A CUSTOMER DRIVEN BUSINESS EXCELLENCE MODEL

After globalization was launched in several countries around 1990, there have been drastic challenges before commercial organizations to maintain growth rate and margins. Focusing on business excellence and becoming world class is the limited option available before organizations. Ensuring healthy margins in operations can be assured by high level of customer loyalty and creating value for customers. Various national Business Excellence models like Malcolm Baldrige and EFQM have been adopted by organizations, globally. However, reality is that majority of organizations are product & technology oriented. While these models are elaborate and replete with several guidelines, the focus on customer requires realigning organization strategies and processes for creating value for customers. More over these are Evaluation tools. Based on a part of study carried out on factors determining business excellence in selected top performing Indian listed companies, a customer focused process excellence model has been proposed by us. This model takes into account the responses obtained from sample companies and the latest literature on business excellence and gives detailed attention to three areas of excellence - Customer desired processes, developing competitive advantage from customer point of view, and improving customer loyalty. This model serves as an alternate model for business excellence centered on customer focus and is much simpler to understand. Important processes have been included. The expected outcomes for the organization are a preferred supplier status, price premium and brand value enhancement. The descriptive model gives step by step checkpoints and benchmarks for obtaining organizational excellence.