A CEO of an FMCG conglomerate spent a day with his retail
salesman at least once in a quarter and visited every retail shop (like an
intern) to learn the retailer relationship, sales volume, product display on
shelves, competitors’ presence, pricing and sales trend. He spent a day with customer service department,
especially at front desk to listen the kind of complaints they are
receiving. He had periodical meeting and
discussion with his collection department to know the issues and ageing
receivables along with his finance team.
He ensures lunch with his factory workers once in a while to understand
their personal issues.
Within a span of two years, he increases the business to
400%, an amazing growth story of my hero of this article. He had spent considerable time on two most
important aspects of business and was immensely confident that he will achieve
extraordinary results. (1) Ensure the
fundamentals are strong and not eroded in the acceleration of growth (2) Made
his deputies to be their toes, because they knows that boss knows every single
thing that is happening in his business kingdom.
Why do we need to revisit our fundamentals?
Visiting fundamentals are like recapitalizing the
business. Uninterrupted manufacturing productivity
(productivity capital); Market and Sales depending on human intelligent (Human
capital); Satisfying customer services (Customer capital) and Improving product
quality (Brand capital) are key fundamentals that a CEO must visit every now
and then. These four capitals are
primarily functioning with human resources and system. Human
resources are always vulnerable to fluctuations and the increase or decrease of
productivity depends on emotional storage.
A system is as good as the operator, the human intelligence, and can be
faltered if fundamentals are weak. All
key four fundamentals require constant monitoring and monetizing for
growth. As a business head, one need to
increase all these four capitals to keep the business competitive enough, if
not outsmarting the competitors.
Visiting fundamentals are the major drive for two business
consequences. One is preventing
unexpected or blind spots and other is perfecting organic growth progression or
sequence. Most businesses start
disintegrating from within aided by external developments. Meanwhile, most businesses able to withstand
external threat when fundamentals are sound and well-coordinated.
Second is strengthening organic growth progression or
sequence, a methodical performance action and supervision. As a business head one need to sequence the
progression based on company objectives, values; and operating market. Primarily, the sequence should focus on:
1.
Cost effectiveness
2.
Technology effectiveness to increase
productivity and customer relationship
3.
Smooth functioning of supply chain, logistics
and manufacturing infrastructure
4.
People (productivity) measurement
5.
Adding value to customers or complimentary
product services to improve product quality
6.
Moving to new customer segment
7.
Increase demand chain
8.
Expand business geographically
9.
Start over again like a cycle and add new
elements in sequences depends on business expansion and progression.
Revisiting fundamentals push and pull both productivity and
marketing, in other word simply to ‘acquire more customers’, thus maintaining
the company growth.