Articles

Many retailers proudly declare their commitment to customer convenience. However, few define convenience from the customer's point of view or systematically craft a convenience strategy. Confronting more retail options than ever, customers value speed and ease at every stage of the retail transaction. Pressed for time, they place a premium on such store features as one-stop shopping, clearly marked aisles, in-stock merchandise, clearly presented pricing, sufficient staffing, efficient checkouts, expanded hours, and easy returns. The retailer that meets these needs and spares its customers needless delays wins their loyalty and outperforms the competition. Some high-performing retailers demonstrate genuine respect for customers' time and effort by viewing the retail experience as an integrated whole consisting of distinct but related parts. These stores enhance the convenience of their market offerings in four main ways: by ensuring that the store's services and products are easy to reach, by enabling customers to speedily identify and select the products they want, by making it easy for customers to obtain desired products, and by expediting the purchase and return of products. The authors cite many real-life examples, including Walgreen, Staples, LensCsrafters, Dell, L.L. Bean, and Dial-A-Mattress, which demonstrate the innovative ways companies address forms of convenience. For example, access considerations may include physical location, parking, store hours, proximity to other stores, and telephone and Internet access. Intelligent store design and layout, knowledgeable salespeople, customer interactive systems, and clear signage are also critical aids in expediting the shopping experience. In regard to providing what a customer wants, in-stock merchandise, timely production, and timely delivery are relevant factors. Self-scanning at checkout counters, drive-through windows, and purchase guarantees are among the ways that retailers can make it easy for customers to complete or adjust their purchases. The most successful retailers invest in all four forms of convenience.

How can companies use brands to expand customer relationships? Many marketing strategists believe they can strengthen consumer brands by building online communities around brands. Observing the power of community spirit in noncommercial brand communities on the Internet, companies now want to establish dialogues with their loyal customers and provide consumer-to-consumer communication in realtime. If the digital pathway is the correct route for cultivating brand loyalty, how can companies nurture brand-based communities? Factors that can help the brand strategist, the author argues, include examining successful communities, addressing management issues, and developing community leadership skills. The popular Geocities Web site, for example, attracts "dwellers" to a familiar "environment" and offers community members a sense of involvement as well as entertainment. Managers also need to understand the difficulties inherent in creating and managing brand-based Web communities. Brand focus and strategic objectives will determine the characteristics of the content offered on the Web. But managers must also exercise community control, establish guidelines for authenticity and ethics, attract volunteer managers, and monitor community size and composition. Ultimately, managers must recognize that the brand community is not just another communications vehicle. Successfully managing a brand community requires professional managers to lead and promote interplay among community members, to manage community volunteers, and to exercise sound editorial judgment in content development. Equally important is integrating a brand-based online community with traditional marketing practices and a company's total brand strategy. When fully developed, says the author, this type of online community will become a vibrant public manifestation of the company.

U.S. prosecutors are imposing giant fines and imprisoning managers when regulatory compliance problems arise. Know how to protect your company and yourself when a legal crisis hits.

Executives can become so wedded to a project, technology or process that they continue with it even when it’s seriously course.

The Internet changes everything -- particularly for companies with brick-and-mortar operations, branded products and services, and traditional supplier and customer relationships. The author addresses five key issues confronting such companies: strategic vision, governance, resource deployment, operating infrastructure, and leadership alignment. Strategic vision. Because e-business is evolving so rapidly, companies must continuously augment current business models (e.g., improve supply chains) while experimenting to create new ones. New business models change the rules for competitors and deliver markedly improved customer value. Companies must be willing to cannibalize existing products and services and engage in strategic alliances. Governance. Companies can organize their dot-com operations as subsidiaries or as part of their existing operations. Subsidiaries make sense when the company is exploring new business models or needs greater freedom to enter alliances, raise capital, and attract talent. Integrating the dot-com business with current operations makes sense if the entire company is migrating to the Web. Governance is further complicated by a war for talent that is being won by Internet startups. Resource deployment. Companies must commit significant resources to differentiate their dot-com operations from those of competitors. They should enter alliances to explore a wide range of opportunities and leverage those that succeed. Outsourcing services can speed implementation. Established companies must develop incentives to attract and retain Web-savvy talent. Operating Infrastructure. The dot-com infrastructure delivers enhanced customer value by straddling physical and digital spaces and providing linkages to partners. At minimum, it must deliver superior functionality, personalized interaction, streamlined transactions, and pragmatic privacy. Leadership alignment. Dot-com operations require superb alignment among key executives. Each must play a leading and supporting role for different aspects of the business. If the management team is not aligned, the dot-com strategy may be hijacked by one or two members with a partisan agenda. Powerful transformations are under way as companies blend their traditional and Internet businesses. Managers must align their vision to the dot-com world lest the leaders of the Industrial Age become the dinosaurs of the dot-com era.

