The Global Human Capital Journal

Meeting Customer Empowerment with Transformation

Michael L. Eskew, Chairman and CEO of UPS, outlined the package delivery giant's vision for transforming itself into a "one-to-one" business at the Executives' Club of Chicago's Enterprise CEO Lunch, 15 February 2007. Before a packed house at the Chicago Hilton, he demonstrated UPS's creative "whiteboard" marketing campaign and explained its role in communicating to customers the value of the company's transformation.

The importance of UPS's vision extends beyond UPS stakeholders because it reflects a shift in emphasis away from industrial efficiency to knowledge-based innovation. Make no mistake, efficiency is mission-critical to every business, but fewer companies can differentiate based on efficiency. To its considerable credit, UPS sees the shift and is striving to empower customers with information as well as delivery services.

Immensely Valuable Field Guide for Word of Mouth Practitioners—with a Twist

Word of Mouth Marketing is an exceptionally useful, insightful and surprising book. Andy Sernovitz has done a masterful job at creating a brief, lucid and tactical guide to realigning your company's relationships with your customers, quickly and inexpensively. It is very straightforward, honest and full of practical techniques. Moreover, it is very human because it addresses customers as human beings, not demographics. I suspect that this aspect of the book might peeve those marketers that are invested in the difficulty and complexity of their craft. Think about it: when customers were (relatively) mute and invisible, marketers were the intermediary between the enterprise and the customer; in the absence of the customer's voice, they created models and theories to simulate it. WOM, powered by Web 2.0, means that customers can talk in their own words, and companies can listen. The customer's back!

However, this direct customer connection also means that marketing will be much more fun and less frustrating for companies that understand the shift and engage their customers. This direct, fun and productive new reality emanates from the book's every page, and its energy is infectious. As a business strategy consultant, I cannot overstate the importance of beginning to act on consumer empowerment as soon as possible. I highly recommend the book as a way to change your thinking and develop some practical first steps.

Production-focused Enterprises Languish as Customers Continue to Forsake Them

As readers of these pages know well, I estimate that one of the most poignant changes that faces Industrial Economy enterprises is shifting their primary focus from production and operations to the customer. The Industrial Economy mechanized work and production, and by any measure it created unprecedented wealth by drastically lowering per-unit costs of any kind of product you can name, bringing more products within the means of more people. This worked extremely well while demand exceeded supply: customers were excited to have their first car/house/television, and they were happy with what producers brought to market.

However, Industrial Economy CSFs (critical success factors) look extremely stale in the Knowledge Economy (also see Transformation: From Self-contained Company to Networked Global Organization). The e-business revolution has vastly enhanced communications, decreased cycle times and moved the mass customization model closer to reality.

Big Dealer to Detroit: Fix How You Make Cars (The Wall Street Journal, 9 February 2007) spells out the problem extremely well:

What does the Knowledge Economy Portend for the Industrial Economy organization?

Today, most of the world's global commercial and governmental organizations increasingly find themselves confronted by the Knowledge Economy's new success factors, which are often contrary to the Industrial Economy's. Compounding the challenge, past competitors have had similar structures and limitations to incumbents', which gave everyone more time to adapt to change; however, new Knowledge Economy competitors often do not have the same structures and limitations. Technology and globalization are changing the rules of engagement.

These developments leave industrial companies in an awkward situation. Now, they need to excel at collaborative innovation—historically a weak point—to capture and hold customers' attention. In the Knowledge Economy, innovation will replace efficiency as the primary driver of value creation. Competitors that can engage rapidly shifting customer desires will dominate.

To succeed, incumbents must quickly become more adaptive and collaborative with external partners and customers. Moreover, they must transform themselves while they continue to operate at increasing levels of performance.