Business Consultant it Is a Basic Maxim

Business Consultant

It is a basic maxim of good business practice that an organization must keep pace with the needs of its customers, and in fact, constantly strive to anticipate the needs of its customers. To achieve this, it is important that a company targets processes and resources on customers and commits itself to the strategic delivery of customer perceived value (Lowenstein, 1997, p. xxi). Currently, it is apparent that the metal company under discussion has a key strength in that its marketing team is extremely customer oriented. This is apparent given the fact that they work harder at building satisfaction among disgruntled customers. Obviously, this work culture is something that needs to be retained and continuously reinforced.

However, given customer feedback about the inconvenience of interacting with different managers from different departments for their basket of needs, there needs to be management recognition that the marketing team will inevitably be constrained by its own organizational structure and operations in fulfilling customer needs. Indeed, the flattening sales curve is already a pointer that the organization needs to re-evaluate its strengths and weaknesses vis-a-vis competitive practices in the marketplace. Further, the reasons for the sale curve flattening out needs to be thoroughly investigated. Several questions, in fact, need to be asked and answered. Does the problem lie in customer acquisition or customer retention? If the customer acquisition rate is unsatisfactory, why is it so? If there is a problem in retaining customers, what are the reasons for existing customers switching over to the competition?

According to the renowned marketing guru, Theodore Levitt, "the purpose of business is to get and keep customers." But, company culture and infrastructure needs to be set up to do that (Lowenstein, 1997, p. 23-24). Since the dynamics of the marketplace keep changing at a rapid pace, it is also important that an organization learn to be flexible enough to keep adapting to new demands. Leading from the observation of the VP Marketing that "the president does not always listen to new ideas, rarely goes for experimenting with anything too new, and does not invite colleagues to share their ideas and views," it appears that the company has perhaps got too comfortable with its existing style of operating and is thereby running the risk of losing business to competitors who are more responsive to customer needs. Further, the adoption of an insular management style may be resulting in the company missing out on innovative ideas and heightened employee involvement. Given these two identified areas of weakness, the company needs to seriously consider re-engineering both its corporate culture and structure.