The customer must configure your company. By forcing every function-not just marketing, but also manufacturing, finance and HRD - to work directly to fulfil her needs. By directing every process - not just selling, but also budgeting, planning and strategising - towards her. By compelling every person - not just the front line staff, but also the CEO - to interact with her. The three critical steps that will enable this transition: Build a chain of internal customers. Institutionalise the process of innovative ideation and expose every part of the organisation directly to the external customer. The pay offs? The values of customer service will cascade all over the company. A constant stream of ideas will keep you ahead on the innovation curve and an enterprise-wide culture of customerisation will blossom, empowering your company to leverage its resource to achieve customer focus and to be competitive. How To customerise-I: Redefine every employee as a customer for everyone else in the organisation. Treat the owners of every stage in the work-flow as customers of the previous stage Create several chains of internal customers, leading up to the external customers Use internal customer satisfaction as a gauge for measuring effectiveness Appraise and reward every employee on his success in serving his internal customer Now there could be several questions in your mind. Why are you? I am because the market is. The market is because the customer is. I am, therefore because the customer is. In fact, I am because I am as the customer wants me. I am because I am the Customerised Corporation. MAKE NO MISTAKE IN TODAY'S MARKET ECONOMY,which is telescoping into the knowledge economy of tomorrow,only the customerised corporation will survive and the corporation must understand that only if they internalise a high level of allegiance to their customers will they be to customerise themselves.               Welcome to the age of the customerised corporation.A corporation whose every employee from the door man to the director is resposible for upholding the values of the company's customers and biniding them to the company forever.Obviously, then each company must start exposing its employee to its customers and suppliers and vice versa,so that the foundation-the mindset of its employees-on which the company launches its customerisation drive is strong.And a few smart companies have already started their march to this goal.               But each company's ability to perceive,intepret and service the customer with precisely the kind of products she desires will not be enough to arm it with the compititive edge of customerisation.Indeed the customerised corporation of tomorrow will have to completely rebuild itself around its customer. 2.Who is your customer? Marketing Manager:He buys the company's products.He is the company's main source of reveneus.He is a contantly changing and demanding person whom the company needs to sevice and listen to constantly since he is the company's d'etre. Manufacturing Manager:He is the person who buys what we manufacture. Research & Development Manager:He is the one who buys what we develop.  EACH COMPANY HAS TO REALISE THAT IT IS FAR MORE PAY-ing when the people who create and manufacture products for customers-the R&D teams and manufacturing staff,for instance also intaract with them.Once this realisaion draws,its logical end usually is the beginning of the customerisation.     HOW TO CUSTOMERISE-II: Ensure that every employee realise the importance of new ideas and concepts Build enough flexibility into individual goals to inject innovation in the problem-solving Empower employees to customer problems on their own initiative Use customer feedback and participation to keep the innovation customer -focused Measure the success of all the ideas in terms of the value they add the customer. ENCOURAGE IDEATION-NOT MECHANISATION, unfortunately most companies manage people, using the carrot and stick policy. New human resources development paradigm has to focus on ideation in a way that it brooks on functional and hierarchical barriers.  Once your employees get into the habit of ideating, educate them on the necessity of listening to customers. Smart companies do this by developing networks of team that assemble themselves as a slim, all-pervasive layer atop the functional structure. Members from various functions and across hierarchies band together as a team to interact and listen to customers. The team identifies the problem areas for a particular process based on the feedback and priorities its tasks. The team's goals are integrated with the organisation's goals in terms of reducing the volume of low grade products. The team institutionalises the new process as a new customer valuation system in the company's manufacturing function.  3.How do you root the customerisation culture deep into your company? A.By servicing your internal customers the way you intend to service your customers. 4.Who are your company's internal customers? A.People within your company who take your work after you have finished with it and carry out the next function towards serving the other intermediate and then the final customer.   CORPORATION NEEDS TO DO unto themselves what they seek to do their customers. Hence the company needs to service every link that constitutes each proces in its value chain, so as to create a strong internal customer value chain.To make that happen companies will have to adopt a horizontal and stacked cellular structure. Manufacturing becomes the internal customer for Finance when the latter is required to service its budegeting requirements. Manufacturing is administration's internal customer when the latter has to service the support needs of the manufacturing process. Administration on  the other hand is Manufacturing's internal customer when it asks the former to furnish its support requirements. Finance is Manufacturing's internal customer it asks the latter to furnish similar details. service each other as they are each other's onternal customers. How to Customerise-III Ensure that every employees interacts directly with the customer and the end-user. Allow the customer Access to every person and function within the organisation Turn every encounter with the customer into a platform of interactive communication Involve the customer in designing fine tuning key products and processes Set up the system to facilitate interactions between suppliers and customers. Finally the winning corporations of tomorrow will be those that not only build on their core competencies but can also transform themselves in a rapid changing world.About corporations which have tha intrinsic capability to value what the customer wants.Indeed that should become the core value of the meta crporation:to develop into a company that not only values customers needs but is also able to guide its customers to their future values. That in a sense is truly customer focused corporation customised by its customers.