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Over 12 months ago we released our first ‘snapshot’ of AdaptomyDNA on Linked in. Since then, there have been many developments. This latest snapshot summarises some of them. What’s new Over the past 12 months we've Changed the governing architecture to reflect the complexity of markets and customers, embrace approaches to managing complexity, sense and build more adaptive, responsive strategies and operations. Added 16 new disciplines based on research into market management, segmentation, behavioural economics, availability, buyer management and implementation of commercial solutions. Framed 20 questions that make it easier to interpret AdaptomyDNA and focus on business outcomes. Categorised and grouped DNA disciplines around these 20 questions to focus on business outcomes We've completed 'first cut' mapping of DNA processes, roles and responsibilities and we're now developing the next generation We've developed ChatGPT Scripts to generate more insight into the DNA model, tools, techniques, metrics and measures We've introduced a new 'standard' process model with seven components, this refelect the iterative and cyclical nature of commercial processes Moved our diagnostics onto a new platform that supports immediate response rather than delayed survey analysis. Mapped data, information, metrics and measures, tools, and technique to detailed processes within Adaptomy DNA, current status 25% of 76 processes completed, remainder to be completed by end March 2024. Created ‘wrappers’ to build instances of DNA for businesses at different levels of maturity (start-up, scale-up and so on…) We've also Started the journey to share DNA through AdaptomyREACH, an entirely new platform for commercial innovators to share insight and ongoing development of AdaptomyDNA And, we've started mapping DNA into a variety of common tools and approaches, starting with ABM - Mapping Account Based Marketing (ABM) over DNA to assess what’s missing and how to build ABM+ What we've learnt on the way We've learn't a lot and covered a lot of grount but some of the key insight include: Ideal customer profiles are far from ideal, personas probably don't work that well Segmentation is not all it's cracked up to be Many 'experts' don't know how to calculate TAM, SAM and SOM, even if they did, it's not the best approach to understand the value and dynamics of markets Some popular metrics and measures don't do what it says on the the tin, some aren't useful and some are downright misleading Value propositions and offer management are consistent weaknesses Too many 'strategies' aren't strategies at all Artificial intelligence will help define AdaptomyDNA, make it easier to search and will be instrumental amplifying the usefulness of proprietary data in AdaptomyREACH. Pricing doesn't have the profile it deserves ABM is an incomplete approach, although it has value it has many gaps that many businesses don't recognise - we're using AdaptomyDNA to close the gaps Underlying commercial opertaing models and performance improvement systems in many businesses are sub-optimal Many businesses don't have an architecture to hang their commercial data on, their ability to prioritise data with respect to specific disciplines that drive value isn't well-developed People still think in terms of organisational silos like strategy, PR, communications, marketing, sales. These contructs don't help from a 'new discipline' or process perspective, they hinder exploration and experimentation. AdaptomyDNA can accomodate any organisational model, whatever you think 'marketing' is or any other organisational construct, AdaptomyDNA can help. It's essential for AdaptomyDNA to remain non-prescriptive a flexible framework for all kinds of companies with mutiple 'start-point's and paths to success.

Commercial data has always been a strategic asset. Unfortunately, it's often not managed like one. It's often treated as transactional information, transient tactical data to fuel short term insight, campaigns, and promotions. Data quality, data integrity, veracity and interpretation are often open to question. Consequently, many businesses are squandering value and failing to build valuable operational and intangible assets using data, especially proprietary data. The explosion in data availability More data then ever is available to businesses, but not all data is either urgent or important. Forecast predict that 5G, IoT and AI will accelerate the growth in data availability. Connected devices, sensory networks, new content, deeper, more granular operational data mean that there will be plenty data available. That's a blessing and a curse as most organisations don’t have well-developed plans to maximise value from the data the have already. Most commercial organisations have not aligned their data needs or data collection to the key disciplines of commercial strategy and operations. While there are many sources of data and the volume of data is increasing, this lack of assignment and alignment is creating an operational gap that is likely to increase. This gap between data availability and management means data assets are often sub-optimally managed and under-developed. The most valuable data is not that which is generally available or available to a few it’s proprietary data, developed from proprietary sources or derived for available sources. It’s this kind of data that’s an asset, providing the basis for insight that’s difficult or impossible for competitors to replicate. Data as an asset Many businesses see data as transactional, transient, a means to an end, Fewer, see it as an asset, something to be curated and developed, an investment. Both are right. Data is a useful source of transaction and strategic insight. The key is knowing which data is useful or valuable in both circumstances. In a transactional sense it can help develop insight into intent, inform personalisation and drive conversion. In a strategic sense it can help share strategies, inform choice, and build adaptability. In both cases the right data is an asset, the wrong data is a liability. However, there’s a lot of data around, it’s not all useful, meaningful, or accurate. It can often be disorganised, incomplete and inaccurate. Commercial and customer data is no exception. Data is a strange asset, in many ways it’s in a class of its own, in most circumstances it’s not limited to a single owner. It’s easily copied, shared, and used. This is why proprietary data is so important, why it should be protected and why it’s arguably the most important source of insight Data architecture and AdaptomyDNA Before any business can think about the collection and quality of data, about data assets, there needs to be a framework or architecture to understand why and when certain data is valuable, what that data can be used for, how it drives customer and commercial value and the accountabilities and responsibilities for commercial data asset management. AdaptomyDNA provides that framework. AdaptomyDNA is a collection of over 70 commercial disciplines, an adaptive model, an integrated framework, a unified architecture to assign data and information*. It helps design and deliver commercial strategy and operations and it’s a way to develop meaningful metrics and build deeper insight into customer and commercial value and the efficiency and effectiveness of commercial operations. *We have completed approximately 25% of the data assignments for AdaptomyDNA disciplines, that’s about 23 disciplines, starting with Sense and Re-think clusters. The full map is due for completion by the end of March 2024.Each discipline, the detailed processes, and the clusters to which they belong have been assigned data. The data is classified in three ways and is used to drive specific metrics, measures and insight associated with one or more disciplines and their processes. Within DNA Data Asset Management is discrete discipline within the Renew cluster. AI and commercial data Increasing use of Artificial Intelligence in commercial strategy and operations amplifies the need for consistent, accurate**, reliable data, rationalisation, and optimisation of data sources. Ensuring data integrity at source, verifying and testing data from all sources is critical to the success of any AI strategy. This is difficult to achieve without a clear architecture or framework. AdaptomyDNA provides a framework to cluster and test data, to optimise data collection across a range of disciplines and processes. Proprietary customer and commercial data, derived data and insight are key assets. These assets can only be build over time if data and information sources are carefully assigned and curated. They can only be managed effectively if the business is