A business can have outstanding products, sophisticated systems and significant capacity and still struggle to grow.
The reason may be simple: your customers have changed how they want to buy.
In this episode of Business Builders Podcast, Pavlo Phitidis explores the challenge facing a highly integrated manufacturer employing more than 350 people.
Its constraint is not whether it can make more. It is whether it can help customers buy with less risk.
When Customer Buying Behaviour Changes
Since COVID, many customers have become more cautious about committing capital and holding stock.
They want smaller orders, more frequent replenishment and greater flexibility as demand changes.
For a high-volume manufacturer, that creates a difficult tension.
The factory wants long, predictable production runs that improve efficiency. The customer wants smaller commitments, less inventory and greater flexibility.
Protecting operational efficiency can therefore make the business harder for customers to buy from.
Turn Vertical Integration Into a Customer Advantage
This manufacturer has invested heavily in vertical integration. It can develop, prototype, test, certify and manufacture products largely within its own operation.
That creates significant control.
But owning more of the process is not the advantage. Using that control to make life easier for the customer is.
Instead of expecting customers to fit the factory, the opportunity is to use that capability to create a lower-risk way to buy.
Three Ways to Create Greater Customer Flexibility
The business identified three actions:
Package the customer journey. Create a clear path from idea and prototype through testing to full production.
Separate different workflows. Keep prototype and test-batch work moving, without continually disrupting high-volume production.
Create replenishment rhythms. Turn smaller, more frequent orders into predictable production rather than constant emergencies.
Is Your Operating Model Still Fit for Your Customers?
The lesson applies well beyond manufacturing.
Customer behaviour changes. Your operating model needs to change with it.
Look at how your customers are buying today. Are they ordering less, buying more frequently, delaying commitments or asking for greater flexibility?
Then ask:
Is your operating model helping customers manage their uncertainty, or forcing them to carry yours?
Building an Asset of Value™ means designing systems around what your chosen customers value, not simply what makes your own operations easier.
Subscribe to Business Builders Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
