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In this podcast, Jim Champy, chair of Perot Systems Corporation and co-author of the best-selling management book, Reengineering the Corporation, talks about his latest book, Inspire: Why Customers Come Back. This is the second of Champy's three books in a Financial Times (FT) Press series about new business models. The resources section has a link to Enterpriseleadership.org's podcast with Champy about his second book, Outsmart: How to Do What Your Competitors Can't.

Jim Champy has a talent for seeing the writing on boardroom walls - companies have to change the way they work if they want to be effective. No wonder Champy's book, Reengineering the Corporation, became an immediate best seller throughout the early 1990s. Over the years, Champy's has continued to crank out books and consulted about how companies must redefine business processes and their strategies if they want to compete.

Several years ago, Champy embarked on a journey to find out how companies have devised new ways to do things, and what we can learn from them. Using a filter of double-digit growth and triple-digit growth, he came up with more than 1,000 companies - ranging from mostly emerging companies to some major corporations. Champy's research has turned into a FT Press three book series about new business models pioneered by these high-growth companies. His Outsmart book features case studies about nine companies, such as Partsearch, that are innovating about how to deliver a better customer experience by combining high tech with high touch. Inspire, his latest book, includes eight concise case studies about how businesses, such as Puma and Stonyfield Yogurt, have become successful by inspiring their customers to be loyal for the long term. Deliver, Champy's third book in the series, will focus on how successful companies execute on their strategies.

Champy says that innovation was the key to driving double-digit growth at many of the companies he has profiled. Talking about Inspire, he says a company's vision directly can affect its sales success. "The new generation of customers value transparency and authenticity above all. If you want to keep your customers coming back, you need to learn how to define a consistent value proposition - one that will make your customers stay passionate about doing business with you."

In this podcast about Inspire, Champy discusses the role innovation plays in the Inspire paradigm, the top five characteristics of customer-centric companies, and the ways CIOs and CTOs can use technology to get closer to both internal customers and external customers.

Bio
Jim Champy is chair of Perot Systems Corporation's consulting practice, and is also head of strategy for the company. He directs the company's team of business and management consultants. Before joining Perot Systems, Champy was chair and chief executive officer of CSC Index, the management consulting arm of Computer Sciences Corporation. He was one of the original founders of Index, a $200 million consulting that CSC acquired in 1988.

He also co-authored Reengineering the Corporation, which appeared on the New York Times' best-seller list for more than a year. His follow-up books include Reengineering Management, The Arc of Ambition, Fast Forward, X-Engineering, and his two latest books, Outsmart, and Inspire.

Resources
Jim Champy Discusses Inspire, FT Press
http://www.ftpress.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1349306

How CIOs Can Help Their Companies Outsmart Their Competitors, Enterpriseleadership Podcast with Jim Champy
http://www.enterpriseleadership.org/blogs/podcasts/2008/09/21/how-cios-can-help-their-companies-outsmart-their-competitors-jim-champy

Taking Care of the Company, The Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123914815543399105.html

Production Credits
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer