For a successful enterprise, there has to be a need for the
service/product which they are providing to the audience. There has to be this
gap which is being fulfilled. If not, the entity being provided has to be
captivating enough to entice the user into buying it. It has to create its own
vacuum.
Over the years as a company, we have evolved to be leaders
in the franchising domain. We know the pain points our customers face and what
how we can alleviate them.
I would like to take an example of a company by the name of
3M. Why I like citing examples of this company is because of its unique
philosophy. Founded in the early 1900's dealing primarily as a mining firm they
diversified, and how! They own 100,000 patents to their name across industries
and roughly a third of their revenue is through products they've created over
the last 5 years. They believe in innovation and one of their company policies
is to allow employees to spend a day a week in self run projects for the
company. Ideas are born in everyone and are born from need. This is then an
example of an enterprise which runs with ideas and bombards the market with
their presence. Presently 3M has nearly 60,000 products in the market ranging
from Scotch-tape to Electronic stethoscopes.
Another example which comes to mind is Samsung. I recently
saw a video on this behemoth of a company which took me aback. They started off
as a trading firm and now employ nearly half a million employees across
Apparel, chemicals, consumer electronics, electronic components, medical
equipment, semiconductors, ships, telecommunications equipment. Most of us only
know about the electronics side of Samsung, but this is roughly just more than
half of its $300Bn revenue.
Working for the Product for the past few years, I've come
across customer requests ranging from the scale of utter absurdity to why we
didn’t think of that! Belonging to the unique domain we are in, we are
subjected to a wide range of perspectives from the local franchise owner to the
Marketing/Sales executive in the corporate office which we have to cater to. It
becomes difficult sometimes to draw the line between what is correct and what
isn't, as everyone is entitled to their perspective and opinion, which may/may
not be suitable to the other. Death by perspective is something I will like to
discuss over another post, but interesting topic nonetheless!
The need to excel and achieve arises from catering to a need
and the willingness to add value in the lives of the users which the products
and services cater to. The above examples are of firms which believe in pushing
boundaries and not just living up to market expectations.
Trying not to digress from the topic at hand, but as a
Product we now need to focus now on innovation and pushing the envelope. We
need to be bold in our outlook and design. Every product has to be in the
learning phase for its entirety, needs to read the customers usage and wants
and cater to it. But the product needs to learn from patterns and take its
customers a step ahead by providing them with insights and applications which
would improve their way of working.
Are we doing enough to delight our customers? Are we just
fulfilling their basic need? The fine line between listening to customers and
making amendments or advising them on what is right and wrong, are we there
yet? Half way? Let me know what you think!
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