Recently Jeff Bezos, founder of e-commerce giant Amazon, overtook Bill Gates to become the richest man on Earth. With Amazon’s immense success in the e-commerce sector, this comes as
no surprise.
There are various aspects to a business that makes it a success. Keeping up with the latest trends, product availability, customer experience, consumer satisfaction, efficient delivery systems, right pricing, kick-ass discounts are just a few things that matter. There are large of variables that can determine how to stay afloat in the market.
However, one thing that can build or break sales is pricing. Whether it be setting the right price for your products or giving discounts that don’t burn down your profit margins but still attract customers, it all always comes down to pricing. And that’s where Amazon has left every other competitor in the dust.
Amazon’s Secret
It takes Amazon exactly 2 minutes to adopt a price change and that’s 43,000 minutes faster than the industry average! No wonder Amazon stands at the apex of the e-commerce business and they are able to do this by exploiting big data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to its fullest. Amazon’s pricing algorithm puts machine learning and data analytics to smart use, enabling price shift based on the insights gathered from web scrapping and big data analytics.
This enables Amazon to stay ahead in the market by learning from the various trends that it analyses and adapting its decision-making capabilities according to the market changes.
Another way Amazon has managed to be top of the shelf always is by following the Six Sigma philosophy. This data-driven philosophy gets its name from the 6 standard deviations used as guidelines to keep business defects firmly in check and within established specification limits.
With such impressive results, here are some key take away from Amazon’s work method.
1. The Basics
Despite the fact that Six Sigma has not been heavily advertised upon in Amazon’s publicity material, it is an integral part of it’s functioning and has been integrated into company’s Operational Excellence program. For example, adopting many of the Six Sigma concepts,
Amazon often recruits the finest thought leaders from top institutions like MIT and
Carnegie-Mellon. Since your business is only as good as the people who run it, you might
as well try to get the best of the lot.
2. Keep it Lean
Amazon devotes a lot of manpower and technology to provide customers with great customer service experience. The transportation system for various packages is based on the promised delivery date and each job function is thoroughly designed to attain maximum efficiency.
3. Building off Kaizen
The goal of any business is undoubtedly to get better results over time with increased levels of efficiency. At Amazon, the philosophy of Kaizen is followed. It focuses on maximizing efficiency to match or exceed customer needs that govern the way a company runs, especially in the fulfillment center. Amazon’s warehouses produce 35 orders every second. Even if your company doesn’t have such a high demand, it might be a good move to be attentive towards elements like order processing that have a direct impact on your bottom line.
4. Upgrade your Business
The only way to keep ahead in the market is to transformatively update your business. Amazon is
a brilliant example of keeping pace with trends while maintaining trust and credibility within the consumer base. If Six Sigma can help Amazon grow leaps and bounds, surely there will be some key insights for you take away as well.
Wish to know how you could further your business growth through the Six Sigma philosophy? Contact us at Datahut, your big data experts.