clear about data value and how that data informs strategy and operations. AI can exploit these assets to provide differential advantage to customers and the business, but only if the data and information is consistently managed. **Conventional wisdom suggests that more accurate data is more valuable, but often data that’s 90% accurate is a useful as that which is 100% accurate and is costs much less to produce. However, with the advent of AI this rule may no longer hold. Data context, patterns, and history Commercial and customer data is context sensitive. It changes over time and circumstance, loses its relevancy, it decays. Its currency is important, so too are the patterns it creates over time. Even subtle changes in the state of data can reveal important customer or market insight that can offer real differential advantage. Today, traditional statistical tools, predictive modelling and AI are being combined to uncover these insights using a combination of available and proprietary data sources. Again, it’s critical to understand the relevancy of source data and these insights to specific commercial disciplines, strategies, operations, and business outcomes. This is especially important when considering the current value, value growth and investment in data assets. Data that’s valuable to one organisation at a point in time may not be valuable to another. It can be challenging to identify and value data assets. The main challenge is attribution the value of specific data to the outcome. This is why an overarching framework is key, it help management assignment and allocation to specific disciplines and processes, the metrics and measures associated with the discipline and the accountabilities. It’s not a perfect science, but it’s a starting point. Key takeaways Unifying data across commercial strategy and operations obviously has efficiency benefits, more accurate, timely information. It can also help increase effectiveness through reliable data that truly informs decision-making. However, the real benefit for any organisation lies in building deep, unique and proprietary insight that informs specific strategies, tactics and operations, insight that delivers more customer and commercial value, insight that aligned to particular disciplines. This is hidden advantage, asset value that is difficult if not impossible for competitors to replicate. Know where value is derived from data (have a framework) Understand the disciplines, processes and accountabilities around customer and commercial data management Develop and curate non-proprietary and proprietary data sources Develop adaptive methods and tools to assign and manage commercial and customer data to specific strategic disciplines and operations Manage data as an intangible or intellectual asset - an investment

AdaptomyDNA is a new framework, ontology, taxonomy, narrative and methodology for commercial strategy and operations. It's a practical approach to creating and delivering customer and commercial value. It's a new way to think of commercial strategy and operations, it's a different way of thinking about marketing, sales and any other more conventional commercial function. It's focused on business outcomes and market impact, how value is created and delivered, not simply the categorisation and configuration of functions. Clarity and consistency Since the foundation of Adaptomy over 6 years ago[1] the primary goal of AdaptomyDNA has been to provide a common reference model for commercial strategists and practitioners. It’s a way to bring clarity, consistency, and completeness to fractured functional commercial operations and organisation. It’s based on over 70 commercial disciplines that help answer critical commercial questions. These disciplines are organised in five primary clusters: Sense, Re-think, Propagate and Renew. These clusters reflect thinking about management of complex systems, progressive leadership, agile, adaptive strategies, opertaing model design, and organisational resilience. Going beyond convention AdaptomyDNA goes beyond conventional approaches and organisational models that are past their sell-by-date, offering its users a flexible yet connected suite of disciplines which they can organise to suit their specific needs. You won’t find things like the 4P’s[1] listed as a discipline, or ABM as a method, or functional grouping like marketing and PR[2]. Instead, you’ll see the components and connections amongst commercial strategy and operational disciplines that can be organised in a wide variety of ways to suit operational and organisational needs. It’s these disciplines that systematically create and deliver customer and commercial value. Functions, although still important, are seen within AdaptomyDNA as organisational wrappers, (collections of disciplines), that can be intoduced at a later stage depending on roles and responsibilities and how the business would like to structure itself. Focus on business discipline Disciplines in this sense are the inputs, processes, diagnostics, tools, techniques, roles, responsibilities, capabilities, outputs, outcomes and human factors within a commercial operation that produce value. Key flows, inputs and outputs connect processes throughout the model. In this respect it’s essentially a discipline framework, a connected process model, a system. We've mapped these processes in a process mapping tool to understand the connectivity, roles and responsibilities as well as provide more detail about the process internals. What we've found is that most of the 'processes' are far from linear, they are, at the same time cyclical, highly iterative and interactive, 'always on processes', (although it has to be said, some are more or less complex or complicated than others, and some might be considered to be fairly simple). It's been used to: ·         Place customers at the heart of business ·         Answer questions of commercial due diligence ·         Understand how to shape organisation to drive better outcomes ·         Fix specific operational problems – improve a specific discipline ·         Align commercial operations and optimise capabilities ·         Organise around POD’s and Squads ·         Diagnose performance issues ·         Eliminate functional siloes ·         Drive more customer and commercial value It’s not rocket science It’s not complicated, it’s a reflection of what actually happens to create and deliver commercial strategy and operations that deliver customer and commercial value. In essence AdaptomyDNA is fairly simple. It’s been designed to focus on answering business and commercial challenges. Challenges like those reflected in the illustration below. The illustration below shows sub-clusters, within each of these sub-clusters are groups of specific disciplines that help resolve each of the challenges. If there are different challenges to be explored or overcome, then disciplines can be grouped in a different way. Or in the simplest case one discipline can be isolated and worked on, that's sometimes how things start, a specific pain, or an itch in one specific discipline that needs looked at, Designed with the outcomes in mind. AdaptomyDNA is configured and organised around answering key business and commercial challenges, not around functional siloes, although if that’s what you want, you can do that too. It's designed to be adaptive, allowing strategists and practitioners to pick and configure several disciplines to help explore and overcome their commercial challenges. First, it provides a framework to recognise and explore the kinds of questions being asked, and align key disciplines to help deliver outcomes. Different 'paths' or clusters can be built to explore and deliver different outcomes. In a way it can be seen as a set of strategy and operations building blocks that can be arranged within different operational and organisational models. It has been used to help start-up, high growth, VC and PE firms and corporates systematically answer straightforward business challenges like this: 1.    What markets are attractive? 2.    What are our big ideas? 3.    What does it take to win in-market? 4.    What’s the market fit? 5.    How should we go to market? 6.    How should we scale and grow? 7.    