Managing Information

THE BASIC premise of this book is ‘Customers want the best product at the best price for them and want to be treated well in the process of buying and owning that product’ (p.1). What this means in practice is explored, beginning with the way in which an organisation is led and working through the implications for the treatment of both staff and customers. The author is the Executive Director of the Center for Information Based Competition. He works with companies on customer awareness and effectiveness as well as being a Guest Lecturer at MIT Sloan Graduate School. He, therefore, combines both academic work with experience in the commercial world. In Chapter two, ‘Leading the human firm’, the point is strongly made that treating employees well is the pre-cursor for staff treating customers well. From this principle follows the need to select and train staff carefully. This means that those recruited will instinctively want to put the needs of customers first and their training will support them in doing so. As a result, the culture of the whole organisation will provide for the employees’ need for acknowledgement, trust and respect, as well as the customers’ need for the same acknowledgement, trust and respect. Staff will respond with exceptional performance in meeting the needs of customers. The remainder of this book focuses on the way to build relationships with customers. An organisation needs to be consistent in every interaction with its customers and it is this consistency that marks it out from its competitors in the market place. The final chapter is a case study of the way in which Ritz Carlton used the ‘human touch’ approach to build its success and continue improving its performance. In this chapter the ‘human touch’ approach is linked to Total Quality Management (TQM) in great detail. At the end of each chapter there is a summary and throughout the text graphics and tables are used to illustrate the text.