|
by Lauren Gibbons Paul, Contributing Editor   | Abstract: | Customer mastery isn't about being all things to all people. It's about identifying your best customers and serving them better than anyone else. |
Roughly a decade ago, Pella Corp. (Pella, IA), a privately held maker of windows and doors, had fallen into the trap of assuming its customers would buy whatever it made. "We got caught up in our brand, got caught up in the belief that our windows would sell themselves," says Rick Hassman, director of Oracle applications for Pella, which posts annual sales of $1.1 billion, according to market researcher Hoover's. With sales then on the decline, company management soon put a stop to that line of thinking, launching an aggressive initiative of continuous improvement that continues today. The goal: Give customers more options in price, color, and size and let their desires dictate the manufacturing process. Toward that end, Pella installed a wide range of Oracle Corp. enterprise software applications (including order process management, customer relationship management, and an online product configurator) aimed at transforming the way Pella interacted with customers. Today, Pella no longer makes product to hold in inventory, instead building everything to customers' specifications. "We have no finished goods stock. We build everything to order," Hassman says. [Click to continue] |