by Cindy Barnes
We wish you every success.
References
Cook, Peter (2016) Leading Innovation, Creativity and Enterprise, Bloomsbury Information Ltd, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, London
Hutchins, Giles (2016a) [accessed 13 January 2017] Redesigning for Resilience [Blog] Human Spaces [Online] http://humanspaces. com/2016/08/29/the-future-of-business-redesigning-for-resilience/
Hutchins, Giles (2016b) [accessed 13 January 2017] The Evolution of the Living Organization [Blog] The Nature of Business [Online] https://thenatureofbusiness.org/2016/10/24/ the-evolution-of-the-living-organization/#more-1506
Hutchins, Giles (2016c) Future Fit, Amazon, US
Kniberg, Henrik and Ivarsson, Anders (2012) [accessed 13 January 2017] Scaling Agile@Spotify with Tribes, Squads, Chapters & Guilds [Online] https://www.scribd.com/document/113617905/Scaling-Agile-Spotify?ad_group=Online+Tracking+Link&campaign=Skimbit%2C+ Ltd.&content=10079&irgwc=1&keyword=ft500noi&medium=affiliate &source=impactradius
Ludvigsen, Karl (2009) [accessed 13 January 2017] Not So Sclerotic: The Truth About General Motors, The Spectator [Online] http://www. spectator.co.uk/2009/12/not-so-sclerotic-the-truth-aboutgeneral-motors/
Ries, Eric [accessed 13 January 2017] The Lean Startup Methodology, The Lean Startup [Online] http://theleanstartup.com/principles
Ries, Eric [accessed 13 January 2017] The Lean Startup [Online] http:// theleanstartup.com/casestudies#dropbox
Southwest Airlines [accessed 13 January 2017] [Online] https://www.southwest.com/html/about-southwest/careers/culture.html
Waldrop, M Mitchell (1996) [accessed 13 January 2017] The Trillion-Dollar Vision of Dee Hock [Blog] Fast Company [Online] https://www.fastcompany.com/27333/trillion-dollar-vision-dee-hockZappos [accessed 13 January 2017] [Online] Zappos.com/core-values
APPENDIX 1
Value Proposition Workshop survey results
Many companies participated in a series of workshops using the Value Proposition Builder™ methodology. These companies ranged from technology and industrials to logistics providers, and they were coached to learn and then apply the methodology in their own businesses.
In the context of this book, the workshops essentially followed the steps described in Chapter 3, ‘How to develop a value proposition’.
The businesses involved in this survey were mostly small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Figure App 1.1 Breakdown of delegate companies by turnover and payroll
Reasons for enrolling
This was an optional workshop for businesses, which enrolled on it for a variety of reasons:
expand into new markets, including overseas;
improve the customer offer;
understand the customer offer;
convey a technical message to investors.
Key challenges cited by delegates included, in rank order:
lack of growth, either revenue or sales;
being driven towards commodity price strategies;
promotions and communication efforts not engaging target audiences effectively;
cost-cutting and lean efficiencies have been achieved;
competitors are taking the lead in their markets.
Working with the Value Proposition Builder™ process
We asked delegates to describe the experience of working with the Value Proposition Builder™ process:
Figure App 1.2 Delegates’ experience of working with the Value Proposition Builder™ process
‘Really forced deep dive analysis and helped us to formulate and then in turn articulate our proposition in a way that could be communicated to and from all levels within the company.’
‘Great for gaining insights into where the customer sees us bringing value. Validates the things we do well. Informs us as to where we need to improve.’
‘It helped cement a belief that we already had but were unable to successfully deliver/promote to our clients. It also made us realize that certain segments of our target industry are best left to the opposition.’
‘The course gave me a really practical tool kit to support the development of a new sales strategy for the business.’
‘It provides a language and structure to use when presenting our business. When building a new business (or working in an existing business) one is very close to it and it can be hard to step back and put key elements into a framework that others (potential clients and/or investors) can understand in a succinct and clear manner.’
‘The workshop provided an excellent ‘out of the office’ forum for our team to discuss and analyse our offering to the market in a structured and focused fashion. Oftentimes these important concepts and exercises are avoided by small companies as they are considered too complex to tackle but the Futurecurve approach makes it not only achievable in a short time frame but also in a fun and instructive way.’
‘A very valuable exercise that achieved our aim of identifying our value drivers to communicate with investors but also enabled the company to focus on customers needs better.’
‘Our business is all about identifying value for our customers – the tool is perfect for this. We then put our efforts into developing the capability to create more value and of course to eliminate waste.
