One of things that I am most proud of is the team and common set of values we built during my 20+ years at Hand Held Products. It was based on integrity and customer satisfaction. We had a great management team and I am glad I had the opportunity to be part of that team. In the years we saw our largest growth, our management team, our customers and our entire company had a clear mission and a clear set of core values.
As a company, our mission was “to be the global leader in applying image-based technology for mobile, wireless and transaction processing solutions to select customers, while operating with integrity”. At the foundation of our company were our core values:
- Integrity
- Collaboration
- Customer satisfaction
- Innovation
- Accountability and
- Associate friendly
We had a deep commitment to quality and living our quality policy: We would continuously improve our products and services to meet or exceed our customers’ expectations.
At Hand Held Products, we were deeply committed to our customer’s profitability. We understood that they expected a high return on investment (ROI) through focused execution of our front line data collection solutions. We executed this commitment through our Customer ROI Engine (CRE) strategy.
The Customer ROI Engine commitment included:
- A deep application knowledge within the vertical market of our customer, as well as, a clear understanding of their business logic.
- Providing purpose built devices (devices that serve specific applications) as well as software assets to make our devices a useful business tool.
- Professional services before, during and after deployment to include solutions architecture and project management.
- A product lifecycle model that insures a long useful life of the investment and a manageable transition plan to proactively migrate to next generation solutions.
Each customer, in each vertical and geographic market, had unique needs that they had to satisfy in order to drive their profitability. Our company, and the companies we partnered with, were organized in such a way that we can provided optimized solutions within an enterprise – where and when needed.
As stated in the mission statement above, the Customer ROI Engine model were applied to “select” customers. In particular, our selected customers appreciated the various elements of the Customer ROI Engine, and demonstrate that appreciation with purchases that allowed us to earn the benefits from all the value elements we deliver.
Accordingly, our select customers were willing to participate in the value based selling process captured in the Customer Centric Selling ® (CCS) methods. Our select customers appreciated the process to analyze, implement and then measure the data collection solution and resultant ROI. With our select customers we were working toward “trusted advisor” status with a customer for life attitude.
Finally, applying the Customer ROI Engine to select customers was a strategy intended to drive better than average selling prices, market leading margins and a loyal customer base.
Our mission and values were clearly understood by every employee. It gave us huge competitive advantage and allowed us to provide true value to our customers over an extended period of time. Our customers knew us and trusted our values. The transition from supplier to Trusted Advisor allowed us to retain customers for several solution deployment cycles. Know your mission and your values. Demonstrate your integrity and commitment to your customers.