Connecting the dots between process and customer is a critical challenge. It is only in the last 10-15 years that people have realised that all work is a result of customer interactions and can, with the appropriate approach, be connected to every single task and activity.
The resulting Process Performance Landscape demonstrates where costs occur, how revenue is created and what levels of performance can be achieved. Once we have that picture we can make informed decisions that touch everything the organisation does. The benefit is completely tangible, something I refer to as winning the triple crown, simultaneously driving out costs, growing revenues and enhancing service.
What types of techniques can be used to achieve cost reductions, revenue improvement and customer satisfaction?
Steve: It is sometimes thought that cost, revenue and customer satisfaction are mutually exclusive. Not so and in fact they should be approached together. Firstly if we understand the causes of work and its effects (our processes) we can set about either removing the causes by putting in place actions to eliminate them.
Secondly if we cannot manage the causes away we must improve them. A couple of useful techniques in this context, which complement process excellence approaches, are the Outside-In Strategic Matrix and Successful Customer Outcome Model.
Australia appears to be a little behind the rest of the world when it comes to business improvement – what steps do you think we need to take in order to catch up?
Steve: A lot of the difference comes down to economic cycles. Australia really didn’t feel the severe impact of the last downturn and as such business was pretty much as usual. Other countries witnessed the implosion of long established industries and you either went under with them or reached out for ways, beyond industrial age thinking, to survive and subsequently thrive. Until recently, Australia hasn’t had the same worries so there has been a degree of misplaced complacency. Catching up is going to require great effort and simply put some won’t make it. That will affect not just the high street brands but the careers and future for many. So listen and observe the next practices emerging and make them Australia’s own. The Aussie ability to assimilate and improve at the same time will get you there.
What key trends or factors will drive change in the process excellence arena in the next 12-18 months?
Steve: A biggy here is the professionalization of process excellence. And then isn’t about belts and titles. It is about equipping our people to live and work with the digital native in all of its forms. We have already discussed the emergence of customer centricity and Outside-In thinking and that is the key. Those folks who can harness that thinking and apply it to their organisations will undoubtedly succeed; at the expense of others still practicing outmoded approaches from the industrial era.
To be blunt the top team demand results like never before. Getting there isn’t about trying harder, it is about working smarter and that involves reframing process excellence to performance excellence. Reaching out beyond the linear production line straightjacket to Outside-In agile structures able to change and evolve rapidly. That is a capability thing and requires folks to get up-skilled as quickly as possible.
What is the value of attending Process Excellence Week Australia 2015?
Steve: At a personal level it is about self improvement. It is about understanding and learning what others are doing so you can take that learning and turn it to your success. At an organisation level it is about the insights of the speakers, vendors and workshop leaders. As a forum to ask the sticky question amongst fellow professionals it is a great place for fast track learning. And on that score the networking opportunity is massive. It is great to know you are not alone in the improvement quest, there are others here to help, share and advise. From my point of view no other conference in the southern hemisphere comes close. Period.
Steve will be further exploring the common ingredients of sustained success and how using the power of process linked with a customer centric strategy can produce a winning and repeatable process excellence formula at Process Excellence Week Australia 2015.
Stop making dumb things happen faster for less money!
A lot of companies pay lip service to customer-centricity, write contributors Steve Towers and James Dodkins, but not many “walk the talk”. Here are 10 differences between inside-out and outside-in companies.
There is a lot of talk today, more than ever, about customer centricity, client focus, customer experience strategy and Outside-In. Many organizations have adopted aspects of these disciplines and where many have achieved monumental success others have fallen by the wayside. Why is this? The problem is perception.
Countless organizations have said all the right things to make the workforce believe that they are becoming a customer-focused organization and then doing the complete opposite.
The effect of this is rising costs, shrinking revenues and ever lowering customer satisfaction.
The problem with this is that there is now a collective of organizations that have a “customer centricity doesn’t work” mentality. It’s like putting a rain hat in your pocket, going out into a storm, getting wet hair, then swearing the hat is useless. Just having the Outside-In customer centricity ideals is not enough; you have to use them in the right way.
So, how do you know if you work in an Outside-In organization or an Inside-Out organization wearing an Outside-In mask?
Table 1: Inside-Out or Outside-In?
