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"If you become your own supplier, you compromise on quality"

By Hasan Shahin, Senior Market Analyst, Zawya
The three Ps - Product, People and Process - continue to be the most important drivers of business success, but Rashwan Miknas, the Managing Director of McDonald's in Lebanon, would like to add Business Ethics to the mix.

In an interview to Zawya, Miknas said he sees the following as the main reasons for business success: having an attractive concept, employing responsible people, building an ethical business environment, creating a well-assessed supply chain, and establishing an ongoing educational system for employees.

Describing McDonald's burgers as "the falafel of the world", Miknas said "everyone accepts their taste and can afford their price". Likewise, as the structure of the world economy was molded into that of one big town, burgers - not only those of McDonald's - became acceptable by everyone. As it is up to the producer of goods to offer them at an affordable price to widen the customer base, the big players in the burger industry were able to transform something that was born in the West to something whose consumers are the global citizens, he said.

People and their sense of responsibility, practices, fairness, customer orientation, and definitely ethics are indispensable elements of success. "No business can succeed without people who get things done - accurately and in a timely manner," Miknas said.

He emphasized that a customer-centric environment is vital for the success of a business. In his opinion, challenges lie in attracting customers, maintaining them, influencing them to refer your brand to potential customers, and, most importantly, to "never stop building your brand in their minds and hearts".

"It's all a matter of perception; how customers perceive your brand and how loyal they are to it," Miknas added. "Besides having an attractive concept, a business needs people who think right and act right, and no one can think and act right if he or she is not fair and ethical - towards customers, other employees, suppliers, and literally everyone..."

One of the keys to business success is avoiding vertical integration, Miknas said. "If you become your own supplier, you compromise on quality. We outsource everything, literally everything," he said. This way, managers will never think twice before turning down any raw material intake whose quality they doubt.

On training employees, Miknas said: "A company should never stop filling its employees' glass. The more educated they are, the more loyal they are to the business, the more they give to it. There's nothing more rewarding to someone than making him feel good about himself; and education does this best."

Miknas believes a successful business is one that recurs, not just occurs. And in order to make your business recur, you need to make sure to have fulfilled the mentioned elements of success, starting with a concept that can grow into a "falafel". Moreover, he advises managers not to take any step forward without being totally sure that what they already have is perfect. "Live and let live; no one will ever have everything. Greed is the enemy of business. Avoid it," Miknas said.

© Zawya 2011

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