Are we winning? Measuring success There are many metrics and measures associated with AdaptomyDNA, some at a granular level measure performance of specific disciplines, others reflect collective measurement of multiple disciplines and other are more universal. In fact, metrics and measures was where it all began over 20 years ago, but that’s another story. One of the things we’ve learnt is that many metrics and measures are useful in combination at different times. However, some metrics and measures, which today are popular, can be misleading if used in the wrong way and some are just useless or plain wrong (Marketing ROI). What’s important is that the metrics and measures are focus firstly with the disciplines, the things being done that create or deliver value, eliminating those activities that don't. It's only important to measure functional performance one an oprganisational model is agreed. Some of the more prominent, (obvious) universal focus areas for commercial metrics and measures are: Market value and market share Number of customers Revenue, margin, and cash flow Brand prominence and reputation Customer feedback Innovation Operating model performance Intellectual capital and intangible asset value While there are many more metrics and measures that can be used from time to time for very specific purposes, there are surprisingly few that are really needed to guide performance. The trick is knowing which group of metrics and measures are the right ones to effectively measure outcomes in specific situations. That’s’ where it helps to know which disciplines are relevant to explore and realise the kinds of outcomes the business is looking for. Continued development AdaptomyDNA continues to develope through addition and refinement of discplines, processes, inputs, outputs, diagnostics, through the configuration of dispclines to provide different buisness outcomes. We're also building a new community for commercial innovators called AdaptomyREACH. In the community we are sharing our insight, prodiding snap shot and deep explanation of disciplines, providing access to diagnostics, process models, tools and techniques that support AdaptomyDNA. We are want to create a new focused and shared dialogue around AdaptomyDNA, what is is, what it can do, how it should evolve. We continue to embrace new learning in complex system management, strategy, marketing, sales, performance and operational management theory. More importantly we are looking for people to join with us and develop better methods, tools and approaches in commercial strategy and operations. You can find out more about that through AdaptomyREACH. We are also developing models specifically for start-up, scale-up, established corporate and market leaders. If you would like to know more you can contact us directly, register your interest in AdaptomyREACH or AdaptomyDNA or connect with us on Linkedin- we'd love to here from you. [1] Adaptomy was founded to commercialise the work of Brand Intellect which created the first instances (over 20 years ago), of what is now called AdaptomyDNA. These were developed through commercial projects focused on defining systematic commercial, marketing and sales strategy and operations with several major clients [2] There are many approaches used in commercial strategy and operations, however they are not all disciplines or methods, some of them are little more than guidelines or focus areas. Some of them have stood the test of time and are important. They often help prioritise or emphasise key facets of commercial strategy and operations, they can provide useful guidance, but some are incomplete and their interpretation and implementation can be inconsistent. However, within AdaptomyDNA valuable ones are recognised and explained but are not always considered disciplines. Where we think there are gaps we show how AdaptomyDNA can be used to fill them [3] Marketing and PR are important elements of any commercial operation. Theories of brand, marketing and reputation management are well advanced and there's plenty of good academic literature. However, elements of the comercial landscape like marketing and PR are often implemented as functions, their construct and organisation differs from one company to the next. That often means their operation and performance can't be compared or benchmarked. However, what’s more important is that underlying commercial disciplines, are clearly understood and well executed, that roles and responsibilities are aligned and allocated in the right way, and that value is created and delivered. AdaptomyDNA provides an operational framework to help make this happen, so that businesses can design their organisation with confidence, in any way they like.

Change is inevitable There's growing momentum around unification of commercial disciplines and for good reason. Radical change in commercial operations is almost inevitable as new frameworks, operating models and technologies unify strategy and execution around customers and opportunities. This has been 'on the cards' for a a long time. We first wrote about Unified Commercial Engines (UCE's) about 4 years ago, in our first blog on the subject Unified Commercial Engines, Sep 2020. UCE backed by rigorous method However, the concept of UCE's has been in development with Adaptomy for a lot longer through all our work on AdaptomyDNA a methodology and framework for commercial strategy and operations. We've helped many different corporates, ambitious SME and VC-PE backed businesses to transition from traditional functional commercial operations to more unified integrated ones underpinned by AdaptomyDNA. Organising principles In our previous paper we explained the need and value to build operations and organisation around the customer. This isn't Account Based Marketing, (ABM) which focuses on the most valuable accounts, the UCE approach applies to all customers, all opportunities. ABM only alludes to re-organisation, alignment between sales and marketing. In organising around the customer, UCE advocates all disciplines are organised around customers, in fact the concepts of sales and marketing as functions disappears, there's simply no need for these as departments or functions. The governing principle is to organise around clusters of customer touchpoints, experiences, or journeys, to align the business with models like the one shown below. A new organisational model - POD's By creating smaller, semi-autonomous organisations with all the requisite disciplines and capability to be commercially self-sustaining, businesses can amplify or increase concentration of customers, their needs and opportunities. Each POD is essentially self-contained, able to identify opportunities, plan, promote, sell and support it's own cluster of customers through each step of the model above. There are two ways to look at this: POD's that manage everything for a group of customers from cognition to recommend POD's that focus on one of the key stages like cognition or discovery and hand off to other specialised POD's Both approaches are a step away from more traditional sales and marketing because they are organised around customers and their behaviours and not an internal function like sales or marketing - they are integrated and aligned with respect to customer preference. There may be some need for multi-cluster governance, geographically or by some other industry or market grouping tom ensure overall alignment with business strategy and markets. This includes unification of overall strategy, performance management, brand building, data and insight, However, most of the time the POD's operate as an alliance, a confederation and coalition of customer focused, semi-autonomous commercial engines. Going beyond organisation Organising around customer touchpoints through POD's can bring efficiencies, it helps create a more agile and responsive business. However, everything still depends on the quality of execution, consistency of brand and alignment with overall business strategy. What's needed is a consistent shared operating model, an architecture to grow and develop capability and manage capacity. That's where AdaptomyDNA comes in. AdaptomyDNA provides a unifying framework for consistent development of commercial strategy, operations, and capability. It helps optimise investment, compare, and build performance through over 60 commercial disciplines. It ensures that resource and capability, knowledge and insight are interchangeable and transferrable across POD's. It ensures siloes don't form around different practice, go to market strategy or operations and that best practice, new approaches and ideas are shared. AdaptomyDNA is an underlying operating model and the key to effective UCE's. Without something like AdaptomyDNA any UCE is prone to decay and may simply create different siloes over time. Without an underlying operating model like AdaptomyDNA it's difficult to conceive of effective ways to build commercial assets, intangible value, and intellectual capital with any degree of success. With an operating model like AdaptomyDNA investment and resource is more portable, flexible and can be directed specifically to disciplines that need it. In other words, the business can deliberately manage value across multiple disciplines.

