This week’s announcement of the 50 Best Managed Companies in Canada is cause for celebration. I think it is a valuable program and aspiration, even if its origins were to elevate the reputation of its sponsors, Deloitte & Touche and CIBC. Any critique in this blog is not meant to denigrate the program. Rather to look at everything through the lens of customer-centric values, because this is what I do. Parenthetically, if I were to denigrate a ranking system it would be the Profit 100, because it uses such a narrow indicator of financial health: anecdotally I gave credit to one company who achieved 4th place on the Profit 100 index and was shorted out $40,000 when the company went bankrupt 18 months later. Back to topic.
I wanted to understand the criteria for the application for Canada’s 50 Best Managed Companies, not having entered. The quick reference to non-entrants is through the qualifying online application form. I am reviewing this, not from an accounting, management consultant or financial perspective, but from a customer-centric perspective.
Questions 1 –11: The type of questions you would expect if you were opening a bank account or applying for credit. One of the criteria that set by the sponsors is a minimum of $10 million in annual revenue. Perhaps this was to reduce the number of applications to a manageable amount, but it struck me that it might be more to do with the size of company Deloitte & Touche and CIBC would like to spend their time getting to know.
12. Key business challenges
What do you think gives your company a key advantage in the marketplace? (select one).
- Exceptional or unique products or services
- Excellent customer relationship management
- Encouragement of employee innovation
- Strong marketing and sales program
- Commitment to continuous improvement
- Training and learning programs for employees
- Investment in technology
- Supportive corporate culture
- Leadership team
- Good business strategy
- Other (specify)
Why only one choice? It puts the applicant at the disadvantage of trying to distill all of its values into a one-dimensional framework. I would rather ask the organization to put these attributes in order of their values. And I would expect good management consultants to understand the correct cascade order of these priorities.
Prioritization of D&T/CIBC value system according to Customer-Centric Marketing:
- Excellent customer relationship management (no surprise here)
- Leadership team (has to communicate the customer-centric vision)
- Good business strategy (customer centric all the way)
- Supportive corporate culture (customer centric top down and bottom up)
- Training and learning programs for employees (can’t build culture without it)
- Encouragement of employee innovation (all to enrich the main goal)
- Commitment to continuous improvement (driven through encouragement above)
- Investment in technology (gotta deliver efficiencies to fulfill the customer promise)
- Exceptional or unique products or services (get all the above right and it all comes naturally)
- Strong marketing and sales program (get the message out there that you are doing all of the above for one reason)
- Other (specify) Why do we need an Other? Skip it.
What is your biggest challenge in sustaining your company's growth? (select one)
Again, what’s with the one? There is no right answer. Is this simply fodder for D & T or CIBC to rank the possible services they might sell to these companies, or have some market research data they can sell or present to someone?
- Raising capital for growth - check
- Developing a management team - check
- Developing a strong marketing and sales strategy - check
- New product/service development – are you talking to your customers enough about their expectations?
- International expansion - check
- Leadership succession planning - check
- Maintaining good customer services. Weak. See comment below
- Dealing with regulatory issues - whatever
- Finding, hiring and retaining qualified employees - check
- Building corporate infrastructure - check
- Maintaining a consistent corporate culture – Classic goals-oriented enterprise-speak. Divisions in egos at the board level filter down to the middle management tier and create fractures within the enterprise. Or, the owner becomes self-satisfied with achievements and takes his/her eye off the ball. The customer-centric enterprise cannot be revisionist in its corporate culture because the key dynamic is external to the corporations.
- Other (specify) Enough with the other, already.
Maintaining good customer services.
This is weak. To maintain good service doesn’t mean you will keep your customers. What about competition doing a better job? Most companies struggle to maintain service levels as they grow because they are not customer-centric, they are goals-oriented, and there is a marginal reduction in customer care the more successful the business becomes! Think Customer Retention, put it in your Management Consultant pipe and smoke it.
How do you plan to grow your company's revenues in the future? (check all that apply)
- Acquisitions
- Expansion to other markets in Canada
- Strategic alliances and partnerships
- Expansion internationally
- Development of new products and services
- Expanding into new product or service lines
- Leveraging the latest technology
- Outsourcing non-core function
Doesn’t D&T/CIBC know that the easiest path to growth is within your existing customers? I don’t see maximizing customer value on this list. How about “Increase loyalty, frequency and continuity within your customer base”?
13. Employee training and development
What percentage of your company’s revenue is spent on training and development?
- % Numbers only (no spaces or characters)
What percentage of your company’s training is developed and delivered in-house?
- % Numbers only (no spaces or characters)
What group is responsible for training and development at your company?
- Human resources
- Line managers
- C-Suite executives
- Individual employees
Do management gurus maintain that, if you don’t invest X% of your revenue dollars in external training resources, you are not managing your business as well as you could? Even if there is a statistical correlation it puzzles me to see this element here, simply because an exceptional company exists outside of the statistical norms by definition.
I am a great fan of the Canadian 50 Best Managed Companies, and I think the process of ongoing review , performance achievement and continuing success of these businesses is a great indicator of the value of their business and worthwhile nature of this initiative. But I would love to see the evaluation conducted through the customer’s perspective and see who wins that race.
