The Hindu Business Line : <I>Integrating business </I>

For ages companies have been talking piously about treating every customer as an individual; about building lifetime loyalty with each one of them; and about customising products. It is only after the advent of the Internet that companies have been able to make substantial progress in the field of customer satisfaction, or what the Japanese call `customer delight.'

Customer satisfaction and loyalty have a seductive logic. The more satisfaction a customer obtains from a transaction concerning a product, the greater will be his love for it. While the customer eagerly seeks and remains loyal to a product, the company is equally keen on sustaining that relationship. It is a virtuous circle. "Industry is a customer satisfying process, not a goods producing process." (Theodore Levitt).

Thanks to network connectivity, modern companies are able to determine what customers want in a jiffy and monitor how they behave. Customers now fill in their own business transaction forms. When a customer completes an electronic transaction form, there is less room for errors . Names and addresses will not be miss-spelt. Accuracy in personal data is outsourced to the customer. Moreover, self-service cuts costs and promotes customer satisfaction, as discovered by supermarkets quite sometime back. Another incidental and yet important advantage of the Internet culture is transparency . Companies invite customers and suppliers "inside the machine," to borrow a phrase from Peter Martin of The Financial Times.

Another consequence is the change in the borders — from the traditional and restrictive frontiers to the new drawn boundaries. Corporates no longer operate inside a fortress; they are eager to collaborate with other companies in the field.

Companies that once left their overseas divisions to run themselves like isolated colonies of an empire now integrate them with other business divisions in a holistic fashion.

The Internet enables companies to connect teams of designers and engineers in different parts of the world — letting them hand over work to each other — taking advantage of the time zones, thereby upgrading overall company efficiency and productivity. Small companies use the Internet for research too. Employees make more informed decisions and, hence, drive better bargains. Indeed, the Internet has connected the business world today as never before.

R. Devarajan

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