Introducing Adaptomy REACH Are you still trying to justify the existence of a functional silo? Are your commercial disciplines really connected? Do you have a clear commercial operating model, a consistent methodology to build capability? Do you know how the business creates customer and commercial value and where your intellectual and capital assets are? ______________________ Ten months ago I wrote Adaptomy DNA, White Paper Part 1, 20 years of innovation. That was to be followed by part 2. This is the plan for part 2. Part 2 will not be a white paper, it will be a movement, a collaboration to continuously develop the methodology and implement it to drive 'real-world' commercial outcomes. Step one: Time for change It's time to change the narrative of commercial strategy and operations. It's time to stop talking about functional siloes like Public Relations, Marketing and Sales and start talking about business and commercial outcomes like scale-up, growth, market leadership, revenue, margin, cash flow, capital asset and customer value. It's time to cut through organisational barriers and functional ambiguity to understand and use the key disciplines that drive commercial outcomes, what they are, how they are connected and what commercial and customer value they create. It's time to abandon 'pretty periodic tables', loosely configured approaches, 'single point' tools and techniques that were never imagined to work together, that don't work together efficiently, that can't work together. It's time to develop integrated disciplines and processes that deliver value. It's time to change perspective and embrace a new ontology, taxonomy, and vernacular. A perspective that combines systematic and human factors, inputs, outputs, processes, meabingful metrics, behavioural economics, and psychology. A way to bring together valuable tools, academic research, practical experience, to clearly define disciplines, establish clear connections, and configure these disciplines for any kind of organisational model. This is what AdaptomyDNA was designed to do. With over 60 disciplines already defined and supported by detailed process models, tools, and techniques we're well on the way to changing the narrative. It's a map for all stakeholders to understand where value is created, delivered and contribution that commercial strategy, execution, and operations make. Step two: Ask everyone to help Creating a methodology to change the narrative is one thing, but it's needs to be used and owned. That's what AdaptomyREACH is all about. It's a platform where commercial innovators can engage with peers and experts, where they can access Adaptomy DNA, contribute development and share in the outcomes. It's full of spaces where different 'outcome-based' commercial conversations can take place, where innovators can help shape disciplines, learn and share insights within a common, systematic 'organisation agnostic' framework. We're starting with scale-up and corporate business challenges. If this is something that interests you, or you know a great company that could make a real contribution or benefit from a unique combination of collaboration and systematic commercial methodology, reach out or visit AdaptomyREACH. The challenge As we move through 'super-early bird' and work with development partners we are looking for commercial innovators, people who truly want to change the narrative. We want the methodology to take on a life of its own, to be developed and implemented by enthusiastic practitioners, we would love to see commercial strategy, execution and operations become the disciplined, accountable and impactful entity that is can be. We want to know what you need, how you'd like to use the platform and the methodology, we want to understand the commercial challenges you're facing and how you're currently dealing with them. We want to find ways to ensure the method and the platform overcome real-world commercial challenges.

Just listened to the MarketingWeek debate on marketing effectiveness, 'Should Marketers have a 'universal' framework for effectiveness?', hosted by Russell Parsons with Mark Ritson Cheryl Calverley Peter Weinberg Jon Lombardo and Matt Holt . A great debate and 'right on the money'. Discussion on the effectiveness of marketing is where it all began for me over 20 years ago. It's the origin of AdaptomyDNA. It's critical that this conversation continues like this, at a strategic level and doesn't regress into popular market dicourse with people '10,000 times more famous', talking about irrelevant and sometimes misleading anecdotal concepts. Three factors for Marketing Effectiveness I'd say that to measure effectiveness you have to understand three things: Your current and future customers and the world they live in Business and customer outcomes and the value you're creating The system or reference model that you're trying to measure The first point is a 'no-brainer', except there is a tendancy for practioners to obsess about current customers and forget future ones, or past ones for that matter. The second point is that 'marketing', is part of a commercial system, a system that creates and distributes value, for the business and its customers. It's part of value management. The last point, and arguably most important from the point of view of measuring effectiveness is the need for an agreed, or at least well defined system or reference model to set expectations and build the propsects for systematic performance improvement. There's a problem in marketing As Peter said, "...there's a problem in marketing where the answer is always...well it depends...no right or wrong way...everyone just figures it out on the job.."... well, that's just not good enough. 'It depends' is a reasonable response if you have a system or reference model to explain what 'it depends' means. You need to be able to explain what the objectives and outcomes are, as Matt said, "...it depends on...to diagnose and get to the biger outcomes..." is the key. To explain 'it depend' and the bigger outcomes you need a reference model or system, and as Jon said, "...there's no agreed framework for marketing...". I'd say no agreed framework for commercial. Essentially, the disicplines that relate to marketing can eminate from and exist almost anywhere in the business. As Mark said, "...if you want to see soft fleshy, useless marketing...go to the marketing function (large multi-national headquarters), that's the place where you'll see the worst marketing...it's out in the field where, in the product team, in the pricing team where there's really proper marketing going on...". There are great corporate marketing teams in many businesses, but Mark has a good point that functionaly ineffective silo's can easily emerge. Without an agreed way to assess effeciveness, a common framework, contibution and effectiveness can't be measured - which parts of the business have built capability and are making a contribution and whaich are not? Why build a framework? The debate completely encapsulates the reasons why I created Adaptomy DNA, a methodology for systematic commercial strategy, marketing, sales, operations and performance improvement. It's a framework that helps businesses build and deliver customer and business value. What often gets in the way is the term 'marketing'. A while ago I thought that defining what it meant was the answer, I don't think that anymore. It's a functional constraint and marketing can be made up of a wide range of commercial disciplines. With AdaptomyDNA a definition of marketing doesn't really matter. Rather than focusing on functional outputs we are focued of the