One of India’s prominent thought leaders on market strategy and consumer behaviour, Rama Bijapurkar is an independent management consultant who has served as a director on the boards of several of India's blue-chip companies such as Infosys, Axis Bank, Bharat Petroleum, and Nestle India. Her current associations include Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services Ltd, Apollo Hospitals Enterprises, and Sun Pharma.

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An alumna of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, she has been teaching at the apex institution for over 20 years. Focused on bringing market and customer focus to business strategy, she is the author of We Are Like That Only: Understanding the Logic of Consumer India, A Never-Before World: Tracking the Evolution of Consumer India, and Customer in the Boardroom.

In this exclusive interview, Bijapurkar dives deep into the mojo that makes winning companies continue to win, gives sage advice on how to best deal with burnout and professional disillusionment, shares some of her favourite reading on business strategy and growth, how she ensures that each of her books has something new to offer, and why she thinks that despite inundated with new supply, consumer India is still an underserved market.

Q. Why is it important to have the customer in the boardroom?

A.

Boards are focused on improving the financial health of the companies they supervise. They support, monitor, and supervise all aspects of fundamental value creation (sustainable and sustained increase in earnings) that in turn leads to (or should lead to) continuous shareholder value improvement. Strategy and execution that can make this happen are key elements of board focus. The reason why the customer needs to be in the boardroom is that the financials of a company cannot be achieved without customer cooperation.

Revenue and revenue growth are about customers choosing to put their money on you and what you offer as a company and not on someone else. The cost line in a P&L statement has the element of the customer in it because one element of cost is the cost of making what the customer wants. Costs can be cut and controlled but if that is at the cost of customer acceptance then that is a problem. The profit number is merely a derived number of revenue minus all costs. That’s why the customer has to be in the boardroom.

Let me take two other areas where the customer needs to be in the boardroom, areas that boards carefully look at:

1. Mergers and acquisitions: Often businesses rest on the value of customers acquired, on synergies that are supposed to help serve customers better or get a larger share of the customer pie, and on the value of “brand” which is a set of perceptions embedded in the name which has the power to attract new customers. However, without the customer (orientation, knowledge) in the boardroom, it is hard to make appropriately sound decisions in this regard.

2. Boards also do focus on ensuring that the business they supervise stays “competitive” and withstands “disruptions”. The meaning of these two words is that customers (potential or current) must perceive a value advantage over others (benefit-cost) and should want to buy/stay. This again needs customer orientation and knowledge in the boardroom.

Q. What is the one essential that companies should keep in mind when developing customer-centric strategies?

A. There can be a big difference in the logic and perceptions of customers and the company. Hence, companies must test their assumptions about how customers see the world and perceive value and then decide suitability for their needs because they could be exactly opposite. Therefore, companies need to have a bifocal vision—see the world of customers and their own internal world and ensure that strategy delivers a win-win for both.

Companies also need to know that talking to customers about products is still product focus, not customer-centricity. And a caution for B2B companies is that talking to customers about how they relate to your business is not customer-centricity. How much do you talk to customers about their business?

Q. Is there a secret sauce to building a winning business?

A. I wish there was. But the framework that can most certainly help companies win is to see their business as a value delivery system.

The first step is to choose what value the business delivers for whom. Does it improve performance for athletes or make medical diagnoses easier or does problem-solving innovation in lighting and display, or help farmers mechanise?The second step is to align your entire business (all functional areas) with this chosen value, come together to deliver it, and keep building the competence to continue delivering it.

The final step is to signal the value at all touch points to the customer.

Basically, all the three parts have to be in harmony. This orientation and discipline are what make winning companies continue to win.

Q. You have had a prolific, multi-faceted career. Of the many roles, which one do you enjoy the most?

A. I love the consulting role; working with individuals and companies who are very smart and bigger and better than me. This keeps me on my mental toes and makes me stretch out of my comfort zone. The learning is tremendous and the adrenalin that comes from stretching feels good. The classroom is my next love.

Q. In one of your interviews, you said, “I try to resist the temptation to copy a successful template. Each of my books is different in tone and content.” How do you ensure this?

A. As I write or think, if it seems familiar and predictable to me and I get a sense of deja vu, then I know that I am not thinking hard enough and that readers will also see the book as more of the same. I try and start with what new am I saying that I haven’t said before and who is this message meant for and what tonality works best for this and the book automatically derives its execution from here.

Q. How do you avoid burnout and professional disillusionment?

A. Both burnout and disillusionment can never be avoided. The idea is to be self-aware enough to see them coming. If it’s burnout, then I change the pace, do something else and take a break, lie fallow, cook – women can do this so much better than men, I must say. As for professional disillusionment and disappointments, I hate to sound cliched but I analyse it to death and obsessively post-mortem it (after I have licked my wounds) and see why it happened and what I did wrong and need to do differently going forward. I think hard about why it happened.

If what I consider to be my best work gets rejected, I obsess over why and muster the courage to face up to the answers (which could mean I need to walk away or that work has had its sell-by date or I need to re-tool or do the same thing differently).

Q. What kind of business writing would you like to see more of?

A. I would like to see more insightful “what is happening and why” kind of writing. I am a bit tired of the first half of an article describing a situation in obvious ways (revenue of industry/company went from X to Y in years a to b) and the why being “Company lost market share because consumers bought competitors” or “Customers uptraded or downtraded.” It leaves me wondering “But why?”

There needs to be more depth in situation descriptions and more insight into the reasons why. This applies to all sectors—stock market reporting, company stories, economy stories, and geographical stories.

Q. After the social media explosion, do you think it’s become more challenging to write a book?

A. Absolutely yes. Even as you write, you drown in what is already out there and you are constantly unsure of your own point of view. The bar to go beyond what is out there and not just synthesise all that is available is high. It is sheer hell.

Q. Your favorite books on business strategy and growth?

1. Kenichi Ohmae’s Mind of the Strategist

2. Blue Ocean Strategy by Kim and Mauborgne

3. CK Prahlad’s Competing for the Future

4. Ted Levitt on Marketing

5. Carl Madsbjerg’s Sensemaking

Q. Is a new book on consumer India on cards?

A. Yes, there is a new book that is in the works. After We Are Like That Only and its sequel A Never-Before World, it is time to take stock of consumer India once again. This book discusses the consumer India of today in terms of structure and behaviour and also has a section on how the new economy business models have the power to unlock the mass market opportunity that MNCs and large companies, barring a handful, have stayed away from.

The behaviour story is great news, we all know that. The structure story is not great news, we like to forget that. And the supply story is mixed news. My thesis is that despite the tsunami of new supply, consumer India is still an underserved market.

Read other pieces by Sneha Bengani here.