The Platform

Companies that develop an objective understanding of deep-seated customer needs are at an advantage to reimagine how value can be created and to discover new sources of revenue. Strategies that lead to growth and competitive advantages are crafted by looking through the lens of the customer and developing a deep understanding of needs, both met and unmet. When strategies underachieve their intended goals and new products and services are launched that customers don’t need or want, one underlying issue is a narrow understanding of customers and the outcomes they are trying to achieve.

To develop effective strategies, we will explore the following insights:

• What are key differences between market segments you serve?
• Where do your customers sit in the context of their ecosystem and value chain?
• How are the customer processes and needs segmented?
• What outcomes are your customers trying to achieve?
• What core processes and activities in the value chain are critical to those outcomes?
• What customer challenges and pain points impact achieving those outcomes?
• What are customers willing to pay for, and why?
• What goes wrong? Why do companies misconstrue customer needs?

A carefully guided discovery process with direct customer engagement provides the right foundation to reimagine how value can be created and to develop strategies that deliver lasting economic value and advantages.  It not only helps an organization discover more about their customers, it helps their customers discover more about themselves.

Strategic Control Points are part of a market where, if controlled by one party, can be used to leverage power elsewhere. This can be throughout the supply chain, in a related business, or even in an unrelated market. In today’s business environment, companies that find and win points of strategic control are those that dominate. Utilizing a process developed in over 25 years of work with companies ranging from Fortune 500 in size to small entrepreneurial startups, we have developed an approach to identifying strategic control points within an industry’s value chain and matching them with unique competencies. These are the types of questions to be addressed:

• What is a strategic control point and how do you identify one?
• What process do you go through in order to identify and own one?
• What are the tools, processes, and action items to take advantage of and defend against the within and cross-market impact of points of strategic control?
• What do you do if someone else owns a key point of strategic control?
• Are there examples of companies that have “pried loose” existing points of strategic control?
• What can go wrong? What happens when you play your hand too strongly?
• How can you leverage a strategic control point in one market for advantage in another?

Companies that do well in finding strategic control points and unique competencies financially outperform those that do not by a significant margin. 

Every organization possess some set of capabilities, skills, knowledge, experiences, technologies, resources, and other characteristics that in some combination can form unique competencies that provide competitive advantages.  Most organizations have developed an understanding of what their base core competencies are. However, many organizations have opportunities to rediscover their unique competencies and look at them in ways they have not imagined and in the context of deep-seated customer needs and strategic control points in the value chain.  Unearthing this intersection is where the magic happens in strategy.

Setting clear direction for how strategy will be executed and what actions need to be taken stands between great ideas and tangible business results.  Strategies that enable companies to strengthen value propositions and grow require actions to be taken, changes to be made, processes to be altered, and new capabilities to be developed. Good strategies are successful when the ability to execute is considered during the strategy making process and strong bridge is built to implementation. 

As an integral part of the process, these are the types of questions to be considered:

• Is this idea feasible to execute?
• How easy or difficult would it be?
• What changes would we have to make?
• What types of capabilities and skills would we need?
• Could we do this quickly or will this take significant time?
• Is it a prerequisite to enable us to implement other parts of our strategy?
• What are the consequences if we don’t do it?
• What are the key actions we have to take to advance this forward?

Addressing these questions during the strategy making process helps to set direction and priorities for successful implementation. It helps pressure test ideas early in the cycle, enabling organizations to think through what it will take to successfully implement strategy and understand where the biggest challenges and risks may be so that they can be addressed effectively.