strategic and tactical outcomes from a deliberately orchestrated collection of comemrcial disciplines, in line with what Cheryl was suggesting as, focus on critical path disciplines for particular context or circumstance, business and customer outcomes. With AdaptomyDNA you can wrap any organisational structure you like around a set of disciplines and 'functionlaise' them. A Methodology for Commercial Through my own analysis and work I've concluded that what's needed first and foremost are: Founding principles that include: an externalised 'outside-in' perspective, a focus on value management, value creation and delivery for customers and the business, a strategic and tactical orientation and an ability to adapt quickly in response to market and economic conditions. Also required, at least to build capability and differential advantage is a 'non-functional', process or discipline perspective, an appreciation of what's required to drive short term P&L outcomes, Balance Sheet assets and liabilities and capital assets or intellectual capital. One more gem, more a 'rule of thumb', suggested to me by David Gluckman in a recent conversation is, "...always try and reduce the distance between the idea and the customer...". This plays well with the non-prescriptive, configuarable nature of AdaptmyDNA. An over-arching framework that's not anchored in traditional organisational, functional or silo'd thinking, a framework that re-sets the agenda and conversation around exploration, management of complexity, re-thinking, propogation, fulfilment and renewal. A framework with an 'externalised' perspective. (I've built this framework, it challenges orthodox organisational thinking to focus on current and future customer outcomes) A clear reference model, terminology and vernacular that focuses attention and shared understanding of specific commercial disciplines, a way to organise debate, learning, knowledge sharing and execution (I've defined, in detail the origin and processes that support 67 of these) A non-prescriptive approach that helps practitioners build critical paths aligned to the business and customer outcomes, a way to shape capability to fit business needs and outcomes (each of the 67 disciplines are configurable, they can be grouped to form focus areas like scale-up, marketing transformation, go to market...) A methodology that accepts the wide variety of roles and capabilities that contribute to commercial success, (not just marketers, but sales people, account managers, computational scientists, technologists, strategists...). As Jon said, "...there are some good marketers in marketing, good marketers in sales...). I'd say the breadth and depth of moderm marketing, commercial strategy and operations must include a range of skills and capabilities that would never have been considered to be part of marketing or commercial, even just a few years ago - systems engineers, bahavioural scientists... A framework to help allocate metrics and measures to capabilities that produce business outcomes, (specific discipline measures, wide-angle metrics, metrics that matter and those that don't, accurate descriptions and use of metrics and measures...) An approach to help business leaders identify and allocate investment in intangible assets and intellectual capital that drive business value (relationship stickiness, connections, brand assets, capability...) I've been working on this methodology for decades, building it through commercial projects with many different clients of different sizes in different industries and sectors. I did this because I shared the same frustrations and ambitions with Mark, Cheryl, Matt, Peter and Jon. I agree with all those on the panel that this is important stuff, not helped by some of the more popular anecdotal nonsense around, 'focus on your why' for example, (anyway our approach is always start with 'What if?', then 'Who'). I'd say if you want to undersdtand effectiveness from a commercial or marketing point of view, focus on building capability in specific commercial disciplines and outcomes that really matter to your business and your customers. Often the first challenge will be knowing what these disciplines are and how they relate to each other to deliver value. I'm no where near finished building AdaptomyDNA and have a great support network of associates and clients, and there are some exiciting things comming down the pipe this quarter where I'll start to share AdaptomyDNA methods and tools with a much wider audience.

It may seem paradoxical but has marketing in some businesses developed an unhealthy, even myopic obsession with revenue? Arguably in some businesses marketing has become little more than sales support, a lead generation engine, focused on driving sales, obsessed with short term campaign revenue attribution, pipeline and 'marketing ROI'. Short term economic and commercial pressures undoubtably account for some increased focus on tactical revenue, but there has been gradual shift in focus, a growing trend for marketers to fixate on revenue or more accurately, short-term revenue. "Overly focusing on revenue ignores other factors that can mean the difference between success and failure." - Forbes Make no mistake, revenue is important No one in their right mind would argue that revenue is not important, of course it is, and marketing should pay attention to revenue, especiallly the quality and sustainability of it. They should support sales with well qualified and 'winnable' leads, the should understand and help manage pipeline, sales velocity and conversion with effective marketing intervensions and they should understand payback and revenue from campaigns. But is revenue the primary driver for marketing effort, is there more to marketing, a wider, more important agenda. Revenue is undoubtably one of the primary drivers for sales effort, but what about marketing? Arguably two drivers are more important for marketing: Opportunity management - market potential, penetration, share and growth Maximising contribution - margin and positive free cash flow It's not a case of one or the other, it's both, in combination, the volume of winnable or won opportunities times the margin and cash flow they will or have produced. Opportunity management Good short-term and long-term reveue, are products of effective opportunity management, identifying the right business to win, and winning it. If the business is not winning or holding market share, it's shrinking, new strategies and tactics need to be found to win in current or new markets. If it's winning 'any old buisness' it may be 'buying cost', diluting resource or sacrificing margin and cash flow through discounts or excessive cost to serve. Furthermore, current revenue may still look fairly good even when the prospects and probability of future growth are diminishing. Marketing, almost by definition, should be 'all over' opportunity management, identifying winnable, sustainable high margin opportunity 'in market'. Marketing should know where growth is comming from now, and in the future, the volume and frequency of opportunities that exist, how they can be identified, how much they are worth and how to win them and the probability of doing so. If marketing execute against this kind of agenda, sales opportunities, better conversion and revenue will follow. Revenue is a beneficial and welcome outcome of good opportunity management. But, it's maximising contribution, margin and cash flow that really matter. Maximising contribution Margin and cash flow matter more than revenue, so why aren't marketers focused on these factors? Margin and cash flow matter more to