Quality Control

Top B-toB marketers use benchmarking and other tools to determine what customers want

a stute direct marketers have learned that it takes more than data crunching to succeed in today’s business environment. The smart firm also finds out what its customers want, and whether it is actually delivering it to them.

One way of doing this is benchmarking – the identification and implementation of best practices.

Seitz Corp., a manufacturer of thermoplastic components, includes benchmarking in its 33 hours of quality training and then reviews the steps when one of its teams begins a benchmarking project.

This enables Seitz to determine exactly what it is doing, how it compares to other companies, and what can be done to improve the marketing process, says Brian Sikorski, vice president of sales and marketing for the Torrington, CT-based company.

Sikorski describes benchmarking as a discovery process that provides information on how you can improve customer relations. It results in several benefits:

– It helps a company learn ways to improve performance through internal and external studies.

– It reveals the strengths and weaknesses of significant operations, technologies and activities.

– It generates understanding of business threats and competitive positioning.

– It better prepares the company as a whole to meet customer requirements.

– It helps identify ways and opportunities to create new products and services while eliminating unnecessary processes.

“Seitz uses benchmarking to establish the best-in-practice initiatives for new business development and customer resource management,” Sikorski says. “This has included significant review of the B-to-C arena and all applications of technology as an element of strategy.”

Seitz does benchmarking in response to a gap, a suspected gap or a problem, and then forms a team to take the leadership role. The team tries to draw as many people as possible into brainstorming sessions, and also relies on statistical problem-solving tools to develop its proposals.

Seitz also has embraced a formal process for direct marketing called quality function deployment (QFD). QFD is based on listening to the customer, and integrating the resulting information into product features and benefits.

QFD produces performance measurables, and can also enable a firm to develop concepts that lead to products and services, production controls, and good distribution and sales work, Sikorski explains.

“The idea behind QFD is: Don’t start building a product or service without first including your customers,” he notes. “Rather than simply based on traditional market research through surveys and a few focus groups, QFD is a formal process that has deep roots in the automotive marketplace. We benchmarked best practices in market research and product design and have settled on QFD as the way to go.”

INTEL Another company focusing on customer views is Intel Corp., the world’s largest semiconductor company and one of the NASDAQ’s leading technology stocks. Headquartered in Santa Clara, CA, Intel employs about 30,000 people worldwide. Virtually every computer manufacturer today uses at least one Intel chip, with the Pentium processor being the most popular one during recent years.

Intel has a formal consortium process for soliciting customer views. A team of information system managers meets periodically with customers around the world to learn what they are looking for in their products and what changes in applications they are considering. This produces insights into distribution channels, geographic considerations, the sales process, what customers’ needs are and which are most important.

The Pentium was launched seven years ago and its major advantage was taking only 10 minutes to be plugged in and booted up by computer manufacturers, compared to about five days for its predecessor, the Intel 486. The key from a marketing standpoint is that Intel keeps working hard to improve the chip process.

To do this, though, Intel combines the views of its own field staff members and its customers. Intel also takes its new product development ideas to key customers much sooner these days than ever before, which helps maintain very strong customer relations.

Customers are invited to provide input at every phase of the design process. The net result is an Intel team involving marketing, design, field work and management that conducts regular efforts to check the new design process as well the new products based largely on customers’ opinions as well as their own.

The moral of this story: It pays to talk to your customers constantly and to treat them as full partners.