People, partners, innovation key to success

The ICT industry is fickle. One moment a particular technology is all the rage; the next it is old, slow and ineffective. The rate at which the industry progresses is phenomenal and to remain a serious contender, organisations must ensure they have the four cornerstones of success bedded down.

Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor of Berkshire Hathaway fame, once told Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy: "You have been drafted into a war you did not start. To win, you must focus on your customers and lead your people as though their lives depend on it."

The four crucial elements to success are customer fanaticism, employee buy-in, the channel and innovation.

Before embarking on any "customer first" initiative, it is essential to ensure senior staff are confident in the leader they are following. If some of them do not have faith in the company`s leader, they should be offered an easy way out. The team leading the company must have their hearts, minds and souls focused on the goals set out by the CEO. Those who stay become very active, even stretched, but the last thing the organisation needs are armchair quarterbacks criticising the leader`s every move.

Innovation has become the defining factor that sets companies apart from their competitors.

Rob Abraham, MD of Bytes Document Solutions

Once everyone is heading in the right direction, assign executives to support the company`s largest customers. Or, key members of the leadership team can be assigned to field customer support calls for a day. This shows customers that management cares. It also keeps management in touch with the real world. It keeps their feet on the ground and helps them locate problems so that they can be corrected.

Another strategy is to align customers with employees by developing customer champions in the organisation, introducing staff on a customer`s site full time.

The organisation`s focus should be to deliver value by reducing customer costs and complexity. No longer should it be about selling technology.

Businesses, universities and governments have poured hundreds of billions of rand into technology, and the return on that investment has not always lived up to the promise. That is because the old world of IT was made up a little "i" and a big "T". The focus was always on the technology. This is changing to a world made up of a big "I" and a little "t"; where information is more important than the technology used to acquire it, store it, retrieve it or print and disseminate it.

Xerox research has found that 75% of customers who defect say they are "satisfied" when surveyed. Satisfied does not cut it. The relationship between the customer and the organisation must be other-worldly.

Loyalty in the channel is another cornerstone of success. It is a highly valued trait in business partners and is sought and nurtured through incentive programmes, reward schemes and extensive relationship building.

Managing the loyalty of distributors, resellers, concessionaires and business partners requires an understanding of the environments they are operating in, setting targets that are appropriate and achievable, measuring progress against these targets and then providing the necessary support and training required.

Creating loyalty requires transparency, understanding and support. The relationship between the organisation and its channel partners must be one that can survive any environment and produce outstanding results. Relationships built on these principles also ensure that the organisation`s energy and resources are focused on collaborating with its channel partners to create demand in the marketplace. Channel partners must be more than box-droppers; they must become invaluable business partners.

The final ingredient for success in the dog-eats-dog world of IT is innovation. It is the enabler of progress. With business becoming more competitive by the second, consumer demands becoming ever-more demanding, and financial departments constantly tightening their proverbial purse strings, innovation has become the defining factor that sets companies apart from their competitors.

It enables organisations to become involved in the attempts to slow the effects of global warming by repairing some of the damage done by ecologically bad manufacturing practices. It also enables companies to constantly develop new technology that is bigger, better and faster.

On average, an organisation should invest no less than 10% of its earnings into research and development. It is a wise investment in any organisation`s future, its competitiveness and its contribution to the industry and society.