Inside Out – attending to tasks and activities
Outside In – aligning to Successful Customer Outcomes (SCO’s)
Doing things right
Doing the Right things AND doing things right
1
Pyramidal management knows best
Context and customer defined
2
Business as a factory (left to right)
Customer Oriented Architectures
3
Benchmarking competitors
Determine customer needs and trends
4
Customer feedback retrospective
Customer needs designed and delivered
5
Process Improvement and optimization
Customer Experience innovation
6
DMAIC/SIPOC/DFSS/Lean
CEMMethod/4D’s
7
Improving efficiencies
Developing value for the customer
8
Model and method oriented
Customer journey and experience focus
9
Top down business architectures
Customer centric frameworks (context sensitive)
10
Remuneration for tasks completed
Rewards based on delivery of SCO’s
Let’s review the not so subtle differences
#1: Pyramidal management Does your CEO really know the most about your organization? Can your CEO really relate to customers? Let’s face it, your CEO probably hasn’t spoken to a customer in years (if ever) so, why are they best qualified to determine how your organization is run? Maybe they aren’t…
#2: Business managed as a factory (left to right)
What percent of the work within your organization is manufacturing? What if you don’t manufacture anything? Then why does everything within your organization look like a factory?
We can’t meet the future with an industrial age mindset… join the rest of us in the 21st century.
#3: Benchmarking competitors
If you benchmark against other competitors you will, at best, only ever be as good as them, no better, most of the time worse and you will always be one step behind the trend.
Are you still managing a business that you think looks like this?
Rather than focusing on what your competitors are doing, focus on what the real need of the customer is and deliver that, innovate the customer experience, there is no easier way to become a market leader…let your competitors benchmark you.
#4: Retrospective customer feedbackAsking customers “how did we do” is stupid, asking customers “how did we do” 3 weeks after it happened is even more stupid, allowing customer to self-select for a survey to tell you how you did 3 weeks after is happened is even more stupid than that.
If you want to get totally non-representative, inaccurate, and relatively useless data on how some customers may have felt you performed at some point then the traditional methods are fine (NPS, CSi, etc).
To measure a customer experience properly and objectively you need to first know what makes a great customer experience and measure if you are doing those things, we need to get scientific about the customer experience (CXRating). If you are still in the land of subjective, self-selecting, retrospective feedback, chances are you have no idea just how well, or poorly, you are performing…even if you think you do.
#5: Focus only on process improvement and optimizationTaking what you are already doing and making it happen in a shorter time frame, more efficiently or for less operating cost is not good enough any more. If you are doing dumb things all you are doing is making dumb things happen faster for less money.
You should focus on innovating the customer experience. Any work within your organization is caused by a customer interaction somewhere down the line. If you engineer and innovate at the causal level, you will make the customer experience better and eliminate swathes of pointless dumb work that you are wasting time on every single day…simple really isn’t it?
#6: Trying to use DMAIC/SIPOC/DFSS/Lean to optimize the customer experienceIf you are using process improvement methodologies that were created to optimize manufacturing processes to optimize the customer experience then you will find yourself in a mess.
Use a 21st century methodology like the CEMMethod that was designed for this day and age to really turbo charge your customer experience efforts. Have you ever heard the phrase “trying to fit a square peg into a round hole”? Methodologies like Lean and Six Sigma were great at what they were created to do, but they were not created to improve customer experience… and therefore won’t.
#7: Improving efficiencies for internal customers onlyTrying to make things more efficient for yourselves inside your organization – more often than not – will actually make things worse for the customer. Don’t just perpetuate the Inside-Out mindset. You need to make sure that everything you are doing is actually creating value for customers. Don’t focus on internal customers, focus on real customers… they pay your wages.
#8: Model and method orientedDon’t get shackled by the oppression of the models and methods that ‘the man’ has said you should use. You shouldn’t focus on trying to implement a model or method you should be focused on how to make the customer experience better… whatever it takes.
#9: Top down business architecturesDo you work in an environment when the person above you tells you what to do and you tell the people below you what to do? If your whole working life is focused on trying to make your boss happy what aren’t you focusing on? That’s right, the customer.
