The prescription for ‘Day 58’ in ‘Innovate! 90 days to transform your business’ by Rekha Shetty (www.penguinbooksindia.com) is CAPS – an acronym for Consideration, Access, Promotion of services, and Service – to enhance and supplement the 4Ps, viz. Product, Price, Place, and Promotion, respectively.
An example shows how you can apply the idea in a bank to improve customer service. “Price + Consideration: Consider the inconvenience that is caused to the customer. This could be loss of time, safety… This adds to price,” explains the author. The antidote that she suggests is to make the paperwork easy to understand or to depute someone to help.
‘Place plus access’ is about looking at the ease with which a service can be conveniently used. “Computer and Internet access may be provided so that people can complete their transactions from home or office; 24/7 ATMs improve access.”
In ‘Day 27,’ you get to read about how Tata Steel, Jamshedpur, saved Rs 700 crore in a single year merely by turning spectators into participants. Shetty learns from the vice-chairman B. Muthuraman the process of ‘churning up the energies of the shop floor’ (manthan ab shop floor se): “Every few weeks, workers from different departments get together for a three-hour meeting, with no one from management except facilitators. These worker-driven gatherings have spawned a hundred innovations which are rewarded at the ‘Innovation Exhibition’ where the workers get to talk about their work to Mr Ratan Tata himself.”
Then, there is the MD Online, a company-wide cable TV broadcast, when the MD speaks to over 2,000 people, and is open to responding to questions. Muthuraman believes that everyone can be innovative if we provide them with the ambience and the structure for innovation.
A fast-track approach to getting at new ideas.
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