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Customer-Driven Disruption: Five Strategies to Stay Ahead of the Curve
Businesses worry about new technologies, but customers are the ultimate disruptors—Suman Sarkar offers bold strategies for making sure you understand your customers and keep up with their ever-changing needs.
Disruption—the brutal roiling of markets, the decline of long-established brands and products, and the rise of new upstarts—drives business failure and success. Most people think technology causes disruption, but technology merely enables it. Changing customer needs cause disruptions, and too many businesses get caught unaware.
Suman Sarkar offers proven strategies that will enable any business to stay radically close to its customers and address their evolving needs. He argues that businesses need to focus on existing customers first—research shows they’re likely to spend more and are more profitable than new customers. Personalization is becoming important for the newer generations in both developed and developing markets, so Sarkar describes approaches to make them cost-effective. In our era of instant gratification, customers want what they want now—Sarkar explains how you can develop and deliver products and services faster than ever. And since a few bad Yelp reviews, social media posts, or angry tweets from customers can ruin you, Sarkar shows how to proactively make sure the quality of your products and services stays better than that of your competitors.
The key to survival in this era of changing customer needs is to focus on and address them quickly so customers don’t switch to the competition. Drawing on his experiences with leading companies worldwide, Sarkar offers five strategies and techniques that will keep you ahead of the curve.
Disruption—the brutal roiling of markets, the decline of long-established brands and products, and the rise of new upstarts—drives business failure and success. Most people think technology causes disruption, but technology merely enables it. Changing customer needs cause disruptions, and too many businesses get caught unaware.
Suman Sarkar offers proven strategies that will enable any business to stay radically close to its customers and address their evolving needs. He argues that businesses need to focus on existing customers first—research shows they’re likely to spend more and are more profitable than new customers. Personalization is becoming important for the newer generations in both developed and developing markets, so Sarkar describes approaches to make them cost-effective. In our era of instant gratification, customers want what they want now—Sarkar explains how you can develop and deliver products and services faster than ever. And since a few bad Yelp reviews, social media posts, or angry tweets from customers can ruin you, Sarkar shows how to proactively make sure the quality of your products and services stays better than that of your competitors.
The key to survival in this era of changing customer needs is to focus on and address them quickly so customers don’t switch to the competition. Drawing on his experiences with leading companies worldwide, Sarkar offers five strategies and techniques that will keep you ahead of the curve.
- GenresBusiness
192 pages, Hardcover
Published September 3, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 24, 2020
While this book was written well, I found a lot of it to be opinion, passed off as facts. There is a lot of uncertainty throughout, with the author presenting leading questions about specific industries and companies, which, if you do not notice it, present a specific view of the health of those companies.
While I am a proponent of customer driven change within an org structure, the way Suman presents his strategies for, aways with a question attached, is untenable. He is a proponent of personalization for products and services but barely mentions the added cost to produce personalized products and services. His answer seems to be "millennials and Gen Z don't want to pay for personalization but you have to do it anyway". While I agree that personalization is a nice to have, it has become increasingly obvious that most personalization is actually an automated process and therefore not personalized at all. Another point he makes, mostly around supply management, is that big companies (except for Amazon for some reason) get stuck in their ways and do not innovate their Supply Chain Management for a new generation, which leads to a loss in marketshare.
I find that while this may be true, Sakar provides very little evidence to back up his claims that this relates to a difference in generational buying habits. I would have liked to read more examples of implementations of the changes this book proposes rather than the opinion on the state of multinational companies as a whole.
While I am a proponent of customer driven change within an org structure, the way Suman presents his strategies for, aways with a question attached, is untenable. He is a proponent of personalization for products and services but barely mentions the added cost to produce personalized products and services. His answer seems to be "millennials and Gen Z don't want to pay for personalization but you have to do it anyway". While I agree that personalization is a nice to have, it has become increasingly obvious that most personalization is actually an automated process and therefore not personalized at all. Another point he makes, mostly around supply management, is that big companies (except for Amazon for some reason) get stuck in their ways and do not innovate their Supply Chain Management for a new generation, which leads to a loss in marketshare.
I find that while this may be true, Sakar provides very little evidence to back up his claims that this relates to a difference in generational buying habits. I would have liked to read more examples of implementations of the changes this book proposes rather than the opinion on the state of multinational companies as a whole.
November 14, 2021
Numerous Industries highlighted with customer disruption & practical exercises to determine how to Focus, Set Standards and Adapt to Future Customer needs while empowering your teams to stay the course. Changing Strategies Responding to consumers needs faster than your competitors to avoid disruption! It's compact - but it's full of information that makes you consider the alternatives. A must read for all businesses and people entering the workforce.
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April 27, 2020A great book, full of practical strategies.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews