
424 Part III n Information Quality Applied to Core Business Value Circles
Quality is not an engineer’s determination, nor a marketer’s determination, nor
a manager’s determination. It will always be the Customers who have the final
say.
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The best way to ensure that you delight the Customer is to ensure that you
design your products and services around the needs and Requirements of the
end-Consumers. This is why the Consumer is at the center of the “Product-Idea-
to-Product-Retire” Value Circle.
It is too late to start thinking about Customer Satisfaction after you have
designed and produced your products and services. The proactive organization
will seek to understand Customer Requirements and design Quality into the
products to meet or exceed those Customer requirements.
But the internal Information Consumers are at the heart of the Value Circle
as well, for they must have Quality Information to produce the products and
provide services that meet their end-Consumer expectations.
Many organizations today have shifted their emphasis from the end-Consumer
to the Shareholder. While Shareholders have a stake in the success of the enter-
prise, they are only “lending” money to the company on the promise of seeing
their “investment” grow. But that invested money is not a gift. Decisions made
for the benefit of the Shareholders may lead management to make short-term
decisions that put the long ...