By A Bisht at 7:09 AM
I found the story IIM-A offers dabbawalas food for thought that appeared in Business standard, downright funny.
The story informs the reader about how some students from IIM-Ahmedabad, India’s key business school, won a case study competition, for suggesting innovative marketing techniques for Mumbai’s famed office meal delivery service the Dabbawalas.
After going through the story the suggestions from the B School to the Dabbawalas are:
The students believe that economic slowdown will catch the Dabbawalas too. That apart, competition form delivery units of fast food chains, changing eating habits and higher incomes can also affect the Dabbawalas.
So what they want the Dabbawalas to do:
• Start a marketing campaign
• Do tie-ups with those that can give stiff competition in future.
• Run a publicity campaign that can reach farthest and still cost less. Use word-of-mouth, local radio, tying up with IPL team Mumbai Indians, get local political and NGO support.
• Use Orkut, hi5, Myspace, Facebook( ok, I stretched the point; the story only said leveraging the current craze for social networking)
• Dabbawalas start a blog and link it to their website.
• Rope in some Bollywood star who connects with common people well to endorse the service.
• Make detailed database which include every detail about the customer and their food preferences.
• Offer vouchers and movie tickets to loyal customers.
That’s it.
Now why is the story downright funny?
The same story suggests that the Dabbawalas are the “masters of supply chain management”. They make just one mistake in six million deliveries. One in 60 lakh, I stress.
Now some facts that I want to put:
The Dabbawala supply chain uses special picture symbols like a star, hash, a bird and so on to mark the Tiffins; So even a person who unfortunately couldn’t go to school or complete his education can be accommodated in the system. If the symbols are made with some material that can raise them from the base, even visually challenged can be accommodated. I hope the system will be already doing this.
The USP of Dabbawalas is their faultless service, how easily word-of-mouth publicity goes for their system and their image of being the sons of the soil.
And just to add, the service should be believed to be rightly priced, as it has 20 lakh clients.
So all said, suggesting them to use a campaign, use social networking, rope in a Bollywood star and so on, is needlessly messing with a system that can be a system to learn from.
It's needlessly complicating a system, that is already working exceptionally, accommodating even those people who can't read and write and above all doing it like an expert.Without the frills of some highly rated organization.Simplicity is also a virtue.
Before concluding, a story from Shiv Khera’s “You can win”:
A man used to sell hotdogs from a small shop. He used to do roaring business. The hotdogs literally sold like hotdogs. The man sent his son to a business school. After completing his education, when the boy came home, he told his father about how hard the future is going to be. The man who was doing great business till then; took his son’s word too seriously. Fearful of the hard times in the days to come, he started making half the number of hotdogs. Buyers came and went empty-handed as the hotdogs were now not enough. And in no time, a man who was doing roaring business once had to settle for a few buyers. The dwindling numbers convinced him about what his son said once. Hard times had already begun.
I found the story IIM-A offers dabbawalas food for thought that appeared in Business standard, downright funny.
The story informs the reader about how some students from IIM-Ahmedabad, India’s key business school, won a case study competition, for suggesting innovative marketing techniques for Mumbai’s famed office meal delivery service the Dabbawalas.
After going through the story the suggestions from the B School to the Dabbawalas are:
The students believe that economic slowdown will catch the Dabbawalas too. That apart, competition form delivery units of fast food chains, changing eating habits and higher incomes can also affect the Dabbawalas.
So what they want the Dabbawalas to do:
• Start a marketing campaign
• Do tie-ups with those that can give stiff competition in future.
• Run a publicity campaign that can reach farthest and still cost less. Use word-of-mouth, local radio, tying up with IPL team Mumbai Indians, get local political and NGO support.
• Use Orkut, hi5, Myspace, Facebook( ok, I stretched the point; the story only said leveraging the current craze for social networking)
• Dabbawalas start a blog and link it to their website.
• Rope in some Bollywood star who connects with common people well to endorse the service.
• Make detailed database which include every detail about the customer and their food preferences.
• Offer vouchers and movie tickets to loyal customers.
That’s it.
Now why is the story downright funny?
The same story suggests that the Dabbawalas are the “masters of supply chain management”. They make just one mistake in six million deliveries. One in 60 lakh, I stress.
Now some facts that I want to put:
The Dabbawala supply chain uses special picture symbols like a star, hash, a bird and so on to mark the Tiffins; So even a person who unfortunately couldn’t go to school or complete his education can be accommodated in the system. If the symbols are made with some material that can raise them from the base, even visually challenged can be accommodated. I hope the system will be already doing this.
The USP of Dabbawalas is their faultless service, how easily word-of-mouth publicity goes for their system and their image of being the sons of the soil.
And just to add, the service should be believed to be rightly priced, as it has 20 lakh clients.
So all said, suggesting them to use a campaign, use social networking, rope in a Bollywood star and so on, is needlessly messing with a system that can be a system to learn from.
It's needlessly complicating a system, that is already working exceptionally, accommodating even those people who can't read and write and above all doing it like an expert.Without the frills of some highly rated organization.Simplicity is also a virtue.
Before concluding, a story from Shiv Khera’s “You can win”:
A man used to sell hotdogs from a small shop. He used to do roaring business. The hotdogs literally sold like hotdogs. The man sent his son to a business school. After completing his education, when the boy came home, he told his father about how hard the future is going to be. The man who was doing great business till then; took his son’s word too seriously. Fearful of the hard times in the days to come, he started making half the number of hotdogs. Buyers came and went empty-handed as the hotdogs were now not enough. And in no time, a man who was doing roaring business once had to settle for a few buyers. The dwindling numbers convinced him about what his son said once. Hard times had already begun.
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