Incredible quality of customer understanding will take you to the summit of business. When your product or service better resolves the customer?s purpose by increasing tangible benefit with exciting distinction, your customer will pay extra. Only then will your bottomline grow. Surpass practice that I wrote about last week applies both at individual and enterprise levels in today?s world of banality.
To contribute to a company?s premium earning, mere cost cutting and standardisation will not work. No matter which continent your business is in, China Bazaars are proliferating the world with low-cost products in every domain. Digitisation helps in standardising quality, ease of use and operating cost reduction. But to really add value in customer delivery and raise business profitability, you must have to create the Surpassmark quality standard. That?s done through the voluntary urge of people in your enterprise towards capability building.
Here?s a terrific example of an individual?s deliberate urge to build capability. Fifty years ago, a young African-American, a minority community in society, had the guts to dream of becoming the greatest in the world. He overstretched himself running 6 km per day. Having fixed a 4-km fitness schedule, his coach reprimanded him for running more. With steely conviction, he told his coach the extra kilometers were to fulfill his ambition, so nobody can block his exalted goal. This is the story of Cassius Clay who became Mohammad Ali, the world?s number one heavyweight champion (boxing era 1960-1981). He achieved Surpassmark by building his capability, the most important active agent in human life.
In India, managers tend to hide capability but overexpose good spoken English and educational degrees from so-called high-end MBA and engineering institutions. They?d rather not discuss their own function, but point out defective practice in others. Industry leaders lend an ear to street-smart subordinates who can express themselves, often promoting them over those who have strong capability. This prevalent, unhealthy HR practice rarely takes into consideration the kind of delivery capability customers positively talk about. Unfortunately, this attitude of mistakenly valuing extroverts over real performers results in not building up capability in management and operation levels.
An enterprise aiming for Surpass Practice has to train people to develop competence without complacency to adopt the new. At all levels, people must have a high level of common understanding. I?ve regretfully experienced the reverse when some clients have advised me to lower training levels explaining mismatch with their people?s capability. Tailoring a training process to a lower level of capability actually defeats its very purpose; the enterprise pulls itself down instead of up.
A pertinent example of discounting capability building is India?s IT business that?s focused on the demand-led market. Global clients need low-cost services, so go net in fish without much effort. That?s probably why IT service has linear growth. There?s no capex investment to get an order, just hire more people to get growth and profitability. Manpower size counts, as do high profitability and share market results. Initially India?s engineering cream from IITs were hired, now basic graduates are adequate, making it evident that skill level required is not high. No tier I Indian IT company has tried to make an outstanding difference by creating global Surpassmark, save for one that?s galloping up right now.
In 2010, while on some global research across four continents interacting with top business leaders of billion-plus dollar companies, I found Cognizant, an American Indian company, had become a buzz with outsourcing customers and industry advisors. Whether or not they worked with Cognizant, they appreciated that Cognizant had invested to understand a client?s future requirement as per its specific industry, helped shape the client?s business strategy, and also did so during recession time. They commented that Cognizant?s key client-facing personnel were of higher standard and generally younger than other Indian IT service providers. This would mean that Cognizant invested in developing people capability too. When I shared this point with Indian IT biggies and predicted Cognizant?s quick growth, everybody said it was a smaller company. But that?s exactly what happened. In 2013, Cognizant become number 2 after TCS.
Cognizant?s ascent just proves that a highly demand-led market like IT service can be transformed to surpass in value if the process of handling customers and delivering outstanding customer value can become perpetual. This is Cognizant?s corporate Surpass Practice leading to exceptional business result among Indian competitors. I’m sure Cognizant will encounter the global biggies to establish that this Surpass Practice can become their Surpassmark worldwide.
Everything boils down on how differently from competitors an enterprise understands customers. There?s a scale of four levels, basic, average, superior and unbeatable, to understand customer requirements. Every enterprise can make the choice. To establish the market reputation of being a high value business, look at unbeatable level delivery. It will automatically impose that your employees have a high level of business understanding and delivery capability. Such capability does not appear on waving a magic wand. The whole enterprise has to first recognize its necessity, accept and adhere to the change required to live up to the unbeatable platform. Willingness of the workforce is clearly essential for raising the learning curve.
When people reflect on my Surpassmark examples for individuals, of Charlie Chaplin in entertainment I wrote about last week, and Mohammad Ali from sports now, they enjoy their delivery capability. The crux of delivery excellence for an enterprise is such Surpass Practice that establishes Surpassmark. What is the perceptible code of Surpass Practice? It?s the working process of an enterprise that repeatedly delivers surpass value that?s perceived by customers in the competitive environment. That means employees have such a high level of common understanding that they empower themselves to reject delivery that does not meet the Surpassmark. As Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle, who lived 384-322 BC, said, ?You are what you repeatedly do. Excellence is not an event, it is a habit.?
Shombit Sengupta is an international consultant to top management on differentiating business strategy with execution excellence (www.shiningconsulting.com)