In today's competitive environment and with a mature customer base, organizations need to go beyond providing high quality products and efficient services in order to sustain customer loyalty and retain their reputation in the market. A key differentiator today among organizations worldwide is what are their efforts towards improvement of the very community it operates in, rather than simply coming out with a new and innovative product and/ or a useful service. Customers and more importantly non-customers (people and institutions other than the organization's target market) are today more educated and have access to multiple information sources and expect profitable organizations to make sustainable contributions towards the general well-being of the community. They also take a very keen interest in the functioning of the organizations than what they did a few years ago. Hence, organizations today have a much greater accountability and responsibility towards their actions other than those related to its operations alone. Corporate actions today go a long way in conveying a strong message that the organizations do not simply serve or support a community but are essentially a very part of the community itself.
One of the examples of Corporate Responsibility that comes to my mind is about an Indian business powerhouse, ITC which is active in multiple business streams. It being a very profitable and well-known company realized early that its operations are beyond products and services, and hence as a part of its corporate responsibility and leveraging the power of information technology launched a social initiative, e-Choupal. “e-Choupal, is a knowledge portal providing farmers with a range of information and services. Designed to enable them to bargain collectively and enhance their transitive power. Today, it is a vibrant and rapidly growing zone of business and interaction for over 4 million farmers." (Source: ITC website- http://www.itcportal.com/sustainability/lets-put-india-first/home.aspx) It is similar to a social networking interface in rural India empowering Indian farmers to interact with other farmers and share better farming tools and technology to grow improved crops that can be used as inputs to organizations to generate sustainable value benefitting customers, farmers and the entire community. They can also discuss trends in the markets for their crops and price them accordingly and also sell directly rather than taking help of middlemen to help reach their produce to the markets.
This e-Choupal sounds like Farmville. But really it actually sounds useful and worthwhile, while Farmville is one of the most useless abominations ever.
ReplyDeletee-Choupal sounds like a useful tool to farmers, especially I would think to small time farmers. They need all the help they can get with the big business pushing out the little guy. Anything that helps them get an edge would be a good thing. It's amazing what can be accomplished these days. The fact that they can share farming methods and technology, some of which may be cutting edge could be a huge benefit to them to keep up with the industry. It is also a good thing that they are trying to keep a value of their crops that is beneficial to customers.
Having heard of ITC i agree with you that they are doing a great deal to serve the community back home in India. This portal that they have started seems to be very useful for the farmers who actually do not get their worth due to numerous middle men involved in the transactions. They hardly get any share of the profits of their produce. However i am not sure about how easily can these farmers access the technology in question. In my opinion huge corporations like ITC should send teams of agricultural scientists directly to the various villages where millions of farmers reside in India and should personally train them and provide knowledge on issues like irrigation, better use of seeds and farming techniques which will really help them to get their hard work's worth.
ReplyDeleteI do agree with anirudh that ITC would do a great job if they sent people to teach the rural farmers on how to use the technology.Am sure most of them do not know how to share the information through this technology
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