Services
We work with:
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Start-Ups: Help in developing a robust customer base
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SMEs: Strengthening and improving interactions
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Larger Corporations: Re-connecting and growing large accounts
Our reason d'être
MFC is a consulting firm designed to fill the connectivity gap between suppliers with great products or services and their customer base. Having worked as a key account manager for a diverse range of customers types and sizes, many with international footprints for many years, I became acutely aware of the sizeable disconnects which can often develop between supplier and customer on many levels.
This disconnect or lack of understanding and alignment between the two companies would combine to produce a difficult, cumbersome and inefficient dialogue.
The dysfunctional dynamic would create an ongoing struggle for both entities to develop a stable, efficient business relationship. Ultimately a (temporary) balance would be reached with extra costs regularly being incurred to institute short term remedial actions such as air freight shipments, SQA escalations or cash-flow issues from aged accounts.
Such a business relationship regularly requiring extra cost expenditure on both sides is unsustainable for supplier or customer. This pushes the customer towards looking for an exit strategy and purchasing may conduct a market test of the supply base, resulting in some for all of the business likely being transitioned to a competitor.
This can be addressed though as there are many different tools available which can be applied to address internal and external areas of concern to build a successful long term relationship; this is where we fit in.
What kind of services do we provide?
At the highest level, we're on a mission to help companies grow revenues and profitability by figuring out how to better align with their customers and build the account value. Whatever the industry, market, product or service type it is essential for a company to develop and incorporate a customer driven approach into their ideology to maintain and grow their business portfolio.
To fill and support that need, we have developed a set of tools addressing the different areas upon which companies can focus to optimise their customer management techniques. These tools and techniques can be easily adapted and integrated into a variety of businesses, from early stage start-ups through to mature larger corporations.
For start-up companies, the ability to embrace a customer-driven approach is key to its' business development strategy - forming a solid foundation to build revenues and expand its' customer base. SMEs and much larger companies may also experience "distancing" from customers following a period of expansion, re-alignment, re-structuring or other disruptive corporate initiative. The sheer size and number of people with accompanying frequent staff turnover may mean customer focus has been unintentionally sidelined - in this case it may be necessary to institute a customer re-alignment process.
Typical Areas of Focus
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Improved customer engagement
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Delivery on customer project milestones
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Developing a pro-active approach to avoid last minute scrambles
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Planning around key customer drivers
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Ensuring a customer-centric focus
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International account management
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Easing pinch-points in processing customer orders
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Customer segmentation modelling