Putting customers in the centre of things

Businesses exist because of customers; there's someone at the end of that pipeline to buy your goods and services; Customers are the core of business strategy – these statements are a no-brainer, right? Actually not, as ace market strategist, Ms Rama Bijapurkar, explains in her new book.

As Ms Bijapurkar articulates in her book, Indian businesses operated in a certain way all these years. Consumption growth was never an issue. You just produced it and there were enough to lap up the stuff. As she says, ‘if you expanded supply and managed operations skilfully, you were sure to win'. So, the demand side of business was not the centrepiece of business strategy for India Inc. The focus had been almost entirely to build an efficient and scalable supply machine that could make the maximum hay while the sun shone.

But, all that changed in the mid-90s when many upstart Indian companies and MNCs joined the battle to win over the great Indian consumer. In fact, the Indian consumer moved on, demanding a whole new range of products and services, but many companies are still stuck in the old paradigm of ‘servicing' the market in their traditional way.

The prediction from the author of the earlier bestseller – We are like that only , is ominous: supply-focused business strategies may yield good results for another three to five years at the most, but they will produce diminishing returns. India Inc, she says, needs to open a new chapter of domestic business strategy that looks beyond building a lean, mean supply chain machine that fires on all cylinders. Her book discusses ways and means to bring market and customer-focus to business strategy, enabling companies to build defensible and valuable market propositions.

Bristling with anecdote, real-life experiences, theory, analysis, rationale, the book does not make for casual reading. It's academic in parts as the author provides a conceptual framework on how to weave a customer thread into whatever business strategy is being practised. But, the many examples she cites from contemporary corporate scenarios embellish the book and keep it rooted in practicality.

Ms Bijapurkar reiterates the value of customer insight and cites examples of many companies that got it right when they looked at their offerings from a customer point of view. For example, everyone knew that customers are unhappy about having to choose between mileage and power in a two-wheeler. It was Japanese innovation that produced a 100 cc motorcycle which provided adequate power as well as superb mileage and Hero Honda became the country's largest bike maker. Or, to cite another example, how Hyundai changed its plans to enter the Indian market with a large car and instead launched the Santro that became a runaway success.

From her own experiences, Ms Bijapurkar throws up many ideas and suggestions which a sharp and willing entrepreneur can translate to a workable model. Here's one, which many business travellers would agree with: the hotel industry is forcing people to pay an arm and a leg for facilities they do not use, “just so that they can have a decent address that they can display when they meet new business prospects or customers who ask the apparently innocuous but loaded question: and, where are you staying?”

She makes the point that a new category of affordable hotels, priced like three-star hotels, but positioned and skilfully branded as a high-status sensible hotel, high on functionality but low on frills (wireless internet, but no bathtub/jacuzzi) will “unlock high value”. The Tatas' with their Ginger hotels are attempting that, based on a recommendation by the late strategy guru, C.K Prahalad, whom the author also quotes extensively in the book, apart from other well-known business strategists.

So, the book has a takeaway for everybody. If you wish to understand the conceptual framework, there is enough of that. The many real life anecdotes she has thrown in also offer powerful learning for a lay reader as well and leads one to ask: if the insight is so blindingly simple, why aren't companies doing it already?

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