If, as a company leader, you did not lose a heartbeat over the bankruptcy filing of Kodak, Barnes and Noble, Blockbuster and AMR Corporation (American Airline’s parent) or Google’s pending purchase of Motorola phones, you should have. When previously solid businesses run out of cash, there are lessons to be learned. In particular, never forget the vital strategic question, “What business are we in?” Too narrow an answer, like Kodak’s “film” or Blockbuster’s “video store,” positions your business to be disrupted by a better solution. Look what stand-alone digital cameras and smart phones have done to film or what Netflix’s more convenient mail-order DVD model did to Blockbuster. A change in consumer preferences also leads to disruptions as Netflix found out with the surge in on-line media streaming. Too broad an answer to the question “What business are we in?” or an out-of-touch-with-the-market…
With less shine, what will happen to Apple’s performance?
How will loyal Apple customers react to Apple’s first public supplier performance report card? Recent news about abuse of labor hours and environmental standards by some of Apple’s Asian supply chain partners might lead the loyal and merely satisfied to shop elsewhere. After all, loyalty, past satisfaction with purchases and implicit expectations about corporate behavior are woven together in a rope that can propel or, in Apple’s case, choke off future growth. About loyalty, satisfaction and expectations Customer satisfaction measures, “Did the product or service I purchased meet my expectations?” If it did not, once satisfied customers become dissatisfied, shop elsewhere in the future and, depending on the magnitude of dissatisfaction, encourage others to do the same. Customer loyalty is more than very high levels of satisfaction. A disappointed loyal customer gives a brand a second chance following any disappointment. Most of the…
A winning crusade to slash healthcare costs
Want to build a more competitive business model by lowering labor costs? “Why then are you leaving management of healthcare benefit costs to outside health benefits administrators?” John Torinus, Jr. might ask. Torinus, chairman of Wisconsin-based Serigraph Inc. and former business editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, views health insurers as “middlemen with a busted business model.” With “a foot in both the provider and payer camps,” health insurers fail to extract best value from provider care networks that insurers need to win business. Torinus understands the value of proactive management, which may explain why the printing, in mold labeling and custom industrial graphics company he purchased in 1987 has grown more than three-fold to 1000 employees, with plants in the US, Mexico, India and China. By reinventing his company’s approach to healthcare, he’s avoided the dramatic increases in employer and employee benefit…
Enhance business model performance by becoming a “social organization”
Entering 2012, leadership teams are hotly debating social media. How should we use it? How might it shape markets? Will we lose control of our brand image? And, what policies should we adopt for its use? Into this mix, Anthony Bradley and Mark McDonald thankfully remind C-Suite leaders that social media “is a means to an end, not the end itself” and that the end can be a really exciting business purpose. Bradley and McDonald are Group Vice Presidents at Gartner Inc., a leading information technology research and advisory company. Their new book, “The Social Organization:How to Use Social Media to Tap the Collective Genius of Your Customers and Employees” (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011) is required reading for companies seeking to build competitive advantage by deploying social media strategically. The authors move quickly beyond the use of social media for marketing communications….