Customer-Driven Organizations

1. What Do Customers Want?
   1. Customers sit at the top when the organization is viewed as an upside-down pyramid.
   2. Customer service can be an important source of competitive advantage.
2. Internal and External Customers
   1. External customers are the final customers or clients who buy the organization's products.
   2. Internal customers are the persons/groups in the organization who "use" or otherwise depend on the results of another person or group in order to do their jobs well.
   3. "External" and "internal" customers are important to an organization's workflows.
   4. Example: At Hewlett-Packard, a new quality control system was designed to make sure things are done right at every step in production. Each person in the workflow works directly with their "suppliers" and "customers" to make sure everyone has the quality materials they need to pass a quality product on to the next work station. This provides accountability for results to one's co-workers, not just supervisors.
3. Customers and Operations Management
   1. Operations management (OM) is a branch of management theory specifically concerned with the activities and decisions through which organizations transform resource inputs into product outputs.
   2. The transformation process is the actual set of operations or activities through which various resources are utilized to produce finished goods or services of value to customers or clients.
   3. Today, OM is increasingly viewed in a strategic perspective, and with close attention to the demands of productivity, quality, and competitive advantage.