Customer Focus - the efficient strategy target
Organisations often focus on incremental improvements to internal operations & business systems that invariably produce two results: either a web of quick fixes that reduce efficiency over time, or a hodgepodge of haphazard fixes.
A better way is a sustained focus on your customers is the trick to keeping your organisation efficient.
Who are your customers & which ones are your focus?
Your customers are many: the people, or businesses you sell to, the regulators that define compliance requirements that allow you to trade & teams within your organisation that use the services, or products, you create.
Customers' needs & requirements are as different as each person. Therefore, it's important to remember their priorities are unique to each customer. People, and businesses, who buy your products & services pay your bills, but regulatory customers may decide whether it is lawful for you to operate, and how.
Many businesses find that they’re internal customers are ‘the loudest’.
Use your customers to define value
Use your customer’s perspective to critically review the value of the activity & work your teams perform.
Ask your teams “Would our customers pay for this activity if it was itemised on their receipt?”
If your customers would pay for the activity, then the work is Value-Added. If the customers would not pay for the activity, it is Non Value-Added.
If the activity is performed to meet regulatory requirements, it is Necessary Non Value-added.
Don’t be surprised that when a customer value lens is applied to your operations, you find there are only a handful of activities that are actually Value-Added.
Use customer requirements to find the value in your operations
Once you identify Value-Added versus Non-Value Added activity, determine how to eliminate non-value added work & reorganise processes around Value-Added work. For the Non Value-Added activity as your teams:
Why are we doing this activity?
What are the drivers of the non-value activity & who uses the output?
Is this activity performed to fix an issue related to another activity?
Direct investment toward customer value & eliminate non-value work
Once Value-Added activity is differentiated from Non-Value Added work, reconfigure the operations to eliminate the non-value work.
If the non-value activity is related to transferring data between systems or quality checks, leverage automation & systems to digitise manual work.
Ensure investments perform value-added work better. And more efficiently.
Your customer should ‘feel’ the results of your investment & it should improve their experience & satisfaction. Don’t waste improvement effort on work that doesn’t add value & simply doesn’t need to be done.
Take a major step change in efficiency and define the needs of your highest priority customers.