marketing than revenue because margin and positive cash flow analysis helps marketers understand and improve the quality of revenue and ensure the business is making money. Maximising margin is part of brand building. Protecting margin and cash flow is part of pricing and discounting strategy. Winning business with attractive payment terms has a direct effect on cash flow. Effective management of margin and cash flow delivers to the bottom line and increases the capital value of the business. It's sustainable, superior margin and positive free cash flow that increase brand value and shareholder returns. Again, almost by definition marketing has a direct responsibility to build superior margin, (an indicator of brand strength) to create and maintain a premium between costs and price. It has a clear mandate to ensure 'quality of revenue' and therefore good cash flow by engaging and winning business from the right customers, at the right time in the right markets. The long and short of it Focusing on opportunity management and maximising contribution helps marketing balance short and long term brand building and activation. It's one mechanism to help balance marketing strategy and investment in brand building and activation. Superior opportunity management and maximisation of margin has a compound effect on the capital value of the business. By consistently finding and winning more 'margin rich' opportunities the business can build brand, invest, protect price and cash flow in the short and long term. The proverbial debate in marketing about the choice of investment in brand bulding or activation is in many ways misleading, a distraction, it's more a question of thinking about the outcomes, how to deliver sustainable margin and capital asset value. To do this marketing needs to embrace systematic approaches and dsisciplines beyond the remit of short-term tactical marketing. It needs to focus on buisness outcomes, not marketing inputs. Increasing iterative adaptability and speed One thing that marketing can and probably should do is to increase the adaptability and speed of market opportunity evaluation and contribution managemnet cycle times. This isn't a short term or tactical initiative, it's simply increasing the frequency of strategy formulation and audit, a faster more frequent calibration of opportunity and commercial outcomes. Systematic approaches, clear process, data and AI can help here, but first there has to be recognition and investment in this capability. Clearer understanding of the discrete, yet connected disciplines that drive opportunity management, margin and cash flow. More adaptive, faster market opportunity identifiction, evaluation and contribution management makes good sense, at least from a marketing and commercial point of view, especially in current challenging economic times, it's part of building resiliance in the business. The executive agenda There's another dimesion to this. I'm often asked why marketing doesn't have a seat at the 'top table'. The answer, is that marketing in some businesses is too focused on tactics and execution. It's a support function, a lead generation engine for sales and its strategic contribution just isn't identified, promoted or visible to executive teams. To a large extent the executive questions and marketing contribution could be framed by marketing answering two executive questions, the why, what and impact of marketing strategy: Where is business growth comming from now and in the future and how do we capture it? - This is a question of market opportunity, why should the business focus on one opportunity and not another, what does the opportunity look like, how much is it worth and what's the probability and actuality of the business winning 'in-market'? If and when we capture that growth how much should it be, or is it really worth to the business? - This is a question of impact, the bottom line is, how much money is the business going to make or making from selected market opportunities in the short and long term? This isn't really a question of revenue, it's a question of sustainable, superior margin and positve free cash flow, basically, that is money in the bank. If marketing can systematically answer these two questions with credible evidence and authority, their seat in the executive is assured. If they can only testify to campaign ROI, revenue and pipeline then they are destined to remain in tactical execution and be less relevant to strategic and executive decision making. Conclusions Revenue is imporant and every marketer should be encouraged to keep an eye on it, it is an important metric to measure. However, it's arguable that they should be more focused on growth opportunity management and marketing impact, superior, sustainable margin and cash flow. This will help deliver short term results in the form of 'good revenue' and help build longer term capital value and shareholder value in sustained profit and capital asset value. It will provide the c-suite with valuable growth insight and business impact measures that they are looking for. It sets the scene for meaningful marketing contribution and a seat at the top table. For an introduction to the systems and approach behind the thinking in the article, adaptomyDNA a value management and growth methodology covering market opportunity identification, evaluation, strategy, marketing, sales and perfomance improvement. For more on cash flow as a metric that matters: Metrics that matter, and those that don't, No. 2, cash flow.

Another article on the futility of Marketing ROI as a meaningful measure of marketing performance. Are you trying to measure marketing ROI? Why are you trying to measure marketing ROI? What are you planning to do with the results? Should you really be focused on Marketing ROI as a primary metric for marketing? In a recent study by Marketing Week, marketers voted Marketing ROI as the top metric they thought the C-Suite wanted, ROI - Top Effectiveness Metric Demanded by C-Suite. (Thanks for the prompt Mark Peacock...). It is astounding that almost half of marketers (48.4%) say ROI is the most important metric for their CEO, CFO and board members think. Thank goodness just under 52% don't! Calculating ROI To be clear, Return on Investment (ROI) is calculated by dividing the Net Return on Investment by the Cost of Investment multiplied by 100% or Final Value of Investment, less Initial Value of Investment, then the result divided Cost of Investment multiplied by 100%. It's about investment, costs of investment and returns. No one thinks it's useful Despite continual prompts to the contrary from academics, industry bodies and consultants many marketers, particularly in B2B, still have an unhealthy obsession with marketing ROI, and are insistent on trying to measure it. Here's what some of the most respected people in marketing have to say: "ROI tends to inversely correlate with profit growth, as due to diminishing returns ROI decreases as you spend more, and increases as you spend less. So the easiest way to increase your ROI is to decrease your media spend. ROI can send you broke. Your most profitable customer is your next one.", Byron Sharp, courtesy of Tom Roach, Marketing Week. "It is odd that ROI has taken such a prominent role in the recent calls for accountability. Advertisers should indeed be able to justify the expenditure in financial terms, ideally the impact on the bottom line. One can call that productivity or payback that is the return from (minus) expenditure, but the ROI ratio is misleading." Tim Ambler, London Business School "Don’t optimise ROI, optimise net profit. The optimum ROI budget