Skillsets

Strategy Infograph

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Executive with a Track Record in Developing Growth Strategies and Solutions: I have devised and implemented winning strategies that have opened up new markets and business opportunities. I have developed strategies that address customer/market needs, secured buy-in from executives/board, motivated the functional organizations to deliver and launched successful products & business models.

 

Family Man: I enjoy spending time with my beautiful wife and two lovely kids. As a family we are a good mix of outdoors and indoors. My son and I are pretty much outdoors and sports oriented while my daughter and my wife like the indoors. This diversity of interests helps us maintain good balance in our lives.

Tag: Customer Experience

There are 7 posts tagged as Customer Experience.
3 Apr, 2015

Top 5 Reasons Successful Companies Focus on Innovation

Ever wonder why companies like Google, Amazon continue to launch new products and business models. These companies focus on innovation as part of their culture. Here are the top 5 reasons why these successful companies focus on innovation. more

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8 Jan, 2015

Improving Customer Experience in a Connected World

Happy New Year 2015

After a long hiatus from blogging I am back as I see some very interesting developments that have prompted me to blog.

In November 2014 issue of HBR, an article by Michael E Porter and James E Heppelmann on the topic of “How Smart, Connected Products Are Transforming Competition” got me excited. In summary, that article talked about the third wave of IT transformation where IT is becoming part of the product itself through the additions of sensors, processors, software, connectivity and analytics. Companies like Cisco, Bosch and others have talked about this concept as “Internet of Everything”, which in itself is a big challenge and huge opportunity. more

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14 Jun, 2012

Better Customer Experience Delivers Better Value to the Customers

Long ago, when I was interviewing for a consulting job, I had to learn the consulting speak. And one of the cliché in that consulting speak was “delivering value to clients”, which when used would signal to my potential employer that I am “client ready” and ready for the job.

“Delivering Value to Clients” is part of the core strategy for many consulting companies, it was the core theme of most meetings, it was even part of employee evaluations.

But what does it really mean? Can we measure it easily and consistently? Is there a metric that indicates if we have delivered value? more

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26 Mar, 2012

Fab.com : Customer Experience Success Story

This is an updated blog post on the customer experience driven innovation story of Fab.com.

In January 2010, Jason Goldberg and Bradford Shellhammer launched Fabulis.com, a social networking website for gay people. The initial vision of the founders was to become Yelp, Groupon and Facebook for gay people. Jason Goldberg was a successful serial entrepreneur who had successfully exited a couple of ventures before and Bradford Shellhammer was good with design. They both launched this social networking website which managed to attract 110,000 total customers and about 30,000 active users. Though they built a good website, Fabulis.com did not deliver a differentiated customer experience compared to Yelp, Groupon or Facebook, so gay people did not feel the need to use this website.

By early 2011, the founders realized that they need to do something different. So they shut down the site in order to develop a newer, un-served niche where they could be much more successful — one based on design. In June 2011, they launched Fab.com, a flash sales website (i.e. a site that offers products at deep discounts for a limited time) for the fashion-oriented customer segment. more

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27 Feb, 2012

Social Responsibility Focused Innovation in Pharma Industry

In early 80s a new deadly disease came into existence, first in some gay men, then in injection drug users followed by users of blood related products. Most of the patients affected by this pandemic has suppressed immune systems and were falling severely sick with diseases that people with a decent immune system would never get. This caused alarm for National Institute of Health (NIH) and they started funding research projects to figure out the basic science behind the disease which we refer to as Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). They demonstrated that Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) causes AIDS and funded basic and clinical research to discover drugs that could treat the HIV infection. They have also funded clinical trials to figure out the drug combinations for slowing down, halting and preventing the HIV infection. more

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12 Jan, 2012

Innovation focused on Customer Experience

During my consulting years I had the good fortune of working on many innovative projects. And I would share one such experience to show the impact of customer experience framework on innovation.

This project was with a networking equipment manufacturing company (makes switches, routers etc for businesses). We were engaged to develop the right strategy and business model to take away the market share from the market leader (800 pound gorilla).

I started by analyzing the market and understanding the customer experience delivered by each player. Given that it was a B2B (business to business) market with long sales cycle, I needed to understand the primary drivers of customer experience. So I immediately plugged myself into an inflight sales opportunity and learned that meeting customer requirements and having a good quality record was table stakes. The next best factor was brand value of the company and the relationship that customer executives had with networking equipment vendor sales staff. Without meeting these three factors, networking equipment vendors were not even invited to the table for discussion. more

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22 Dec, 2011

Netflix Saga: A Customer Experience Perspective

My last blog described a new “Customer Experience Framework” (read it here), that companies could use to understand their customers’ experience. In this blog, I use this framework to illustrate the affect recent Netflix fiasco had on customer experience.

In 1990’s Blockbuster used to dominate the video rental marketplace. They had shops that were conveniently located in many neighborhoods and rented good quality movies . Figure below depicts the Customer Experience delivered by Blockbuster during that time period. more

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