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| Involve
Your Customers and Trading Partners |
Understand
your customers capabilities...and be prepared to help upgrade them.
Even if your project should, in theory, offer significant benefits
to your customers, it may not work if they do not have the IT capability
to cope with it at their end.
It can be easy to overestimate your customers IT capabilities. Kingspan,
the Cavan based manufacturer of cladding panels was concerned that
it would be technologically leapfrogged by its competitors in the
construction industry. These fears proved ungrounded, however. “We
rushed in to try to keep out the competition,” said Tom McGuinness,
Commercial Director of Kingspan, “and when we got there, the
competition weren’t there. Neither were the customers”.
Quite a few companies found that they had to help their customers
or distributors to upgrade their capability. We have already mentioned
how Joe Blogg’s found it necessary to provide training in the
use of their virtual showroom to staff in their customer’s shops.
Having found that many customers were not yet ready to use its new
system, Kingspan also decided to take a proactive approach to the
matter. The approach they adopted to one category of customers, namely
structural steel contractors, was to identify someone in the customer’s
company to liaise with a Kingspan customer service person. This person
tended to be a computer aided designer or an estimator/detailer, as
they needed to understand both IT and the construction industry. Once
selected, this person was trained, by Kingspan, in the use of the
system, in technical knowledge of the Kingspan product range, and
how to apply it to a building. They were also assigned a customer
service representative to deal with any technical or product related
queries they might have. As a result the online ordering system has
been rolled out to 45 of Kingspan’s 47 structural steel customers
in Ireland.
 Such
efforts need to be tailored to the customer’s level of capability.
Kingspan also supply roofing and cladding contractors. They tend to
be less technically advanced than Kingspan’s structural steel
customers and it was felt that a different approach might be needed.
The project team has identified 25 of the roofing and cladding contractors
to be part of a pilot project. Where necessary, Kingspan will provide
them with the necessary hardware and software in order to access the
system.
Vitra Tiles of Arklow also discovered customers who needed training
and/or who had a fear of IT. Their response included customer training,
offering discounts for online ordering and using sales staff to help
promote the IT system to customers with whom the staff member had
good relationships. Field sales staff were trained to provide local
technical support to customers. Account managers helped overcome language
problems encountered when training foreign customers. A case study
of this company will be available shortly on the Enterprise Ireland
website.
VLM also gave training and MD, Declan Malone gives a stern warning
not to underestimate the time needed to train users of the system.
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