is always zero. If you optimise ROI you will destroy your business." Les Binet, Adam & Eve DDB, marketing Week. "While ROI is “absolutely” the correct way to measure short-term performance marketing, marketers need to stop trying to measure the ROI of long-term brand spend. Let’s stop measuring the long of it and brand building with stupidly complex, just ridiculous dollar estimates,” Mark Ritson, Marketing Week. ROI is not the greatest metric for measuring investment success, many financial and investment analysts have abandoned it, but Marketing ROI is just an idiotic fool’s errand. Here’s a simple scenario to explain why. A marketer, let’s call him Farquhar, focuses on trying to measure marketing ROI diligently collecting information about costs, expenditure and revenue. Unduly concerned about what constitutes investment, investment costs, time to return, cost and expenditure allocation, or relative contribution of marketing to revenue or asset value Farquhar uses all the data he can get his hands on to isolate what he thinks is investment and what he thinks are costs of investment for the quarter. Farquhar applies the ROI calculation and comes up with a number, a neat little percentage, marketing ROI for the quarter. Excitedly he goes to the CFO and proclaims he’s calculated marketing ROI. The CFO looks at Farquhar with a blank expression. The marketer says "Surely this is important, I’ve calculated marketing ROI, we can use it to justify marketing and measure its contribution?”. The CFO looks at Farquhar with a blank expression. Farquhar asks, “why aren’t you excited about this, don’t you think this is important?” The CFO calmly says, “No, I’m not excited and it’s not important”. Farquhar asks “Why?”. The CFO says, “I appreciate you’ve gone to a lot of effort to try and calculate marketing ROI, but I doubt it’s an accurate calculation, marketing contains many different programmes running over different periods of time, it also has long term investment programmes in assets like brand and short term expenditure or cost, what you might refer to as costs and expenditure associated with 'activation' programmes. "Marketing has no start or end, it's a continuous stream, a constant flow of programmes and activity. Unlike a discrete campaign which does have a defined period, start and end, for which you could have calculated ROI. Instead of ROI you might want to think about NPV and Discounted Cash Flow, or payback, maybe even net profitability of campaigns. However, you simply can’t calculate ROI for marketing”. The CFO then goes on to say, “What’s more, comparison between one investment in one period and another period is meaningless unless the conditions in each period are the same, marketing isn’t like that, it’s quite dynamic”, a slight pause, "marketing is also part investment and asset building and part expense or cost and revenue building, which bit are you calculating ROI on?". “What you’ve clearly demonstrated is that you don’t understand the meaning, purpose or calculation of ROI”, and then she says, “even if you could calculate marketing ROI and your calculations were accurate, marketing ROI doesn’t matter to me, to be frank, the world of financial and investment performance management has moved on from ROI as a useful metric, except in very specific investment scenarios”. She then says “If you’re talking about ROI being a broader concept, a contribution in a wider non-financial sense, then don’t use the term ROI” Which is quickly followed by, “I’m not interested in marketing ROI as a metric and I’m not interested in marketing wasting time to justify its own existence. If I thought for a minute marketing could not justify its existence, that would be a whole other world of pain”. Farquhar asks, “Well what is important to you?” The CFO responds by saying “What’s important to me is the contribution marketing is making to the premium we can charge over and above our costs and expenditure, what’s important to me is how marketing drives sales velocity, volume and the confidence we can have in the quality and amount of future revenue, what’s important to me is how marketing drives market share, reach, new opportunity and acquisition, what’s important to me is how marketing is building differential advantage, intangible asset value, brand, reputation, and intellectual capital that’s driving up our share price and capital value”. The CFO finishes with, “I know marketing is important, there are many far more useful ways to measure its contribution to the business, but I don’t care about marketing ROI, there are far better, more accurate and informative metrics and measures that could be used” Just then, the CEO walks in. “Hi, what’s going on here?”, the CFO says, ”just talking through marketing performance measurement and contribution”. “Great stuff” says the CEO, “ Hope you didn’t get side-tracked by marketing ROI, we need to be well beyond that, we have strategic capability, superior margin and a brand to build” What do you think? Never mind if you think you can calculate marketing ROI, ask yourself is it the right thing to do, is it metric that matters would you be better looking at something else that clearly show the great contribution marketing makes? For more have a look at: Metrics that matter, and those that don't: No.1: Marketing ROI #marketingROI #marketing #ROI #adaptomy #AdaptomyDNA

20 years of innovation There’s a proverb that says, “if a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing well”. There’s another phrase popularised by Jim Collins called a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG). The development of Adaptomy DNA fits both these descriptions. Developing systematic methodologies to support commercial strategy and operations, providing a framework for commercial capability building and capacity management, a systematic value management and growth methodology is not for the faint hearted. Today Adaptomy DNA is a unique methodology for systematic commercial scale-up, growth, capability building and value management. It’s a methodology to help leaders and commercial teams know why, when, and how to take ideas to market, create customer value, 'win in-market', drive cash flow and build capital assets. It's based on 63 commercial disciplines supported by proven playbooks, diagnostics, templates, process maps, a range of proprietary tools. It’s used by experienced practitioners to deliver integrated growth roadmaps, future customer success, margin, and capital asset value. Adaptomy DNA has taken over 20 years to develop. It is the history of three companies Brand Intellect, Aptimet and Adaptomy. I invented what is now Adaptomy Commercial DNA, founded and ran Brand Intellect, Aptimet and Adaptomy to develop and deploy the Commercial DNA methodology. The full methodology is now being brought to market with the support of some astonishingly talented advisors and innovative customers. It’s been an astonishing journey! This is part I of a two-part white paper explaining the history of Adaptomy Commercial DNA, (C-DNA) and what it is today. Thanks Adaptomy C-DNA could not have been realised without the help of many people. Inspiring people who helped shape and support development of the methodology through the early years and deserve very special thanks include Andrew Seth. Andrew was for many years from 2002 a constant source of support and encouragement. His insight into marketing at scale proved to be invaluable, so too were his introductions to some of the best minds in marketing including Tim Ambler. He introduced me to Mark Sherrington, a charismatic and skilled marketing leader, who asked, on hearing