Sunday, October 25, 2009

Cost effectiveness Vs Quality. Which one is better for an organisation?

Ours is business organisation.Its a Knowledge driven business. Striking a coherence between cost and the quality is really imperative in order to sustain in the market. Our website accentuates the importance of both .It says"we strive to offer our client best quality service at fair price".
Quality
Quality is the face of the company.The company is known for the deliverable it produces.
Q: Why does it every time happen when Nokia/Siemens launches a product and there is a huge surge in the demand and people are ready to compromise with the cost! ?
An obvious Answer:- These companies have established their brand name for their quality and they are simply known for that.
Q :Why does it every time happen when Big software firms like Infosys,TCS,Accenture bent upon to reach high CMM level(Capability Maturity Model) and Six sigma level?
Answer :Because they Know how important is to have a quality brand name to ensure great sense of service and loyalty to the customers.
Quality definitely helps in retaining faith during weathering times.If one gets in Economics ,the law of Diminishing Margin Utility says every product has certain life cycle .During that life cycle one time frame comes when the rate of returns contributed by the product starts depreciating .During that times quality comes as a rescuer.So Creating a good quality product is always advantageous.
More importantly,In a process industry a good quality assurance department always leads to a cost effective product.Say a manufacturing industry a good quality department if finds a technical glitches in the beginning of manufacturing process,Then whole amount of rework is prevented hence a cost effective product is obtained.
Cost effectiveness.
Cost is important to run the finance of the company.The best characteristic of low cost product is simply that it entices the client.In Tough times like this no customer is loyal to anyone.Offering the low cost with same quality as that of competitors will attract the customer.
Not even that, a cost effective product will build long standing strands with the customer.
Cost effectiveness means how effectively one is using the cost to obtain a product or a deliverable.It should not be construed as a low cost.There are different way of reaching to a finalized product.That product has certain benchmark and standard.The most economical way to reach the product without compromising the quality will lead to a cost effective product.Hence,a cost effective product is noway a bad quality product. It indeed is the economical way of producing the economical product.
According to the research conducted by SERI on the downfall of the investment banks in the financial crisis,The main reason for the collapse of companies like GM was lack of restructuring Plans during their good times .These organisation didn't resort to cost effective measures like Restructuring .Then during weathering times it resulted in absolute Mayhem.Hence cost effective measures like restructuring should always be there at any point in time.
British Petroleum is a company which used to take the service of many IT Vendors for running their business unit system,finance system,inventory management system etc. Now Instead of taking service from many IT vendors they opted to get service from single IT Vendor which ultimately saved their huge cost .Such cost effective measures can really be fruitful in tough times.
Too much cost effectiveness is also an unfavourable aspect of business.Too much cost effective will reduce the margins .The insufficient margin can put you out of the business.That margin which could have been utilized to retain the key employees,future expansion is no more . So It is sometimes a business suicide!!!!