By Marco Hoekstra

In a world where everybody is convinced markets can only grow, the fight is on for market share. There is enough money available but the difficulty is how to spend it in a way that it can lead to maintain or growth of market share.

The Insurance industry worldwide has had to deal with a lot of new international regulation to protect customers and investors. In these so-called emerging markets it sometimes seems as if there is not always need to comply with these regulations.

Luckily I have already seen things changing in the year that I have been in China. Within the insurance industry I come across more and more “operations managers”, for many of them it is still a struggle to find a place in the organization since usually this is a new role that hasn’t been fulfilled before.

They are working hard to get more grip on back- and mid office processes. They are working on transforming the back office from cost to profit center. Imagine a flexible and high quality back office operation. How do you think this can benefit you in your fight for market share…

Many people always say that Chinese are price sensitive. I have learned there is no such thing as “the Chinese”, so make sure you have a clear picture on your client group and try to serve them in a way they want. There is a fast growing group of Chinese who demand high service and is willing to pay for it…, is that your client?

In Dutch there is a saying “being well prepared is already half the job”, so if you really believe in the opportunities for China. If you believe that the growth will continue, that the people in China will further develop themselves. Make sure to be prepared.

There are enough examples in the western world of companies doing so well in their marketing and sales efforts that it finally killed them. If you cannot handle to manage the large amounts of applications in time for example, your clients will be unsatisfied and will go to your competitor. So only investing in marketing and sales is not enough, your back and mid office is part of your offering!

So having grip on your operations is key to make sure the positive effects of your marketing and sales activities can also result in market share and profits for the long term. At the same time it will give you a better insight in your organization and therefore it will become easier to comply with all sorts of regulation. Another important side effect will be that you can make more effective use of the talent in your organization, for a country like china where talent is hard to find a very interesting side effect…

A company that I came across a couple of years ago is focused on Ops management and have develop a whole set of tools especially for the service industry. See www.activeops.com for more information.

Marco Hoekstra, Talent&Pro