Mind your own business

Success comes from the systems you create

I recently had to renew some insurance and so I went on internet. I searched around and found a good quote for what I wanted and began to complete the on-line application forms. I got to near to the end and for some reason I couldn’t get past a particular section so I telephoned the company.

I explained to the person the situation and he said no problem we can do it over the phone. He ran through the questions until he got to the occupation of Katri, my partner. I said ‘market analyst’. He said ‘that’s not on our list’. I said ‘so’. He said ‘well, it has to be on our list, what you want me to do?’ I said ‘put down the truth’. He said ‘I can’t do that because we don’t have that option’. I said ‘so you’re asking me to lie when applying for insurance are you?’ He said ‘We can only use the choices on our list, so you have to choose one of those’. I said ‘fair enough’ and took my business elsewhere.

This was one of the big names on the internet yet they are operating a horrible system. I wonder who was in mind when they designed it?

To quote Tom Peters ‘most of the trouble that businesses get into-in serving their customers and getting things done with despatch-is directly attributable to the ugliness of their systems and processes’

The way forward towards more profits and happier customers, whether a business is a one man band or multi-national, is to create better and better systems.

Tom Gau, one of the top financial consultants in the US earning over $3m a year says ‘the key to success is not what you do but how you do it-the only difference between a big producer and one just being stuck on a plateau is the systems he uses day in day out’

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