- By: Áine Byrne
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The secret behind Santa's smooth operations
With your marketing optimised you’ll be seeing a steady influx of leads, but even then you may find, like most businesses that there is a seasonality to it. Times when you get more and times when you get less. Christmas is a perfect example of this, some companies, like us here at adexe, the influx of leads tend to slow down. Others see the complete opposite, with leads skyrocketing as the festive period kicks in. Just think about Santa, his year is a quiet affair until December comes around, his pipeline is filled with requests and the big man in red finds himself swamped!
Qualifying his leads – naughty or nice
By now, children across the world would have sent their letters to Santa, each one a potential lead that needs careful consideration. Luckily Santa has his tried and tested system, his naughty or nice list. Through this, he prioritises the well-behaved children over the rascals ensuring they get the presents they deserve.
Santa’s fortunate, where most businesses would be working hard on converting leads into customers, Santa is guaranteed a 100% conversion rate on his nice list of leads. Wouldn’t it be great if we were so lucky. But once the leads become customers, the real work begins. The good news is he has the building blocks to ensure every order is fulfilled and delivered flawlessly. On time, every time.
Taking on too many new customers, without the capabilities or resources in place to fulfil is a common pitfall in business, especially with businesses that are eager to grow. We always emphasise sustainable growth for a company, ensuring your capabilities grow at the same time as your customer base. This guarantees you can consistently provide the same level of service, quality of product, or solution your customers expect. Santa’s had centuries to work on his quality of service, building out his capabilities in his North Pole workshop to meet the ever-growing demand from his customer base.
When capabilities become magical
The secret to his North Pole workshop’s outstanding service lies in having all the building blocks aligned with Santa’s strategic goal of delivering joy worldwide. These building blocks include well-defined business capabilities, processes, information, and resources. Consider his Magical Operations capability. Qualified leads are passed on to his amazing resources, his Elves, at the workshop, who break down the requests to determine the quantities of each present needed. With this in hand, they can trigger the right processes and put in place an action plan with clear goals and a timeline.
This action plan extends beyond just the presents; it must also account for wrapping paper, name tags, ribbons, and bows. But this is all a piece of cake for the Elves, as Santa’s Human Resources capability includes Elf Training, Development, and Morale Management, ensuring the Elves are skilled in crafting while staying motivated and cheerful throughout the year.
At the same time the Elves receive the list, the Reindeer Powered Flight Ops, also a well-defined business capability, gets a copy. Here, close interdepartmental cooperation is required to calculate the final volume and weight of all the presents that need to be delivered. In addition, they must map out the delivery route for Christmas Eve using Santa’s Sleigh Navigation Support to ensure it is as efficient as possible.
The Reindeer Care and Training capability, which oversees the health and preparation of Santa’s reindeer, ensures they are up to the task.
And once all that is done, it’ll likely be Christmas Eve. With the presents ready and the route planned, it’s now up to Santa to lead his team of reindeer across the world and complete the fulfilment, ensuring every child receives the presents they wished for.
Come Christmas Day, thanks to solid building blocks of well-defined business capabilities and seamless interdepartmental cooperation, Santa can relax knowing he has successfully converted and fulfilled his lead list, delivering end-to-end value and creating a world full of happy customers.
So, as Santa wraps up his magical operations and we all switch off for the festive season to spend time with friends and loved ones, let’s take a moment to appreciate the incredible teamwork that makes Christmas possible. Wishing you all a Happy Christmas filled with joy, warmth, and all the magic this special season brings. May your holidays be as well-coordinated and joyful as Santa’s North Pole workshop!
From everyone here at adexe, we’d like to wish you all the best for the holiday season.