Towards Collaborative Customer-Supplier Relationships in Global Building Product Businesses

Our aim is to enhance management of collaborative customer-supplier relationships among globally operating building product suppliers. Three key concerns are: (1) how best to manage achieving effective collaborative customer-supplier relationships in a global building product business (2) how best to create and manage a supplier’s relationships with its primary customers across the globe and (3) how best can suppliers and customers both advance collaboration in global building product businesses? We apply aspects of Rappaport’s (1952) collaborative approach to the baseline strategic game of prisoner’s dilemma, as articulated by Axelrod (1984). Prisoner’s dilemma has long been used as a guide for formulating strategic collaboration positions. Herein it is used to help readers understand how a building product supplier can select between customers as: nonessential, essential but untrustworthy, and finally as essential and to be trusted. For management responsible for a supplier’s relations with customers, this implies a mental progression from dependence, through greater independence, to acceptance of the advantages of continuous interdependence between parties. We advocate the adoption, deepening and continuous renewal of such collaborative relationships among suppliers and customers across global building product businesses. We will focus on the context of a large Finland-based supplier who is setting business objectives for global operations. This discussion on customer-supplier collaboration, in terms of its conditions and benefits, may well be applicable to global business contexts involving building product suppliers based in the U.S., UK, other EU countries and Japan.

A Service Marketing Approach to High Technology Innovations Management

This chapter reviews the different approaches of innovations management, often treated as synonymous to R&D, which is seen as a component of the product development and manufacturing processes. It is argued that customer needs and expectations are not considered sufficiently through these approaches, which ultimately leads to business failure. Understanding customer needs and expectations is a fundamental source to business success and also a basic element of service marketing. Therefore this chapter explores the possibility of applying a service marketing approach—more specifically, relationship marketing as presented by the Nordic school of thought—to the management of high technology innovations management. The arguments are illustrated with insights from high technology sectors: information technology (IT) and biotech.

Challenges and Opportunities with IT-Enabled and Assisted Customerships

The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate challenges and opportunities related to IT-enabled and assisted customerships. The chapter begins by defining the term digitization and illustrates what can be digitized and to what extent. Next we illustrate how IT (and digitization) can assist in various types of interactions or create new types of interactions. Digitization and interactions form a fulcrum for the rest of the chapter, which deals with IT-assisted and -enabled marketing activities and customerships. We will make a clear distinction between classical relationship marketing and IT-enabled techno-relationship marketing. Finally we focus on a single marketing activity, namely customer service.

Information and Competition

This chapter focuses on the new face of IT-enabled competitiveness in the early 21st century. It notes that the impact is global with the art of the possible for old-economy firms dramatically changing with a heavy focus on application links external to the firm. First mover vs. fast follower with new technologies is an important issue for firms to address (first is not always best). Finally, it addresses the importance of operational reliability.

Integration of Business Systems and Applications in Merger and Alliance

The strategy of Metso Corporation and its business units is healthy, profitable growth achieved organically, by acquisitions and by new developments. This strategy means that Metso Automation system architecture will be multiple platforms, multiple sites and multiple applications exchanging information in the global business process. Metso Automation system development is globally coordinated and continues, based on this modular network-centric system structure. Each operative function such as sales (and sales office), manufacturing, product engineering have its own system application. These systems are loosely coupled together with agreed, standardised communication messages like order, invoice and order status. These two company integration cases show that the integration of modular systems can be done in a reasonable timeframe and with limited system technical work, and the main business goal, better service to the customer, can be reached.

Growth the KONE Way

This chapter describes the private view of a long-serving KONE manager on how KONE Corporation has over 30 decades developed into one of the global leaders in its field. Perhaps the most important success factor is the consistent, integrated development and implementation of vision, strategy, business structure, processes, IT tools, and people skills and capabilities. The article ends with a short outline of a practical solution in one small area of the business, where the combination of all of the above has led to improved productivity, customer value and customer satisfaction.

Web Breeds Services Apart-But How to Get Them Right?

Since the recognition of IT as a source of competitive weapon—the links to customers and suppliers as the main artillery—the emphasis has been on early movers. But when viewed from the vantage point of the market, i.e., the efficiency of services, the heroic efforts and temporary success of the pioneers appear more like an episode of a survival game as opposed to a brutal war that would lead to the acquisition of new territories. The exciting part of the process—the attack with new weapons—has been exercised but without any deliberate strategy to ensure subsequent productivity and administrative stability. This chapter reiterates some experiences since the mid-80s when the technological dominance pursued by the companies often led to staggering investments never to be recovered. We use an established business model to outline the paths for evolutionarily sound development. The model of Services and Channels is used to illustrate the premises of a balanced diffusion of IT into different services. The main message is that the application of IT creates opportunities to diverge the existing services into new types of channels. This breeding process creates new generations of services, some of which add value to the customers and some destroy the profits of more conventional competitors. We are particularly interested if the Internet as an open network has had (or will have) any different impact on the services and channels than did the dedicated ICT. For illustration, we use some of the service innovations described in this book, which also provide prime examples of more detailed mechanisms by which the new services have been organized. The assumption is that the different types of services differ inherently by the integration and coordination of the service relationships. We propose a framework for analyzing the mechanisms of integration and coordination of service processes, including different scope (the parties involved) and media (joint routines, shared resources and common interests) that contribute to such mechanisms. We conclude that the validity of the model of Services and Channels extends well into the era of the internet, but also that the correct application of the model calls for better understanding of the mechanisms of integration of channels and coordination of services.

Customer Relationship Management in Service Mediary-Driven Mobile Services

In this chapter we introduce the concept of Service Mediary, which provides a conceptual and technical platform for electronic services. Our analysis shows that it pays off to outsource customer relationship management in electronic channels to a specialized service provider. The I-mode case study demonstrates clearly the benefits this kind of cooperation offers to content and service providers. Especially the built-in billing and revenue sharing logic are critical elements to I-mode’s success story. Even more encouraging are the benefits of collaboration to customers, who will enjoy the fruits of the new networked e-business economy. A Service Mediary is in a position to understand the customer requirements and building a service offering which optimally matches those requirements. In the multi-channel business environment of tomorrow, no single company can develop cost efficiently all required services for every channel. The future belongs to specialized, closely cooperating companies, which can offer superior customer experience at a competitive price. A Service Mediary like NTT DoCoMo with its I-mode service can offer a true win-win-win business model: service providers, customers and the Service Mediary all win in this game. Based on the analysis of the I-mode case, we can conclude that Service Mediary as a business model has a great potential in the future.

IT-Enabled Global Customer Service

This chapter describes IT-enabled customer service development projects in six global companies. The chapter summarizes the projects to illustrate some of the contemporary trends in developing customer service processes and systems. The cases more importantly provide an opportunity to learn from experiences in implementing new service processes and models. While some of these lessons describe conventional wisdom known to all experienced managers, others may appear surprising. Perhaps most importantly, the experiences serve as a reminder that the most challenging phase in developing services on a global scale is when organizational boundaries for the development efforts are defined. Trying to integrate and harmonize everything is rarely the most viable strategy. The cases also illustrate that a fully integrated real time customer information system may not always be a prerequisite for high-quality global customer service. So rather than simply implementing complex state-of-the-art technologies to all service units, managers more than ever need a clear vision of where and when global harmonization and integration of service processes truly benefit the company and its main customers.

The Concept of Industrial IT in Customer Service

Industrial IT is a new technology to integrate technical industrial processes with business processes. That secures the benefits of low cost and high speed at optimal quality. Industrial IT will also offer solutions to linking intra-company processes and help industry clusters serve their customers better.