‘It was a systematic process where each step in the builder built upon the last. This was something that we could replicate outside of the programme for our different offerings.’
How the businesses have implemented what they learned
Twelve months after the workshop, we contacted businesses to understand how, if at all, they had put what they had learned into practice.
Figure App 1.3 confirms that while the most popular approach was to feed the value proposition work through to marketing messages, over half of delegate businesses had also gone on to repeat the process internally. Nearly half had ‘reset’ their company vision and over one-third had changed the products and services they sold.
Figure App 1.3 How delegates have implemented what they learned
Barriers to implementation
While none of the businesses had any problem getting management buy-in, one-third cited lack of resources for an implementation programme as a barrier to putting the workshop into practice. The most common problem, however, was the simple fact of being too busy: nearly 60 per cent of respondents were held back by operational business pressures from putting their plans into practice:
Figure App 1.4 Barriers to implementation
Results and successes
Following the workshops nearly half of the businesses that attended went on to create a new value proposition for their businesses; and over 73 per cent continue to use the Value Proposition Builder™ today.
When asked what success the methodology had achieved for them, responses range from an improved understanding of the business’s value to measurable financial improvement (see Figure App 1.5):
Figure App 1.5 Measurable improvement after adopting the Value Proposition Builder™ methodology
‘A fuller pipeline.’
‘Sales cycles have been cut from months to days, we have targeted messages for each customer segment, clear strategies on how to find new customers and distributors. Sales have doubled each year and our ability to serve those customers has been streamlined by the clarity of our own offering.’
‘Clearer more concise value proposition. Understood by all.‘
‘We have a much better understanding of where we are going, we are on track and slowly transitioning our client base, our engagements and are focused on “demonstrating” the results of our capability. We had ignored the evidence of our successes that is right under our noses.’
‘Clarity.’
‘The process has been used as part of the strategic growth plan for the company. Evidence of its success is that growth targets are being achieved year on year since implementation.’
‘We identified that having closer engagement with our customers by making our scientists available to advise and visit
more was a hidden customer need we were fulfilling. By increasing these interactions we have increased sales, especially repeat ones, but also gained new insights into applications for our technology.’
‘We have grown from €15 million to €40 million. Obviously this is not all because of the builder but it certainly helps.’
‘The process directed us towards a change in our market targeting.’
‘It has allowed us to measure our success and progress in a more systematic and considered way. It gives us common language to analyse performance and interpret market behaviours.’
‘Helped us to focus on customer needs and on packaging of our product.’
APPENDIX 2
Case studies
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CASE STUDY Thermodial
Context
Thermodial is a building services engineering company providing planned preventative maintenance services for heating, ventilation, air conditioning, building management systems, electrical and water services.
Andy Donlan, Marketing Manager Thermodial, told us:
Together with one of our directors I attended a Value Proposition Builder™ workshop, which introduced us to the formal concept of value proposition. I think both of us walking out of that one-day workshop were actually quite excited about the prospect of what the Value Proposition Builder™ could do for the business. It is a systematic process where each step in the builder builds upon the last and this was something that we felt suited our business processes and could be replicated internally.
Challenge
Our overall goal is to get the conversation away from price and more towards other value elements of our service – and if you can be on-message with what you’re saying there, then you can steer the conversation away from price alone. Obviously there is a cost to everything, we understand that, but we want to exhibit some of the other benefits to our service as well.
Action
We have approached our value proposition through a sector at a time as we are active in seven business sectors. For example, hospitals is one of our sectors – we will look at that and do a value proposition workshop with some of our staff internally to find out what it is that customers value. I will have done my own research and interviewed a selection of customers in that sector and I will bring that into the workshop. We go through Futurecurve’s Value Proposition Builder™, the six stages, and finish with something that is twofold: one, we end up with something that we need, especially when we are looking for new customers; two, we also engage with our staff, which involves them in the decision making of the business – this is part of our ethos. Everyone contributes; our people are very clued-in and hands on – and when you put them in a team environment and don’t disregard any ideas, we really get something of value out of the process at the end of it, I think. You need a certain number of people, obviously. We found that about five or six people in the team – from different departments – is ideal.
We now have a more systemized process to gathering customer feedback; I have a template for testimonials, which enables us to get the best messages from customers. Generally there is far more awareness around the company from the managers and the directors; they are tipping me off on specific projects, ‘We’ve done a specific energy-saving project there. Maybe you should talk to the person responsible and write it up.’ Or ‘I think that might form part of a value statement.’ We add the customer testimonials to our website, which helps us in the future when we are going for more customers in that sector.
