Do Business Well

So far, we have talked about projects that may take as little time to complete as a week or as much as several years. When a client replaces its computer systems or sets up a business-to-business exchange, the involvement, though lengthy, is finite with a specific beginning and end.

Here we focus on providing ongoing coaching and value- adding services to collaborators for as long as they are needed or wanted. The market leaders that excel at offering them stand out as much for their insight and knowledge as for their clear understanding of customers‘ specific and evolving needs. At the root of their success is the capacity to form genuinely respectful, trusting, close relationships with their clients. Not unlike the relationships that doctors, clerics, lawyers, and other confidants form with their patients and clients, these suppliers get to know and understand their customers, hence are far more able to guide and advise them on myriad circumstances.

Let’s consider Charles Schwab, the investment company, which began with the goal of winning customers by making their stock transactions fast, easy, and inexpensive. Though Schwab provided a useful service, its clients‘ needs changed over time. Many had more money, more complex lives, and greater concerns about retirement and trust planning. They wanted a wider range of investment services, including personalized advice. In a word, they wanted a trusted partner to rely upon.

With its core business continuing to focus on the needs of streamline-oriented customers (as we discussed in an earlier article), Schwab initiated a separate effort to cater to its clients who were craving collaboration. It established AdvisorSource, which is, in essence, a referral network of independent financial service providers that have been screened by Charles Schwab. Approximately 450 of Schwab’s 5,500 independent advisers participate in AdvisorSource. Moreover, in early 2000, Schwab merged with U.S. Trust, an organization that provides financial planning and trust services, including ongoing counseling, to affluent investors.

Of course, Charles Schwab’s customers are not atypical. It has been apparent to successful financial services providers for a long time that personal advice and trust cement relationships with customers and gain their long-lasting patronage as much as, if not more than, handling their funds efficiently. That Internet trading and electronic banking are lavished with publicity does not mean that self-help has replaced traditional relationships based on trust. Fortunately, the choice doesn’t have to be made. Market-leading financial institutions provide sophisticated timesaving technology without compromising personal contact.

When the issues are complicated and the particular segment of the marketplace in constant flux, as in the financial field, collaboration is extremely important. In such circumstances, customers value having access to suppliers they trust, who are aware of their particular circumstances. This applies equally to business customers. I am no longer surprised when I enter companies to find people other than employees settled into offices. They are, in fact, steadfast suppliers (and not infrequently, consultants) who permanently reside at the client company, acting as virtual employees.

Exemplifying this is a little-noted company, Amdocs, Ltd., which is ranked 88 on my top 100 list. In the last six years, Amdocs’s sales grew tenfold, with 2000 revenues expected to top $1 billion. Its success rests on its formidable skill in building longterm strategic relationships with customers in the communications industry. Amdocs offers companies such as the baby Bells, Sprint, Deutsche Telekom, and Vodafone ongoing guidance in an area that now differentiates phone companies: customer care.

The company began two decades ago as a publisher of Yellow Pages in rural Missouri, but in the early 1990s expanded into innovative software products and services to help communications companies handle their ordering, billing, and customer relationship management tasks. In a rapidly evolving industry, such tasks are critically important to boost customer retention and satisfaction, making a customized approach for each communications company a necessity. Distinguishing itself from systems integrators and other project-oriented suppliers that move on as soon as a solution is in place, Amdocs’s strategy is to stay deeply involved in its clients‘ companies, even to be on call to address new developments immediately. It’s no wonder that it derives 88 percent of its revenues from ongoing servicing fees, rather than from licensing or selling its software.

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