Digitization for customer delight in ready mix concrete business in India

Abstract

The concrete industry in India is subjected to challenges such as aggressive work schedules, space constraints and requirement of concrete with high strength and quality which has created an increasing awareness of Ready Mix Concrete (RMC) due to its many advantages. However, RMC Industry has been always being plagued by issues such as ensuring proper understanding of customer requirements, tracking of product delivery during transit from manufacturing plant to site, unceasing follow ups, and planning error free concrete pours. Improper handling of these issues leads to losses in man-hour, time and quality and cause customer dissatisfaction. In this age of digitization, a leading RMC company felt the need to formulate a customer service oriented mobile based application (App) for addressing customer concerns. In order to make the App relevant with real-time updates, the organisation mapped customer issues. This paper elaborates the journey for the development of RMC App and explains how it serves as a virtual assistant to enhance the customer experience by easy tracking and real-time product updates right from the concrete booking to delivery at project sites. The approach for App development based on Lean principles is brought out in the paper, covering strong orientation for customer value creation, innovative approach for operational efficiency and waste minimization by continuous improvement etc.