White Paper - Cross industry flair to use best practices
W H I T E P A P E R
Whatever industry
you may be in, knowledge of
multiple industries
is crucial to succeed
in business today
by Shombit Sengupta
In the 21st century you cannot afford to think of your own business industry isolated from other industries. The trend today permeates every industry through the customer’s eye. Whatever industry you may be in, your customers are always impacted by the dynamics of multiple industries, from their personal living style
to social interactions to the workplace.
Social interactions
Work place
Personal living style
Retrospective:
Since the last 20 years, I’ve been mentoring Jacques Vincent, one of the world’s most spectacular CEOs whose key contribution transformed BSN into Danone, making it a 20 billion Euro global corporation. Just back in France to take
charge at Danone HQ from heading Danone US, Jacques sent word that he wanted to meet me in my painting studio
at 26 Avenue Jean Moulin, Paris 14 District. I was curious, why my painting studio, and not Shining office?
I hadn’t met him earlier but had been working for Danone since 1984, and had already got them their biggest success
with the green yoghurt branding of Activia (earlier Bio). Jacques observed that he found a similarity between my water colour paintings and the fresh strokes I brought to the multiple Danone brandings I had done. As he was not from a Marketing background he wanted to know many things from the social perspective and made me his mentor.
As a consulting company, in normal course we have to deal with the sensitivity of multiple industries. So Jacques and I would meet every quarter so I could induct him into multi-industry dynamics. When Jacques recently
met my wife, he was recounting how my multi-industry knowledge therapy for him, 20 years ago, was prescribing 4 television screens for his office
room. He turns them all on simultaneously in silent mode to keep different happenings in the world in his top-of-mind.
He laughed that people feel confused the first time they enter his room. Jacques in fact takes the metro to work every day to personally experience the crowds in the ocean of humanity.
Generation of convergence
Another trend has emerged in the last 15 years Earlier camera makers were making cameras, refrigerator makers only the refrigerator, television makers only the TV set and so on.
But the banality of digital technology
has made consolidation possible today
So a mobile phone incorporates a camera, music system, internet, message transfer, even film and TV viewing besides enabling voice telephony. Similarly, in the service industry, unless you understand technicalities beyond what you service, you will remain a basic service provider like a plumber.
The more you understand and scientifically benchmark the complexity of different industries in their competitive scenario, the more will you better be able to gauge your customer’s requirements beyond the technicalities.
The areas of understanding are their pain areas, HR issues, market competitiveness, geographical expansion dilemmas, cultural integration problems from one country to another,
raw material intricacies and end customer sensitivity.
You can then add value to your customer’s business, earn better monies and the respect of interacting from an advisory level.
Cross category breeding is another driver to get the things at low cost. For example, if the invention of some instrumentation feature already exists in the automobile industry, it’s easy to use that in white goods as well.
That would save invention cost as it’s already there and just needs adaptation.
Conclusion
Co-opting the customer’s
psychological frame
means mastering the multi-industry
sensitivity in whatever industry you are operating from
