Be lean and be in real time

Lean enterprise and real time marketing are the two phrases that I hear most often these days.

There are really few companies who can be either lean or in real time, let alone succeeding in being both, but just like cloud computing, these terms are must to know.

According to the Lean Enterprise Institution, the core idea is to maximize customer value while minimizing waste. Simply, lean means creating more value for customers with fewer resources. A lean organization understands customer value and focuses its key processes to continuously increase it.

The ultimate goal is to provide perfect value to the customer through a perfect value creation process that has zero waste. Eliminating waste along entire value streams, instead of at isolated points, creates processes that need less human effort, less space, less capital and less time to make products and services at far less costs and with much fewer defects, compared with traditional business systems. Companies are able to respond to changing customer desires with high variety, high quality, low cost and with very fast rate of production times. Also, information management becomes much simpler and more accurate.

Being lean also makes a company more flexible. Lean companies can make decisions much faster than others. That is why IBM has coined the term “Individual Enterprise.” According to IBM, by embracing mobile and analytics, organizations will discover, define and refine new and emerging end customer needs and aspirations, and create truly unique, exciting experiences. An Individual Enterprise creates integrated ecosystems, creates insights at the point of engagement and can take contextual actions in the moment.

Being lean and individual lets you roll out real time marketing solutions. There are many amazing examples of real time marketing around the world. There is a billboard that can understand the make of your car and change the advertisement that you see accordingly and soon, it will also be calling out to your name specifically. There are stores that recognize you as you enter and suggest a mix of your favorite purchases depending on your last few visits. Amazon has started to ship out books before you even order them.

This is going to change everything about marketing.

How ready are Turkish firms for this?

I think they are not ready at all. There are two main barriers in Turkey. First is the mindset of the managers. To be lean and mean, you have to let people make decisions and take responsibilities.

Usually empowerment is not a favorite term in Turkish companies. The second issue is about technology: If you want to be moving faster and decide better, then your infrastructure should be agile and mobile and you must have the best network. Turkish companies always want to own the infrastructure and this makes them as slow as a turtle.

Can Turkish companies change their behavior? I believe it is up to the service providers to change these mentalities. Let’s wait and see how they will act on these issues.