We have a display system in the office that holds the main points of the value proposition statement from each specific sector. We put the system on the wall so it is visible for everyone to see. It all works very well but you need to have someone like me implementing it day-to-day and I need to have the support of the board, which I have – that is exactly what you need.
Results
What it has done is that it has given our people more confidence going into sales situations with people they haven’t met before as we are absolutely on message then with what those people want to hear in any given sector. So it does give a lot of confidence when going into meetings.
Learning
The value proposition process has given us structure; it has meant that we have a template for each of the sectors that we are operating in. I would definitely build in some implementation time, to work on your post-statement plan if you want to call it that… You cannot just do it and let it fall by the wayside.
I would say that getting people involved from different parts of the business definitely helped us because some of the things that have come out of the workshops are things that neither the management nor I could have come up with, as these are the people who are facing the customer day-to-day – so that information is gold!
Future
There are common themes emerging from our sector work that I am now analysing for our overall company value proposition statement, but I have yet to sit down and formalize that.
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CASE STUDY CCN
Computational Class Notes (CCN) is a self-funded start-up with a vision to enable easy access to education. Based on advanced computational technology, CCN has developed a cloud-based educational platform that can take a wide range of materials from university or college professors, including class notes, reference materials, practice worksheets, etc, and make them available to students via their smartphones and other mobile devices. This accessibility results in increased student learning, success and grades, lower dropout rates, and better use of professorial time to spend in creative work, research and writing, which is vital to the professor and the institution.
Delivering a real-time, dynamic learning environment for both professors and students significantly overcomes some of the organizational and financial barriers inhibiting the education sector.
Director Lucia Valente told us:
We are a start-up, we are not a mature company and we will continue to evolve. We are passionate educators; we want to make a difference to education. If what we are doing does not enhance student learning or help them master their subject or build confidence in what they are doing, resulting in enhanced learning and grades, then we are not going to do it. Our technology, the algorithms we have developed, can be applied to a spectrum of other areas but we have chosen education because that is what we believe in. We are targeting professors because they are the decision makers, they give us the entré to the university or college – the ultimate customer is the student.
Context
We are still educating students using a 19th-century model. We should be thinking about the future; what education model does the 21st century require? It is not the same education I experienced – the current education model still thinks in terms of the 19th-century model, so what we have tried to do is shake this up and say, ‘We want to look and think about education for the future’ – that’s why I called our service The Modern Professor; to reflect the concept of changing the way we are imparting knowledge. The key thing is that we deliver very dynamic learning, unlimited practice questions with quizzes and other tools, bringing the content to life while remaining highly interactive and adaptive to the student, which is dramatically different to learning with passive books and material.
We provide the technology platform and then help the professor to put all their course materials online. It is the professor’s material and class notes. The professor has shaped it and their picture is placed on the course modules and content – the class notes. They are the authors and their name is placed prominently on all class materials. Professors are not only delivering a course (and they take pride in that) – they are intimately involved in the development of the class modules. We work collaboratively and iteratively with each professor – it is their class content running on our technology. We help them to deliver their knowledge digitally to become The Modern Professor, to enhance their students’ learning, retention and mastery as well as r
eturning valuable time into their schedules.
Challenge
Education is more than just getting grades, it is about ‘learning’ and that is the trap that educational institutions have run into: the student wants the grade, they don’t care if they have learnt the subject matter or not. This is the problem that education is now facing. We have read so many articles and I have watched so many YouTube videos about students who graduate with good grades but when they are put into the real world they haven’t learned how to problem-solve – and that goes right back to students saying, ‘I just want to get a grade, I just want to pass’, but that is not education and that is not knowledge.
For many students that pressure for success is increased by their financial situation. Professors we work with tell us that some of their students are so poor that if they have to buy a book that costs $50 or $100 this could mean that month that they have very little money for food. That’s wrong. In this day and age that is wrong and we feel very passionately about making education affordable for students who want to learn; our mission is removing barriers to learning and this is what we are focusing on at CCN.
Action
The Value Proposition Builder™ encourages engagement with the customer – and that has really influenced how we approach our development process when our developers engage with our professors. Our product is software, our company is virtual and we are dealing with customers all over the United States. We have a forum where we talk to our customers and we are now putting a lot of effort and thought into our development site. That is something very tangible that we did and the professors love it, because we have given them a voice in this process.