People over processes?? Customers over profits???

You might have read letters in your mailbox something like “Company Annual Report” , written by the CEO’s of the company’s , either you might have invested in or employed for. It appears to be a routine for the readers who have low involvement with the company, when I use the term “Low” that would refer to the ones who has just the vested interest and not necessary onus on the particular aspect. But it certainly, has a high value to the ones who owns the processes and have invested great deal of sweat and blood in the said company.

Well the report would generally have the 5 key elements:

1)     Facts and Figures on Revs/investments- Yes, undoubtedly, this is the first thing which every guy outside the Dalal Street, Wall street or Paternoster square etc… would want to know their ROI’s or Bonuses tied upto. This point is the up the chain and that’s the reason,  is the most viewed section on any annual report.

2)     Operations /Scale of business/Deals- followed by the profits generated and dividends issued, we as humans are always highly unsatisfied satisfied breed which looks to calculate every thing in terms of value, indeed it is important for a CEO to assure shareholders that – “hey don’t worry, the best is yet to come…we have invested in XYZ project which will have ABC returns thereby projecting 500% dividend payout”.

3)     Litigation if any ( if CEO wishes to be candid enough)- this is a gray area, which few company’s are quite candid about to let the shareholders know the true inside story if any..

4)     Markets - this spot is an unusually high for the ones who likes to hide away due to the losses and comes up with a cool and jazzy PESTEL or SWOT analysis. This is the point which gives a high to intellectual people to take further call about their relationship with the company.

5)     CSR initiatives (mandate by PM Modi now)- beyond  certain revenues you have to contribute towards the Nation/Society cause, doesn’t matter whether you like it or not- https://indianexpress.com/article/business/economy/mandatory-2-csr-spend-set-to-kick-in-from-april-1/..a great initiative by the Govt. of India.

So, while most of the points are covered in the above section, the most important point that most company’s skip at times to mention- CONSUMER. How often, do we read letters aimed towards Consumers, where the existence of any business relates to the Consumer , which itself should be at the helm of any company’s objective. The consumer might arrive out of Pain point or creation for inclination towards the product. Lets look at One of  my personal fav. Company across the globe-  A letter to his Shareholders by Jeff Bezos- Amazon-No title needed. Seriously…for the starters- he is the CEO and Founder of Amazon! Refer to his picture:

Lets look at some of the Key elements that Jeff wants his shareholders to know…truly amazon….errr..amazing..

True Customer Obsession

There are many ways to center a business. You can be competitor focused, you can be product focused, you can be technology focused, you can be business model focused, and there are more. There are many advantages to a customer-centric approach, but here’s the big one: customers are always

beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied, even when they report being happy and business is great. Even when they don’t yet know it, customers want something better, and your desire to delight customers will drive you to invent on their behalf. No customer ever asked Amazon to create the Prime membership program, but it sure turns out they wanted it, and I could give you many such examples. A customer-obsessed culture best creates the conditions where all of that can happen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56GFhr9r36Y

Embrace External Trends

Over the past decades computers have broadly automated tasks that programmers could describe with clear rules and algorithms. Modern machine learning techniques now allow us to do the same for tasks where describing the precise rules is much harder.

At Amazon, we’ve been engaged in the practical application of machine learning for many years now. Some of this work is highly visible: our autonomous Prime Air delivery drones; the Amazon Go convenience store that uses machine vision to eliminate checkout lines; and Alexa,1 our cloud-based AI assistant. (We still struggle tokeep Echo in stock, despite our best efforts. A high-quality problem, but a problem. We’re working on it.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrmMk1Myrxc

But much of what we do with machine learning happens beneath the surface. Machine learning drives our

algorithms for demand forecasting, product search ranking, product and deals recommendations, merchandising placements, fraud detection, translations, and much more. Though less visible, much of the impact of machine learning will be of this type – quietly but meaningfully improving core operations.