Providing Business Solutions - Learning From A Doctor

Providing customer centric solutions is a tricky business requiring the solution provider to juggle multiple factors in a unique fashion. Though there are many such factors, a few of the important ones are discussed here, using a a doctor as a very good analogy to explain the good practices of solution providing business.

1. Customer Uniqueness: Each customer is unique, has a unique set or combination of problems, and expects a unique solution from the solution provider. Say, a patient with an ailment of Diabetes fractures his limb and needs to be operated upon. A second patient may walk in with Diabetes and a viral infection. All the three individual ailments and their cures are known. However, in each patient's case, the treatment has to be a combination of the individual treatments in such a way that the patient's ailment is cured. It is difficult to imagine the treatment being meted out for the fracture and the infection without considering the prevalent Diabetes. Hence it is necessary for the business solutions providers to provide a solution not limited to one or a few problems and but consider the overall health status of the customer organization and provide a holistic solution.

2. Expertise: It comes in essentially as two sides of the same coin viz. what has been learnt till now based on past work and what is the capability to apply that knowledge to unique customer problems and solve them. We go to a doctor because we have heard that he or she has been able to cure similar ailments in other patients. But we choose to stay and get treated by that doctor because the doctor treats our ailment in unique fashion.

3. Diagnosis - Separating the Cause from the Effect: A good doctor always listens to the patient's ailment, asks the right questions and conducts the required medical examination to arrive at the root cause of the ailment The good doctor does not treat every patient with a headache the same way. Since the headache could be due to deprivation of sleep, work related stress, unaccustomed exposure to afternoon sun, and so on, each merits a different treatment. In business too, there would be a common symptom like demand - supply mismatch with varying causes like lack of proper IT tools, friction between the sales and production teams, employee morale, high capacity with low demand or low capacity with high demand and so on. Each requires a different treatment.

4. Follow Through: During and after the treatment is provided, the good doctor follows through and checks the health of the patient to confirm the success of the treatment. He or she does not hesitate to change the treatment if necessary.Similarly, a good solution provider should ideally follow through and seek regular feedback regarding the success of the solution provided, and change course if required.

These points do tell us what the good solution provider would do. But it comes with a caveat. The customer needs to be a good patient as well. As a good patient selects the good doctor and entrusts his or her health to the doctor, the customer organization would perhaps do well to do its groudwork in selecting the right solution provider and then trust it to deliver the solution agreed upon!