Companies lose money because they treat pollution control and plant operations as separate concerns. But it costs less in the long run to make plant managers true partners.

A collective corporate memory can permeate processes, products, services and even distributed digital networks.

This article analyzes survey data to explore how companies with specific supplier development programs overcame common pitfalls in assisting their suppliers improve their performance. The authors provide a process map for deploying supplier-development initiatives. After identifying critical commodities and suppliers, a cross-functional team meets with top managers at the supplier firms to discuss areas of improvement as well as key metrics and cost-sharing mechanisms needed to evaluate the success of the effort. Lastly, firms need to monitor and modify their supplier development strategies, as appropriate. The survey data indicate that organizations generally experience three types of pitfalls, mostly in the final stages of the process. Supplier-specific pitfalls stem from a lack of initial commitment. Companies can avoid these by using evaluation systems that compare measurements and performance among suppliers, holding kaizen events at supplier sites, identifying cost-saving opportunities through target pricing, and designating a supplier employee to ensure that buyer-supplied training is put into practice. Tying a supplier's performance improvement to receiving future orders is a particularly dramatic way to get the attention of managers at a supplier. Some buyers also offer their resources to suppliers, such as providing personnel support for some period of time to improve operations or building training centers for supplier use. Buyer-specific pitfalls also stem from a lack of commitment. Consolidating purchases to one or a few suppliers is one approach to creating the volume needed to justify investing in a supplier-development effort with the remaining suppliers. Examining how these suppliers impact the quality of products or using total-cost-of-ownership data can yield further proof of the benefits of supplier development. Buyer-supplier interface pitfalls originate in the areas of trust, alignment, and communication. Although written contracts may be important, some buyers rely more on close relationships rather than on contracts to build trust. Others use "expectation road maps" to tell suppliers where they are going and better ensure buyer/supplier alignment. Financial incentives, "designed in" supplier products, and expected contract renewal are also incentives for gaining a supplier's commitment to a supplier-development effort.

Responsibility audits are a management tool for demonstrating the potential qualitative and financial benefits of mirroring core values and ethics in day-to-day practice. Waddock and Smith argue that corporate financial performance and socially responsible practices are positively correlated. They outline a responsibility auditing process that improves both the bottom line and a firm's stakeholder relationships with owners, employees, suppliers, customers, local communities, and government entities. Companies typically overlook the hidden costs of problematic or less responsible practices. The authors cite examples of how operating responsibly often saves money (in overhead, employee turnover rates, insurance costs, and other non-value-added expenses) and may even create profitable new opportunities. Eight companies beta tested the authors' responsibility audit by comparing their operating practices with their formally stated vision, values, and mission. All uncovered deficiencies in four operating areas: employee relations, quality systems, community relations, and environmental practices. The audit process consistently revealed that when a company adopted proactive, responsible practices, it reaped measurable improvements in efficiency and productivity, lowered legal exposure and risks to the company's reputation, and reduced direct and overhead costs. By creating an adaptive and proactive corporate culture from the top down, operating responsibly becomes a core business strategy.

Strategic alliances are assuming increasing prominence in the strategy of leading firms, large and small. Yet many alliances fail to meet expectations because little attention is given to nurturing the close working relationships and interpersonal connections that unite the partnering organizations. This case study follows the strategic alliance between two Fortune 500 firms (referred to as Alpha Communications and Omega Financial Services) as they developed a cobranded product. It explores the social architecture of the alliance and identifies the communication patterns that united the participants & #8212; and the beliefs that divided them. The researchers gathered data from the entire network of alliance participants, including the core team and a cadre of senior executives in the two firms. The result is a vivid and comprehensive portrait of the intricate web of relationships that formed in this alliance and the flow of communications within and across the partnering organizations. The interviews in the study revealed, for example, that fears of ulterior motives preoccupied managers on both sides, leading to a lack of trust. There was also a perceived imbalance in the degree of importance that each partner assigned to the alliance. One appointed senior managers, the other lower level managers, which led to significant pacing issues. Although managers in both firms agreed that the alliance made sense, inattention to the inner workings revealed bothersome incompatibilities. The firms’ different personnel structures also contributed to high levels of frustration. Omega used a centralized approach to control the outward flow of information, whereas Alpha used a decentralized approach. The researchers’ findings suggest that positive personal connections are crucial to the success of a partnership. Initial negotiations and senior management advocacy set the tone for the alliance, galvanizing support and promoting effective interpersonal ties. A well-integrated communication and work-flow network is required within and across the firms, so firms must carefully select team members who will match in rank and specialization those from the partnering organization. Regularly auditing the evolving ties between the organizations is valuable in gauging alliance health.