SI
SI
discoversearch

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor.  We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community.  If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.
Microcap & Penny Stocks : TIGI : Building Innovative Marketing Relationships -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Tom who wrote (83)1/30/2000 3:25:00 PM
From: ztect  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 177
 
(def/essay) "Relationship Redesign."

FAST LANE + HOW TO ACHIEVE BREAKTHROUGH CHANGE IN THE CRM SPACE

By Donald Mick, Vice President, eLoyalty and Michael Ashe,
Senior Vice President, eLoyalty

For the past several years, we have worked with world class
companies on projects intended to fundamentally change the
customer experience. These projects require an enormous
expenditure of time, money, resources and energy, but sometimes
fall short of delivering revolutionary new processes.
Even though the project may be delivered on time and
within budget, it sometimes fails to bring about "breakthrough" economic benefits.
Why is this? What can we learn from these lessons?

The answer we put forth is "Relationship Redesign."
That is, understanding how relationships among four
key constituencies can and will change in process
redesign initiative. The four constituencies are:

- The customer
- The company
- Company shareholders and the
- Staff

The successful companies start the "process" aspect of the
business redesign by asking: "What is important, in this
context, to each of these four constituencies?"
The key, the
"breakthrough" solution, is found in uncovering the right
balance of value exchange that will sustain these relationships
over time.

This type of analysis involves six steps:

1. Understanding what each party wants, from their point
of view.

2. Developing (imagining) an outcome that provides high
value to all constituencies.

3. Designing a process that will deliver that outcome.

4. Identifying the measures that will assess the value
to all parties, from their point of view.

5. Testing the solution against the economic model that
must support the business.

6. Running test situations against the process design to
affirm that the process will work as intended.

The first two steps are what makes this approach "relationship
redesign" rather than just process redesign. Creative and
practical ideas coalesce at this stage:

Imagine a company that sells contact lenses to optometrists.
They were struggling under the costs of providing phone support
for each pair of contact lenses to be custom ordered and then
dealing with the follow-up calls that inevitably would come from
the optometrist's staff to determine when each pair would arrive
(so they could schedule follow-ups with their patients). By
understanding what each participant valued, they arrived at an
Internet solution that allowed an optometrist to order over the
web, track delivery over the web, and GIVE THE END CONSUMER
ACCESS TO DELIVERY INFORMATION. This final step added the
necessary extra value to incent the optometrists to use the web
rather than the phone.

Another client was originally skeptical about asking the staff
what was important to them. Rather than obtaining useful
process design information, they were afraid they would hear
grumbling about compensation and benefits. When we conducted
the interviews and workshops, however, the staff generated a
long and rich list of ideas.


Some examples:

- Allow "quick path" shortcuts for the most common
system navigation

- Give some of us e-mail to correspond with customers

- Empower us to override billing errors up to a certain
dollar amount without supervisor approval and the
supervisors can review these later.

Several of those ideas were relatively easy to integrate into
the new process designs and added significantly to the value of
the system. They had the added benefit of getting buy-in from
the staff, since they could see their ideas being listened to
and acted upon.


Try the first two steps of Relationship Redesign. Look at the
situation from each point of view, then imagine a breakthrough
solution that adds value to all parties. The outcome can be the
difference between a good project and breakthrough project!