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Marketers who embrace what Lean Six Sigma really stands for — growth, efficiency and customercentricity — see ways to use the tools and training to inspire new levels of creativity and innovation, while helping the rest of the company build and maintain more profitable customer relationships. |
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SOME OF THE WORLD’S LEADING CORPORATIONS HAVE INTEGRATED Lean Six Sigma into their marketing disciplines. What started as a manufacturing quality improvement process is now helping marketers save time and money.
Lean Six Sigma combines the principles of Lean, which focus on making the process go faster by removing waste, with Six Sigma, which delivers what the customer wants by removing variations and defects. Lean Six Sigma and marketing may seem like an improbable partnership, but they do share a key principle — hearing and understanding the voice of the customer.
Making it work in marketing
In a recent article, BtoB examined how large industrial companies, such as General Electric Co. and Dow Chemical Co., have begun using Six Sigma in marketing areas such as new product development and customer support to reduce costs, improve performance and boost the bottom line.
Other companies, such as Honeywell and Cummins Engine Co., are realizing returns with Six Sigma by applying the process to specific marketing-related functions. Xerox’s first official Lean Six Sigma marketing project started small — revising a procedure for newsletter distribution — and nearly 2½ years later, their corporate marketing group has fully embraced Lean Six Sigma.
Always a Better Way
To achieve the overall corporate goal of better meeting client objectives and improving client relationships, First Marketing has begun a companywide Lean Six Sigma initiative as part of our Always a Better Way philosophy for continued process improvement.
Putting the customer first
“The key to making Lean Six Sigma successful is to keep the voice of the customer (VOC) as the focus — that means making sure you know your customers’ needs and desires,” says Kevin McCarthy, First Marketing’s Vice President of Development and Lean Six Sigma black belt trainer. “And they communicate those to you in many ways: through complaints, compliments, product returns and customer referrals. You also must understand what they care about — it could be timeliness, accuracy, price and cost, ease of use, flexibility and options, or other issues related to your business process.”
Taking the first steps
Everyone at First Marketing has gone through the first level of Lean Six Sigma training. The levels are categorized as yellow, green and black belts, with the highest honor given to master black belts, whose primary mission is educating black belts. This training has educated them about the process and the tools available as well as prepared them to become part of Lean Six Sigma projects through cross-functional teams, including the marketing and creative departments.
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