CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS 2
The Importance of Quality Partnering and Strategic Alliances
Creating quality partnerships and strategic alliance have become fundamental to businesses that understand the importance of quality. The rationale behind forming partnerships and strategic alliances is to ensure customer satisfaction and market competitiveness. Being part of quality partnering means that all partners are part of a win-win agreement that involves pooling resources, sharing costs, and cooperating in ways that enhance growth. It is important to enter a partnering relationship and form strategic alliances in a systematic way as to avoid bad commitments that might prejudice the well-being of the organization. |
Forms of Partnering and Strategic Alliances
Partnering can be created not only between two companies (externally), but can involve all sort of alliances among all players in the marketplace: Internal Partnership : Employees-Management Partnership with Suppliers Partnering with Customers Partnering with Potential Competitors Global Partnering Education-Business Partnership |
QUALITY CULTURE
One of the main factors influencing the success of a business is its culture. "An organization's culture is the manifestation of its underlying values and traditions," and thus it is very crucial that the culture within the organization be one that projects continual improvement of quality. In other words, it is crucial that the cultural values of the organization emphasize and promote business quality approaches: quality management, employee-empowerment, customer driven, etc. |
QUALITY CULTURE Vs TRADITIONAL CULTURE
WHO IS A CUSTOMER
In a total quality organization, a customer is that individual who depends on suppliers to provide quality work and produce quality products. There are two types of customers: internal and external. Internal customers are all those employees whose work follows that of another employee (supplier), while external customer is that individual who buys and uses the final product (what is referred to in the traditional definition of a customer). |
COSTUMER-DEFINED VALUE
Customers define value of a product not only based on whether the product or service is good but also on the customers' interaction with the organization. The whole customer satisfaction experience is a reflex of the company's image. For this reason, it is crucial that an organization provides customers with a great service experience that includes: effective, courteous and prompt service. A satisfied customer will be that who has experienced high quality product and high quality customer service. In conclusion, customer defined value depends on the customer's perception of : - Product or Service quality. - Service provided by the organization. - The organization's personnel. - The organization's image. - Selling price of the product or service. - Overall cost of the product or service. |
CUSTOMER VALUE ANALYSIS
It is the process used to determine what is the important to customers. It consists of the following steps: - Determine what attributes the customer values the most. - Rate the relative importance of the attributes. - Assess your organization's performance relative to the prioritized list of attributes. - Ask customers to rate all attributes of your product or service against the same attributes of a competitor's product or service. - Repeat the process periodically |
CUSTOMER RETENTION
It is an important measure of customer success (loyalty). Targeting customer retention can help an organization identify strategies that turn the customer into partners. Some of the strategies that organizations can use are: - Establishing customer focus groups: To identify issues before they become problems. - Be recognized as a customer-driven organization: 1) promptly follows through all promises 2) can be trusted 3) has credibility 4) attends to all details (small or large) 5) has a systematic use of customer feedback. Etc. |
PRODUCT INNOVATION MODEL FOR CUSTOMER RETENTION
The key to customer loyalty is consistently providing superior value; and the key to providing superior value is innovation. Praveen Gupta has developed a model to help organizations maintain product innovation:
- Target the Opportunity: Focus on identifying customer needs and use them to guide innovations. - Explore the idea: Conduct a through research to ensure that the proposed innovation will be successful in the marketplace. - Develop Alternatives: Develop prototypes and test them to see which one is the best. - Optimize the Solution: Take the chosen alternative and optimize it for production and delivery. - Commercialize the Innovation: Develop and deploy an effective marketing program for the innovation. |
EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT
A manifestation of total quality management is promoting employee empowerment. Employee empowerment means involving employees in the thinking process, encouraging them to provide input and to feel ownership of their work. By empowering employees, an organization is welcoming smart work, in other words, the organization can take advantage of employees' creativity to"increase the likelihood of better ideas, better decisions, better quality, better productivity and better competitiveness." When an employee is empowered he feels appreciated and valued and thus he is motivated to give the best of him at work.
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