BEST PRACTICES: BUILDING YOUR BUSINESS WITH CUSTOMER-FOCUSED SOLUTIONS

Through the development of its Best Practices Knowledge Base, Arthur Andersen shows how you can take the secrets of the world's best companies and put them to work at your company. Find out how:

+Ritz-Carlton compiles detailed customer profiles based on guest preferences and employee observations, then shares this information throughout its chain so that staff members at its other hotels know exactly who is checking in each day and how best to please each guest. For example, if you've enjoyed playing tennis on a prior visit to a Ritz-Carlton Hotel, be assured that staff members will be aware of it—and will alert you to court availability on future visits.

+American Express targets different cardmembers with offers geared specifically to individual buying habits, then teams with a merchant to surprise them with rewards in appreciation for their patronage. If you are identified as a "VIP" customer at a particular restaurant where you frequently use your American Express card, your waiter may surprise you with a bottle of wine in gratitude for your loyalty.

+Dell Computer Corporation, the world's fastest growing computer company, understands its customers' needs so well that it can sell them products directly over the phone or Internet and bypass retailers. A system ordered from Dell will arrive at the customer's doorstep in as few as five days, at a cost 10 to 20 percent lower than that of retail chains.

These are among the 40 companies featured in Best Practices that share their stories of success derived from a clear focus on customers. From Fortune 500 giants IBM and Nike to small businesses such as rafting king Appalachian Wildwaters and New Pig Corporation, the company with the funny name and winning sense of humor (it makes spill-absorbing equipment), this valuable source profiles best-practices companies in highly diverse industries.

*****
What makes the world's top companies so adept at providing stellar customer service? How do they meet the needs of every customer and still turn healthy profits? And, most important, how can you adapt their practices to fit your business?

Thanks to over six years of ongoing research and an investment of $30 million, Arthur Andersen has created its Global Best Practices Database to uncover breakthrough thinking at world-class companies. Now, in Best Practices, Arthur Andersen for the first time shares its understanding of how more than forty best-practices companies focus on their customers, create growth, reduce cost, and increase profits. Managers of any business in any industry can adapt and apply what those companies do best.

Unlike most books based merely on an author's own theories or limited anecdotal experience, Best Practices is backed up by 30,000 pages of active, documented data on hundreds of companies worldwide. This book concentrates primarily on customers and how to involve them in everything from the design of products and services to marketing, selling, and product delivery.

Perhaps the greatest value of the book lies in its linking of best practices to business processes, thereby encouraging managers to expand their thinking and engage in creative problem-solving with the help of insights from companies inside or outside their own industry For example, the manager of a clothing store chain can study how Federal Express adapted the concept of just-in-time manufacturing to its rapid delivery of parts between supplier and customer. The owner of a small coffee shop chain might learn from American Express and Peapod how to target customers by offering particular products and predicting exactly when they will make their next purchases.

These and other examples will help business people diagnose the processes in place at their own companies and determine how best to improve them. Comprehensive and on the cutting edge, Best Practices will serve as an invaluable information resource.

Robert Hiebeler is the Managing Director of KnowledgeSpace, Arthur Andersen's innovative approach to leveraging knowledge for its professionals and its clients. Over the past five years he has pioneered the development and deployment throughout Arthur Andersen of the Global Best Practices Knowledge Base, an effort that has captured best practices information from around the world in key business processes. In addition to implementing several productivity and quality Initiatives within Arthur Andersen he has consulted with hundreds of companies worldwide about the search for, and implementation of, best practices to improve business performance. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.