Business and Customer Processing in an Organization - Essay Example

Business and processing in an organization Competition is becoming intense in every field of life and business is also not an exception. In order to stay in the market most of the organizations devises new strategies and approaches within and outside their organizations. The importance of business processing and customer processing has been understood by the organizations more than ever under the current globalization and liberalization environment. Business processes Any processes which are associated with the functioning of a business organization can be called as a business process. It can be internal as well as external. For example the production and accounting can be considered as an internal business process while sales and purchasing can be an external business process. The success of a business remains on the effective management of both internal as well as external business processes. Capabilities based competition is one of the common things in business process. In order to compete in the market the organization must well assess their own capabilities along with their competitor’s capabilities. Such assessment will help the organization in formulating strategies for the future business. For example, the Indian automobile manufacturer, Tata has recently unveiled the cheapest passenger car called “Nano” for $ 2000. The Tata group expect a boom in the sales of their Nano car which will definitely reduce the sales of their competitors. So the competing automobile companies in India need to find an alternative to counter the competitions from Nano. Thus Capabilities based competition identifies an organization’s key business processes, manage them centrally, and invest in them heavily, looking for a long term payback. In order to make an organization capable of competing based on their capabilities they should focus on; shift in their strategies to achieve aggressive goals, organise around the chosen capability and make sure employees have the necessary skills and resources to achieve it, make progress visible and bring measurements and reward into alignment and do not delegate the leadership of the transformation. The business strategies must be changed based on the requirements of the changing world. Globalization, Privatization and Liberalization policies have forced organizations to change their business strategies to exist in the market. The successful old strategies may not be suitable for the requirement of the modern world. For example, it is very difficult for a small scale industry to survive is an MNC start functioning around them. So they have to change their strategies to exist in the market. The success of the organization remains in how well they are capable of utilizing their resources to survive in the market. Boundary management is another aspect of business process. In organizations some employees work at the external boundaries (capital raising, purchases from suppliers…) while others work on internal boundaries (management accountants, personnel officers…) While organizations are open social systems, taken as a whole, their sub-systems may be either open (Marketing and R&D) or closed (Production and accounting). An organization will function smoothly only if both the internal and external departments combine well. For example suppose the internal function of production may be functioning well in an organization while the external marketing function may not be doing well. In such circumstances we can say that the production capabilities of that firm are matched with the marketing function and hence the organization will suffer. On the other hand suppose both production and marketing functions are doing well while the accounts department is not functioning well. In such cases the payments may not reach the organizations in time and hence its functioning will be affected. Thus all the business processes must combine well for the growth of an organization. Negative entropy, Feedback and Steady state are some other business processes. Negative entropy is a scenario in which organizations conserve something for the harder times. The present global economic crisis has caused the down fall of many organizations of their lack of vision about a possible crisis. For example, it is a fact that most of the financial institutions like banks, heavily deposited in shares. The present economic crisis has destroyed the share market and hence many financial institutions were destroyed. The conservation of resources must be done in anticipation of all the future calamities. Feedback is another important business process through which an organization fine tunes their strategies. Negative feedback enables the system to correct deviations. Most of the new products developed by organizations will be tested in the market for a substantial period of time before the organization introduces the final product. The beta version of the product will collect all the customer feedbacks before they will introduce the final product. For example, the beta version of the internet explorer-8 developed by Microsoft has been made available to the users before they introduced the finale version of IE-8. Such a strategy helped them to fix all the bugs in their software before the final release of the product. Steady state refers to the balance to be maintained between inputs from the external environment and the outputs going back to it. It is necessary to know the market requirement of a product before deciding about the amount of production. So the inputs from the market collected through various market research methods will help an organization decide about the amount of output needed by the market. It is foolishness form the part of Apple to make millions of touch screen phones before knowing the actual market requirement. Equilibrium needed to be maintained between the inputs and the outputs for the better performance of an organization. Transformational model and value chain Transformation is a process of changing the state or condition of something to produce outputs. For example, in a toy manufacturing unit, plastics and other chemicals used as raw materials will come out as attractive toys. In school or college, teachers, non teaching staffs and the students are work for a common aim of transfer of knowledge to the students through different activities. The output of college or schools, the students is supposed to be a finished good after vigorous training. In transformational model, materials, information and customers are the major segments. In a school or college environment, the materials and the information are obtained from the teachers, curriculum texts, library, lab, and internet while the customers are the students. ‘The aim of Value chain activities are for providing customers a level of value that exceeds the cost of the activities, thereby resulting in a profit. Inbound and outbound logistics, operations, marketing and sales, and services are the main value chain activities.’ (The value chain) The customers of an organization must always feel better about the organization and for that purpose the organization must provide customers some value added services. For example car manufacturers often conduct some free service campaigns in order to attract customers. The customers will take such things as value added services which will increase their confidence in the organization. Customer processing “As businesses and consumers move forward, businesses are being measured more and more by the value they create for their customers (Importance of customer value in todays competitive business market, 2008) Customers are the important segment of a business. Customers decide the success or failure of a business. The marketing people were engaged in all sorts of activities before to convince the customers. They were more focused on marketing their product earlier for the short term benefits. But now marketing is a process of relationship building with the customers rather than simply convincing them for purchasing the product. Such relationship building with the customers will benefit the organizations in setting long term goals. “Whether someone’s job involves direct contact with customers (e.g., salespeople, delivery drivers, telephone customer service representatives) or indirect contact (e.g., production, accounting), all members of an organization must appreciate the role customers play in helping the organization meets its goals.” (Managing Customers, 2009) Customers can be of different types. Some of the customers may be the one who purchases the product from the organizations while others customers are suppliers who provides materials for the organization for the production activities. In any case the relationship with the customers determines the success or failures of a venture. “Internal customer service is the service we provide fellow employees and other departments within our own organizations, as well as our suppliers and anyone else with whom we work to get our jobs done.” (Miller&Miller, 2002) Miller Scott & Miller Kirk, in their article, Internal Customer Service: Getting Your Organization to Work together, suggested four methods for improving the customer relationship; Begin with your own perspective; View interruptions not as nuisances, but as opportunities to serve your internal customers; Exceed your internal customers expectations and Say thank you. In this approach all the members of the organization also considered as customers by the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur must help his employees on their work in every possible ways and thereby helping the organization itself. The entrepreneur must have good patience and he must never consider anybody interacting with him regarding the business activities as nuisance. He must derive pleasure in helping his colleagues rather than pressurizing them for more and more productivity. The employees must never feel that the entrepreneur is deliberately keeping things late by saying simple excuses about his busy schedule. He must set by example in every aspect of the company activities. Saying thank you to the employees will never destroy the pride of the boss. In fact such an attitude will develop more respect about the boss among the employees. Proper contacts with the customers will ensure the equilibrium between the production and the consumption. Excess production or lack of production, both are not good for the functioning of the organization. In order to ensure the optimum level of production the feedback from the customers must be taken into the account by the organizations. Generally customers do not see the production of goods, they will judge the quality of the operation which produced them on the evidence of the goods themselves. But in services the customer judges not only the outcome of the service, but also the aspects of the way in which it was produced. Ensuring the quality of the product or services will improve the customer relationships. The customer must feel confidence in the abilities of the organization. The organization is communicating to the customers through the medium of their product or services. Micro and macro operational concepts Micro operations normally work well within the organization or in other words internal customers and internal suppliers are taking part in this operation. For example being a head of a department can be considered as the operational manager of that division. For example a production manager being the head of the production department will interact with his subordinates, the production workers. A marketing manager will same way interact with marketing executives. In micro operational terms all these managers and workers are functioning or operating within the organization. Macro operations are much wider than the micro operations. Macro operational concepts deal with the external suppliers and customers, like materials providers, or customers who take services from the organization. For example, for a tire manufacturing company, the rubber and other materials suppliers and the vehicle owners constitute the macro operational suppliers and customers. Conclusions Business processing and customer processing are two important entities of a business organization. Business process includes both internal and external activities. The combined smooth functioning of these entities will ensure the success of a business. Customers are the most valued segment of a business. Since the customers determine the success of a business it is necessary to keep a strong relationship with them by the organizations. References 1. Miller Scott & Miller Kirk , (2002) , Internal Customer Service: Getting Your Organization to Work Together, Retrieved on March 29, 2009 from http://www.entrepreneur.com/humanresources/managingemployees/motivationandretention/article51804.html 2. Importance of customer value in todays competitive business market, (2008) Retrieved on March 29, 2009 from http://www.cheathouse.com/essay/essay_view.php?p_essay_id=13421 3. Managing Customers, (2009) Retrieved on March 29, 2009 from http://www.knowthis.com/tutorials/principles-of-marketing/managing-customers/customers-and-the-organization.htm 4. The Value Chain, Retrieved on April 6, 2009 from http://www.netmba.com/strategy/value-chain/ Read More