Customer centricity drives innovation

This is according to Mario Ramos, Vice President of Global Product Development at the Columbus McKinnon Corporation. Lifting Africa finds out more.

Creating safe solutions requires one to connect safety to everything one does. Delivering productivity solutions requires one to listen carefully to the customer. “At Columbus McKinnon we innovate with a purpose. Customers drive our innovations,” explains Ramos. “Our goal is always to identify our customers high-value problems and then come up with solutions for that. In doing so we look at three elements: how can we help customers to be safer, how can we ensure their operations are more productive and how do they get improved up-time.” According to Ramos, the company speaks to its customers, to learn about their issues. "It is incredibly important a step. All the time we spend with our customers hearing about their challenges and seeing what they require, we are understanding what they are dealing with on a day-to-day basis better. It allows us the ability to look at the problem holistically. How is the product used – or abused, how is it maintained, replaced or fixed. Without talking to customers, one will not get to the high-value problems with the customer in mind.”

Often times this results in problems being addressed that the customer did not even realise existed.

“By looking at the whole chain, from installation through to how the product is being used, maintained, and replaced, far better solutions can be delivered.” This can involve visiting sites where products are used to observe operations or just boardroom discussions with clients.

From talking to action

Once there is a clear understanding of the problem, says Ramos, a hypothesis of how the problem can be solved is created and ultimately a prototype is built and delivered to the client.

“This creates the opportunity for the customer to identify what they like, what they don’t like, what aspects they need and what are really only nice-to-haves for the future. The design is then updated, and the solution optimized.” Market research, he says, is also very important. “We had a client who wanted a solution for operations on transmission lines. Too many accidents were occurring. Having the information from the client in-hand, it was just as important to do market research about this high-risk job before we could try to solve the problem of reducing accidents and increasing productivity in a very dangerous environment.”

Finding the solution was not quick. “It was a journey that required us also taking the hoist we developed back to the field to ask workers what still needed improvement. Before one can finalise a design it is essential to speak to the customer again and make sure this meets their needs exactly.” That, says Ramos, is what customercentricity is all about.

Yale Lifting Solutions,

+27 (0) 11 794 2910, +27 (0) 11 794 3560, crm@yalelift.co.za, www.yale.co.za