Product Leadership through Operational Excellence
In the fast changing and highly competitive world, constructing brands and maintaining brand leadership calls for an uncanny they are able to re-write the order of marketing as well as business. From each of the market leaders be it in computers, electronics, style, retail or any industry, one can identify the overall strategy that has constructed them the game changers.
Wal-Mart, Mac Donald’s, GE, Dell, IBM, Apple, Nokia, Sony, IKEA, Nike are some of the global brands that have constructed as well as managed to retain and continually develop their brand leadership . It makes a very insightful investigate for marketing management and business management students to understand how these Organizations have managed to become what they are.
Marketing or building a brand is greater limited to the 4 Ps of marketing theory. Organizations have recognized the need to be client centric and build the entire Organization to be centered around and sensitive to the customer satisfaction . Highest quality of product, service, pricing are the basics that are taken for granted. What makes a difference is the value proposition that each of these Organisations build into their product or service offering and their relentless enthusiasm to excel in the opt value simulate continually.
Going one step further, it would be important to understand how to build and excel in the pick value proposition over a long period. The Organization base their operating model, business process as well as their structure and internal culture to suit the choose strategy. Dell has been a global leader in PC& Laptop segment. In the very early stages, world markets presidents like IBM, Apple and others concentrated on constructing the product features and technology. In the second stage they realise the importance of providing service support. The products were not necessarily cheap but excellent in terms of configuration, architecture and after marketings service assistance. At this stage, Michael Dell envisioned a huge opportunity to make a unique offer to the customers and stand apart from the rest of the tournament. Dell proposed to sell immediately to the customers, allow customers to choose tradition configuration and ordering their machines online. Apart from this, the prices were a lot cheaper when compared to similar configuration offered by tournament. The products were as innovative and strong in architecture as the ones offered by others. Thus with direct selling and lowering costs, DELL instantly made a mark and captured a huge segment of the market. Through farther product innovation, it continued to grow the brand in the global market.
How did Dell manage to offer this value proposition and earn gains systematically ?. The answer lies in the operating model that was implemented by the Organization. Dell has built a very strong and effective patron ordering process. At the sales side, it has removed the entire determine of dealers, stockiest and other marketings channels by offering direct ordering through internet. At the back end, the production is taken up on receipt of the customer ordering, thus avoiding stocking and inventorying comprising in the pipeline. The manufacturing process is based on’ Build to Order’ modeling rather than’ Build to Stock’ modeling followed by others in the market. Proceeding farther, Dell has tied up with the dealers to offer the proportions on VMI-Vendor managed inventory basis. The dealers inventorying hubs are located adjacent to the manufacturing plants whereby DELL can describe the proportions’ Just In Time’ for make, thus eliminating inventory of raw materials. Thus DELL has minimise its logistics costs and is able to pass on the cost advantage as the choose value proposition to its patrons. To ensure the entire system studies, the Organization has built seamless processes integrated with technology and systems. Besides the entire operational culture at all levels and all functions is tuned to and focused on customer satisfaction.
Thus we see that it calls for the Organization to build controlling framework that can deliver the choose value proposition and practise operational excellence to be able to keep up its promise to the customer.