Tata Steel, which has announced major cutbacks in ad-spend during the current financial year, has taken a policy decision to channelise resources towards an internal campaign to educate employees on the importance of customer.
To this end, each department of Tata Steel has identified key and existing customers with whom memorandum of understandings (MoU) have been signed to reach quantifiable targets.
A company spokesperson in Jamshedpur told Business Standard, with rapid changes in global competitiveness in the business environment and particularly in steel companies, changes in marketing perspectives have become a necessity. In Tata Steel, innovations in communication drive the process of change, the spokesperson said.
The internal campaign is a continuation of the two-year customer first campaign which took off in 1995-96. This would, however, be the first year that external advertisements have been compromised in favour of an in-house awareness campaign.
The current financial year would also see a big thrust on the use of benchmarking of business operations. Each business practice would be benchmarked against the best practices wherever available. Some of these business practices would be internal and others external.
There is a massive communications thrust towards increasing awareness on benchmarking and how it can add value and upgrade the process involved, the spokesperson said.
The inherent point of the campaign is to win over certain challenges which the company sees as milestones. Each year, beginning with 1995-96, has been dedicated to overcoming a key challenge.
For instance, in 1995-96 the target was to achieve three million tonne of crude steel in the very first year of the installation of the new capacity. The internal campaign at that time kept the employees focussed on this goal.
Last financial year had customer first as the theme of the campaign and encouraged by the success of the campaign it was extended to the current financial year. Each department would undertake to measure from time to time the achievements of MoUs signed with customers and thus improve productivity and quality.
There would have to be a compatibility between the internal and external communications of the organisation.
The essence of this would be a sound knowledge of the requirements of the market and the ability to transfer the urgency of market demands throughout the organisation.
Hence, while the internal stakeholder the employee
