In our day-to-day life in office, we seek for improvements. Improvement in process, innovation in product feature/service delivery process, and so on. While searching for areas of improvement or innovation, we often try to go out of the box. We try to do something great, like launching new categories, exploring new markets etc.
At the same time, we do not look after tiny things. While brainstorming for big innovations, we forget trying for small fine-tuning that can add value (in some cases bring great results!).
Example? Say, a company has a particular product (and brand) in the market, which is doing good. Now the company will definitely think about adding new products (may be from new category). Say, the company marketing packaged spice products will try to explore categories like packaged rice, lentils etc. No harm. But while trying hard to do something groundbreaking, we may forget to look for improvement in the existing setup. And trust me, collective output of some little fine-tuning can bring as great result as one single great initiative!
I got the opportunity to work with a retail channel of a telco giant of the country. In the stores, customers are served with replacement SIM kits, which are kept in lockers mostly. Customer used to come, a Customer Manager (CM) used to identify the right series of toolkit for her, then go to the back-office, search kits from that series, come out of back-office, then serve the customer. My colleague Mozammel bhai brought a solution. He made a small shelf with several clutters (we used to call those “pigeon-hole”!), and kept few kits from each series, then marked the clutters. Magic happened. Customer came, CM just go in front of the shelf, selected the right clutter, picked one kit, and that’s it. At least 8-9 minutes of lead-time saved per customer, with a very small trick.
In FMCG industry, we can see many initiatives like that. Big corn flakes bags contain zip-lock options so that you don’t have to put it in any jar at home, pouch of dishwashing liquid contains re-sealable caps, USB ports with car seats- and so on. Just think, how much does it cost to add USB ports with each seat of a car? How much does it cost to provide beef as per the size asked by each customer? Many a times I bought chicken from foodpanda at a premium just because they provide pre-cut chicken, in clean bags, in frozen form. They gave me experience, I paid for it.
I haven’t ever thought my wife will order local fish from online shop. Now she has become regular customer. They send updates to her via whatsapp, on arrival of “really deshi” fish, and send fish in ready-to-cook format. “Pathao” now provides foods & groceries apart from their ride sharing & parcel delivery service. They can add intercity bus ticket option as an added service from the same app.
We often link innovation with Sales numbers. Yes, innovation (be it tiny or big scale) has an impact on Sales volume, but it also impacts a company in many ways. Innovation in production process & service delivery results in reducing wastage & cost. I worked for a company which periodically seeks for altering mixing ratios of ingredients, to get acceptable level of result at reduced cost. Innovation also helps a company to develop capability of its employees. Employees feel charged up to seek for improvement, which eventually improves them, and then they develop the company further.
Innovation can be guided as well! If we keep on tracking shifts in market, shifts in consumer behavior, we can “guide” innovation process! For example, if we see demand for a particular feature is increasing, we can prepare our production facilities accordingly. In FMCG industry, if we see demand for bulk SKUs is increasing in India & other southeast Asian countries, we can predict to have the same in Bangladesh as well, may be in coming years. But adding a different packaging line is time-consuming. So if we start working on it now we can stay ahead of competition when the demand for bulk SKUs will actually rise.
Seeking for Innovation may seem like a random initiative, but it can be conducted structurally as well. Innovation can come from shareholders/owners, employees, and from other stakeholders also. So there must be some openness & supporting environment to make sure that innovative ideas reaches to persons who will take the decision. There must be a process for that for sure, and some periodic events can support it. Management must encourage employees (in some cases trusted agencies/vendors) to take risk and try not to penalize for failure (as much as possible). Responsibility to bringing in innovation can be shared with employees & trusted agencies/vendors, which can be followed by reward mechanism. We often rule out vendors while searching for innovative ideas. Vendors might not be a sole part of the company, but they know the industry, market & consumers better (at least to some extent). We should try to involve vendors so much on to our business, that they care to propose innovation for us. Of course, that should benefit them as well. Finally, “innovativeness” can be a specific criterion while recruiting employees or vendors.
While I am preaching so easily for innovation, I am also aware that the practice of bringing innovation is not free. It takes budget to conduct research, try out new aspects, be it a new product or service or process. Management must chalk out how much they can invest behind innovation, after all, it will not generate revenue instantly.
In short, any company can go for seeking innovation, be it a big budget entry with a new product in a new segment, or a very tiny changes in service delivery process. We should not limit the searching process with the excuse that we don’t have budget to do something big. 100 tiny changes requiring small budget can eventually bring big result, as big as a big innovation!
Faisal Mahmud
Senior Marketing Manager
Bangladesh Edible Oil Limited
