Questions Towards a Demand Driven Orientation

Marcos Fava Neves

24 Nov 2012 15:10

Special to China Daily, by Marcos Fava Neves

This article suggests some questions for organizations to try to position themselves according and tuned to the changing and evolving wishes of the demand. 

A demand driven organization has a continuous behavior to develop and promote solutions with higher value ​​for the organization, for its direct and indirect consumers and also for all stakeholders involved, in a holistic approach. 

Within the market in which an organization operates, there is a wide range of actors that mutually benefit themselves within the trade process, like: consumers, distribution channels, competitors, suppliers and others. 

For an organization to be strongly guided by the changing demand, it needs an efficient market information system, which monitors the macro-environment and all the actors that relate directly and indirectly with the organization. 

Internally, it is vital to have a cross-functional coordination, where all departments are aligned creating the organizational demand driven culture.

In order to help, in this article I offer some discussion questions to be done as a guide for creating ideas for a company to be more demand driven. The questions are presented and divided by the most relevant target audiences of a company, the final consumers, distributors, Government, suppliers, non-competitors and service providers for the company.

The following items, as well as a summary table show the possible market players of an organization and propose questions that serve as guidance for the positioning of it. 

For the final consumer some important questions would be: 

- How to deliver great value and built loyalty?

- How to understand the segments of consumer?

- How to anticipate trends?

- How to offer solutions?

- How to monitor the feedback?

- How to build consumers laboratories, places for interactions?

- How to improve the linkage and connectivity with consumer?

For the distribution channels, some important questions would be: 

- How to improve the performance of channels in terms of profit and traffic generation?

- How to offer complete solutions? 

- How to build channel incentive programs?

- How to reduce transactional costs with distributors?

- How to participate in private label strategies? 

- How to improve the flows from the organization to the channel?

For the Government, some important questions would be: 

- How to contribute more with the government (helping international agreements, improving regulation systems and controls)?

- How to better use the available public resources (financing, research development institutes and others)?

For the competitors, some important questions would be: 

- How to make the organization open to strategic alliances, joint ventures, collective actions in a proactive approach?

- How to better participate in horizontal associations?

- How to improve ethics and Standards of the industry?

For the non competitor companies, some important questions would be: 

- How to make the organization open to strategic alliances, joint ventures and other types of collective actions in a proactive approach?

- Is it structured for this?

- How to stimulate benchmarking?

For the input suppliers, some important questions would be: 

- How to monitor and stimulate supplier’s sustainability and security procedures?

- How to improve cost and efficiency (value) of inputs? 

- How to lower transaction costs with suppliers?

- How to innovate towards sustainable and renewable inputs?

For the service providers (financial institutions, certification, transport, insurance, communication, digital support and information technology) some important questions would be:  

- How to have the best value service providers linked to the organization? 

- Which services and how they need to be provided for the best functioning of the contractual networks?

- How services are sensitive or affected to the final consumer buying decision process?

- How to reduce transaction costs related to service providers relationships and contracts?

- How to monitor and stimulate the service provider’s sustainability and security procedures?

I hope these questions can be useful for an internal workshop or even external interviews in the long and important process of making your company more demand driven.

The author is professor of strategic planning and food chains at the School of Economics and Business, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil (www.favaneves.org) and international speaker. Author of 25 books published in 8 countries and in China, “The World on the Tongue”.