Cost increase and Value enhancement blues
It is a very common scene in industry where employees are paid annual increase and bonus for doing probably the same work next year. In most of the cases the increase is higher than the inflation adjustment.
This means that the cost for doing the job would increase year on year just because the employees involved in doing the work continue to do the same work year on year and keep getting salaries and benefits increase beyond the inflation year on year.
“This is a caution to all those who choose to become cozy with the existing situation because this situation may not last for too long. The value has to be enhanced every time. “
In theory, this would mean that the cost of a service or good would increase year on year even though the value for the same has not increased in customer’s perspective. There is another parallel track where it is observed that a service or product gets refreshed or innovated making the previous one redundant or with diminished value. Classic examples are the pagers, typewriters and post offices.
Such refresh of technology and processes results in job losses and social issues only to be buried under the wave of something good coming in next. While this is a good thing to happen, it is a clear indication that any entity involved in doing some service or delivering goods will have to keep improving to keep the value quotient intact or enhanced. If someone fails to do, it is clear that the refresh cycle is becoming short every time.
While it took Lehman Brothers one century to go down , Auto Giants of Detroit kneeling in front of cheaper and better Japanese rivals in fifty years, the connected world is making the refresh cycle as quick as few months or at most a couple of years.
This is a caution to all those who choose to become cozy with the existing situation because this situation may not last for too long. The value has to be enhanced every time.
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