MARKET AND CUSTOMER ORIENTATION

Purpose :
• Periodic measurement of the internal and external customer delight
• Continuously seek and update information on global market, competitors, raw material
• Enrich the product-mix, by introducing new / value added products
• Increase sale to institutional buyers
• Improve the realization with respect to competition

Market Orientation
Textile is a commodity with conventional production system. Since the entry barriers are low, this industry is spread globally and offers a very stiff competition.
Due to continuous globalization of world economy and bombardment of customers with abundance of information, competition in all kinds of products and all sectors was increasing. To top it all, under the WTO and subsequent opening up of economies, China was seen as a major threat, due to policies and economies of scale. In such turbulent times, in the year 2001, when we took a decision to expand our capacity by almost 45%, we also revisited and revolved our marketing strategy with concentrated focus.
Once the steering committee met to freeze the overall company goals for the year 2004, department annual strategic goals were drawn from this, with fixed targets for the year. From the annual strategic goals, individual projects addressing each of these strategic goals were drawn, followed by the action plan.
Depending on the attribute, the performance is being reviewed at a pre decided frequency, i.e. OTIF is being monitored monthly, while Sale to end-users is being monitored quarterly. Like-wise ECSI is being conducted annually. The performance is being reviewed half-yearly with involvement of President Director and all front-line marketing people.

Internal Supplier-Customer Orientation
It is our firm belief that we cannot progress beyond a superficial treatment of customer loyalty without considering employee loyalty. There is a very strong cause and effect relationship between the two. With this in mind, to improve the inter-departmental working, we have introduced the concept of Performance Contract between the Internal Customer & Supplier, in order to understand specific need of each other and to improve understanding. The evaluation is carried out quarterly and subjective evaluation is done to identify areas for improvement. This also helps in setting targets (mutually agreed) based on the expectation of the internal customer and the responsibility of the supplier.
Each important work aspect is taken care of so that the supplier and customer both are aware about it and there is no dispute about the work area - expectations and responsibility. Everybody is aware about their responsibility and as a result do their best to make the customer happy as this gives a sense of responsibility. Moreover the quarterly evaluation brings out the areas of improvement and everybody works in the same direction.
For general work, there is a written guideline. As a result, work is being done without much follow-up and if by any reason there is any variation or delay then the same comes to the knowledge very easily. This serves as the check list and reminder for day to day work and everybody in the chain of achieving customer delight is awake and do his/her best to get the highest score. During quarterly evaluation the reason for improvement or reduction in score is also discussed openly which brings out the areas of improvement for future.

Customer Relationship Management
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a business strategy to select and manage customers to optimize long-term value. CRM requires a customer-centric business philosophy and culture to support effective sales, marketing and service processes.
CRM extends the concept of sales and marketing through a continual process involving every person in the company. It is a methodical process of gathering and using information about our customers to build customer loyalty and increase customer value. Customer Relationship Management enables elegant in deepening the knowledge of our customers over time, and then using that knowledge gained to refine our business strategies to meet those customers' individual needs. With this view we conduct customer satisfaction surveys which are carried out every year. The survey form is prepared /checked for updating and subsequently translated into local language for the Domestic market for convenience and understanding. The list of customers for survey is finalized and survey forms are then sent by email / fax etc. The completed form is received within stipulated time. The data from the survey is compiled and analyzed for each segment and application. The final results of the survey are communicated and discussed in review meetings and action plans are drawn based on the discussions held.
PT. Elegant believes in good and friendly relationship with the customers as we owe our very existence to them and their customers. We regularly arrange technical visits to our customer's plants to see the working of our product vis-à-vis the working of the product from our competitors and during these visits we interact not only with the owner/decision maker but focus on interaction with the technicians and shop floor people who can give us the direct feed back. Here, we get information about all positive and negative aspects of our product and services and that of our competitors. These visits help us take corrective actions quickly and our technicians become proactive to serve the needs of our customers.

These processes of meeting customers at all levels help us build long term relationship with our customers and retain them year after year. To strengthen this we have started a system of Customer Adoption about 2 years back in the domestic market and we have adopted some of our key customers. This responsibility is assigned to specific technician. In this process the technician concerned adopted the particular customer. He visits / contacts the customer on periodic basis to serve the customer's requirement in a better and proactive way.
Under this system, the customers are having total freedom to directly contact the concerned technician to get information/clarification and even they can invite the technician to visit their plant to help them. Needless to say that the marketing head frequently visits the customers to interact with the owner/decision maker and with customer's technicians. Our CEO also periodically meets our major customers which is an indication of high-level commitment from top management. Customers are having direct access to our CEO and technical head for any of their needs. We also encourage our customers to visit our factory to build their confidence in our capability in meeting their expectations. During these visits, they give their feedback, which encourages our people and makes them customer oriented. These visits serve as a good relationship building tool for the organization.
Further, after the last Customer Satisfaction Survey during the year 2003, we analyzed the Survey result and after compilation of the same we gave the feed back to all our customers with our action plan for the areas of improvement. This shows our true and honest way of sharing our weak and strong points with our customers to build their confidence in our sincerity.

Customer Complaint Handling System
We have a structured process of Customer Complaint Handling and the system is inbuilt to handle the complaint. For each process the responsibility and measurement is fixed so that the customers' complaints are used as a good relationship building measure and for areas of improvement. In fact we encourage our customers to share their entire problem with us so that minor issues also are brought to our knowledge and we are always on toes to avoid any major deviation. Improvements are made in quicker resolution of complaints. The response time in case of each complaint is measured and monitored for improvement. Assistance is taken from external laboratories for further analysis wherever we feel it appropriate to do it.

Lost Customer Action and Analysis
All our major customers are buying from us on continuous basis. We are very strong in this area. We are in constant touch with all our major customers and we make the yarn available for them on regular basis. Special care is taken to reserve the capacity for all our major customers. Our main priority is to serve our regular customers.
Customer's buying pattern is being studied on a quarterly basis to ascertain that supply of material to all regular customers is maintained on a sustainable basis. There has been no customer loss in Exports in last 3 years.

Structured Product and Service Development
Our vision is to be a first “choice of customers” in the global market. To reach this vision, meeting the rapidly changing customer's requirement becomes vital. This makes new product development an important process to achieve a competitive edge in the market.
Prior to 1998, product development was only based on the customer's requirement. From 1998 Product development activities are carried out based on information collected by technical visits to the market, exhibitions, reverse engineering the final products, collecting information from specialized machinery manufacturers etc.
New product identification is done not only based on the inquiry of our regular customers, we also often approach the new customers to get the details of their end product and suitability of manufacturing the yarn for their end product is studied at our end. Apart from this approach, we monitor through technical journals and visiting websites of various fabrics manufacturers which give new ideas of market trends. As per the present global trend, manufacturing in the western world or developed countries like Japan is getting costlier every passing day thereby rendering the local spinner incompetitive. As a strategy, we visit the web-site of the major spinners in this sphere to identify the value-added products being manufactured by them and identify the same which would be replicated with our present set of machinery.

Country wise Export (in %)