In the last mile to the customer are you placed at the winning line or are you straggling behind. In retailing terms, lots of companies talk about the last 10 yards. The challenge is to get your product from the stock room in supermarkets all round the country onto the shelf where the consumers pick up the product.
Last week in the business news, John Lewis talked about their success over Christmas and the last mile. In online trading terms, that is not just the product on the shelf but also the check out process, speed of delivery, product arriving in perfect conditions ( not as M & S did to us delivering a box of flowers at our door and putting a curling stone on the top to secure it – result – squashed flowers!), pick up points, returns points at local outlets etc
To me, this reflects the importance of a ‘‘knitted together’ approach for the customer, that is embraced and understood by all in the teams all in a business. Understanding what the strategic marketing process is very similar.
Often, decisions in the smaller business are taken on the basis of cost of investment rather than yield from investment. Success is based also on what will make it easy and simple for the customer to engage and commit with no hurdles to purchase. The investment in this thought process tends to deliver excellent trading results. Successful retailers and others utilise this thinking and they extracted themselves from the also ran brigade.
The lessons here are appropriate for all types of business. It is all about speed to the customer, process, never ending attention to detail and staff empowerment.