As soon as we enter a habitat like this we make a habit out of ignoring what’s right for the customer over what is perceived to be right for the organization. I’m not saying you’ll be able to change this overnight, I’m just saying it’s wrong and will eventually lead to your organizations downfall… don’t get left behind.
#10: Remuneration for tasks completedIf you pay people for doing stupid things, they get very good at doing them. Traditionally, you will get paid for completing tasks and activities, filling in forms, processing invoices, taking calls etc.
If everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) was paid for delivering customer success just imagine how different your working environment would be. Empowering workers to be able to do whatever it takes to deliver customer success is the polar opposite of workers having to complete X number of forms in a day… this is maybe the biggest game changer of them all.
An internationally recognized program with proven track record delivered by been there and done it coaches more than 130 times, in 52 cities with delegates from 105 countries. The program, now in its tenth year, utilizes the BP Groups approaches and framework to help you and your organization win the triple crown – simultaneously reduce costs, grow revenues and enhance service. Producing Immediate and sustainable business results across any industry and sector.
An internationally recognized program with proven track record delivered by been there and done it coaches more than 130 times, in 52 cities with delegates from 105 countries. The program, now in its tenth year, utilizes the BP Groups approaches and framework to help you and your organization win the triple crown – simultaneously reduce costs, grow revenues and enhance service. Producing Immediate and sustainable business results across any industry and sector.
An internationally recognized program with proven track record delivered by been there and done it coaches more than 130 times, in 52 cities with delegates from 105 countries. The program, now in its tenth year, utilizes the BP Groups approaches and framework to help you and your organization win the triple crown – simultaneously reduce costs, grow revenues and enhance service. Producing Immediate and sustainable business results across any industry and sector.
Everything changes- businesses, people, relationships, products, food- you name it. If everything is changing, why would a successful business stick to the same old tired routine? We’ve noticed it before- rapidly destabilizing work environments, unhappy employees, and unhappy customers. What used to work simply isn’t doing it anymore.
Why?
Because age old tactics like Lean Six Sigma that only approach customers as an end to reduce waste, whereas the only true focus is to reduce waste and lower costs are driving customers away.
Good businesses operate with an “outside- in” approach that allows them to succeed in the highly transparent times that technology has created. Instead of putting your customers at the end of the list- most modern, successful businesses (like Google, Acuity, Twitter or Intuit) have started putting the customer first. Sure, it’s a novel idea, but the end result is the same- to increase sales, do what customers want. There are a wide variety of ways that modern companies are approaching this topic:
User Experience Technicians
Enterprise Feedback Management
Voice/Needs of the Customer
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Understanding CEM (Customer Experience Management)
But in general, it’s all about simply collecting and analyzing the things that customers say about your brand, business or market. Then, you have measure the gap between what you’re doing and what you want to do, and close the gap. The way modern businesses are doing this is by supporting the idea that positive customer experiences fuel sales and retain customers- and that’s going to increase the overall organization’s market position.
There are 8 Ways to Achieve the Outside- In Approach In Your Business
1. Figure out who your customer is.
2. Define what outcome you want your customer to have.
3. Figure out how to align your goals with your customer goals (this is called SCO [Successful Customer Outcome] in the business world)
4. Identify what is keeping your customer experience scores lower than perfect
5. Use these scores and interpretations to figure out your weak points internally and eliminate them
6. Establish plans that reinforce achievement of your SCO to boost sales exponentially
7. Execute your plan as you go
8. Don’t wait to improve your customer’s experience, start now instead of waiting for a sign off from upper executives
When all your eggs fall into the right basket, everything works perfectly. Your business revenues skyrocket, your employees are happier because your customers are happier, and you’re lowering costs because you’ve cut out the parts that aren’t working, and buying more because you can afford to branch out. The facts are thus:
-You’ll see 10% pipeline conversion to your competitors
-40% increases in staff productivity
-25-30% improvement to customer retention
-lower costs across the board
Certified Process Professional Masters (CPP-Master) Program
An internationally recognized program with proven track record delivered by been there and done it coaches more than 130 times, in 52 cities with delegates from 105 countries. The program, now in its tenth year, utilizes the BP Groups approaches and framework to help you and your organization win the triple crown – simultaneously reduce costs, grow revenues and enhance service. Producing Immediate and sustainable business results across any industry and sector.
