Beyond Lean: The Perfect Lean Market: While 80% of manufacturers have lean initiatives, less than 1% have lean practices in place. This article was written by Pamela Lopker, president and chairman of QAD Inc.

She went on to say, “The Makings Of A Perfect Lean Market - There are three primary attributes to a perfect lean market. Clarity is one: The second attribute of a perfect lean market is agility , responsiveness to changes in the marketplace. But lean practices won’t get information to the right place at the right time. That’s where technology can introduce agility, through systems that can receive and process information quickly, even instantly, through automation. Unity is the third attribute of a perfect lean market. Getting information to the right place at the right time can fuel that kind of unity.”

She was talking about the waste in supply change management practices. But when I read it, the correlation to Lean Marketing is very apparent.

1. Clarity: How many times have you looked at a marketing piece and questioned the meaning, the reason for it or maybe you just tossed it. We encourage marketing pieces to be educational or a call to action that ultimately has a benefit for the customer as a result of a response.

2. Agility: I do not mean responding to the marketing idea of the week but having a process in place that allows you to have active content. This can be easily done with a company blog and with joint participation the excuse of a time factor is completely removed. The only factor that matters now is the accountability factor.

3. Unity: This is the most neglected attribute. Your marketing to be effective is not a one-way street anymore. It is about communication. Building platforms that your organization can increase the communication with your customer is the actions we take by monitoring news about our customers, building social sites that allow our customers to post, blog and add videos on their own. Being transparent and mixing it up in front of your customers is maybe the largest selling feature you can have.