about the quest to build the C-DNA methodology if I was trying to boil the ocean, then quickly told me that he loved Big Hairy Audacious Goals. In those early years I could not have imagined what he meant; I do now. In 2013 Richard Nunn had the courage and conviction to use early versions of what is now Adaptomy C-DNA to implement a corporate wide ‘Marketing Way’ to align marketing strategy and operations. Martin White gave Adaptomy its first contract to use an early version of Adaptomy C-DNA to design a product management and ‘go to market’ strategy. Rupert Baines and Aileen Ryan provided Adaptomy with it’s first ‘deep tech’ opportunity in 2019 to assess market opportunity and design quantified value propositions. Thanks to Chris Ellis and Dominique Borie for giving Adaptomy the opportunity to use Adaptomy C-DNA for content marketing strategy and product procurement. Thanks to Keith Bibby for the opportunity to use Anatomy C-DNA for commercial strategy and operations, customer journey mapping, market opportunity analysis and marketing transformation. Thanks to Ken Stannard for reviewing the Growth Road-maps and to Bevan Duncan, Paul Davidson, James Bagan and Nick Eades who helped introduce Adaptomy C-DNA to the world of Venture Capital and Private Equity. From 2003 to today a vast cast of advisors, associates, employees, academics, and partners have all provided support and encouragement along the way. Special thanks to Stan Maklan, Andrew May, Cameron MacQuarrie, Andrew Bourne, Simon Scullion, Karen Thomas-Bland, Ben Kettell, Matt Stroud, Noorie Sazen, Chris Weston, Adrian Wakefield, Matt Ballantine, Sarah Wicks, Nick Johnson, David White, Mark Peacock, Geraint Holliman, and more recently, Chelsea Wilkinson, Adam Votava and Simon Leadbetter, and of course to Craig Willis and the team at SkoreLabs for use of their process mapping tools. Adaptomy and its sister company Brand Intellect have worked with many clients that have tried to do something different, and have helped to build the Adaptomy C-DNA model into what it is today, these include, but are not limited to: Lastminute.com, Time Warner, SAB Miller, Unilever, Legal & General, MS Amlin, Orange Business Services, UltraSoC, Wincanton, Octopus Investments, PUMA Private Equity, Convertr, Smart Technologies, Veritas, Scorch, Queens Park Equity, Turtl, RWS and SERCO. An introduction to Adaptomy DNA Adaptomy Commercial DNA (C-DNA) is a methodology for systematic formulation and execution of commercial strategy, operations, performance management, capability building and capacity management. It is also a reference model for intellectual capital and intellectual asset management. It is a methodology designed to work alongside and in no way diminish the creative value of strategy, marketing, and sales. C-DNA, is a proprietary methodology currently being deployed by Brand Intellect Limited (founded 2001) and Adaptomy Limited under the titles of, and known as, Adaptomy DNA, Unified Commercial Engine and Customer First Operating Model. It has been under development for the last 20 years through numerous commercial projects with large and small businesses, Private Equity and Venture Capital firms and academics. The beginning In the early days around February 2001-2002 Brand Intellect started to gather metrics and measures for marketing performance. This was well before the kinds of sophisticated data that’s available today, and well before marketing performance measurement became in any way professional. The premise was to: Put the customer first. Measure what mattered. Develop integrated strategy and commercial operations, bringing strategy, marketing, and sales together. Tie marketing performance metrics and measures to business management and financial performance metrics. A pivotal ‘lunch meeting’ with Andrew Seth, (former CEO of Lever Brothers, now Unilever) in 2002 where he was presented with an early concept paper that ignited a 20-year journey to the current versions of Adaptomy C-DNA. Initially, Brand Intellect collected operational marketing metrics and built score cards prioritising these metrics and measures to suit different commercial circumstances. Focus on the core metrics and measures stored in Brand Intellect’s Base Line 'Book of Numbers', quickly moved from marketing metrics and measures to commercial metrics and measures, (including strategy and sales), then on to measures of intellectual capital. Early work supported by Andrew Seth quickly revealed that although valuable metrics and measures were available or could be sourced, their context and meaning was to a large extent lost because there were no clear processes or systematic approaches supporting them. It was also clear the marketing and the majority of commercial operations were at the time almost process free. There was no consistent way to approach strategy, marketing, and sales. If you were to ask a room full of strategists, marketers, or salespeople to ‘define what you do’, there would be as many different responses to that question as there were people in the room. Contrast that with almost any other discipline, (for example: accounting, law, information technology.) where you will find process, rigour, and systematic approaches. Initial growth frameworks In 2003 Aptimet was founded to work with Brand Intellect and operationalise the systematic approaches, processes, metrics, and measures developed by Brand Intellect. In 2011 Brand Intellect and Aptimet launched Integrated Growth Frameworks designed to de-risk growth strategy, inform strategy formulation, deliver operational improvement, and execute commercial strategy based on robust, integrate measures. Products included: rapid diagnostics, deep performance insight, benchmarking, work-style alignment, strategy, and growth alignment, KPI’s, best practice libraries. These early frameworks included the integration of collaboration, commercial process, and operating models. Very early construction of what was to become C-DNA included development of ‘Collective Competency’ frameworks, developed to drive development of intellectual capital and build new competencies for collaborative client side and consulting execution. These early frameworks now seem naïve but began the process of filtering and organising commercial processes, operating models, and intellectual capital. In 2010 Aptimet launched a series of rapid diagnostic and deep dive analysis tools focused on integrated measurement, analysis and performance improvement in key disciplines including: knowledge management, innovation, human capital management, brand building, product and service design, demand management and customer relationship management, strategy, culture, relationship management, organisation, process information and technology management. They provided perspectives on leadership, planning and renewal, implementation, efficiency and effectiveness, empowerment, visualisation, agility, and organisational management. These early diagnostics laid the foundation for today’s far more sophisticated C-DNA disciplines, capability, capacity, intellectual capital diagnostics which have been embedded in today’s C-DNA. A new mission Brand Intellect and Aptimet established one of the main driving principles of C-DNA; to find new competitive advantage from robust, integrated strategy. They laid the foundations to provide answers and solutions to a key strategic question: “How many companies have truly integrated, robust corporate strategy and clear measures of success that balance capital allocation and risk across a range of key strategic processes?” From 2011 the mission could realise more adaptive, balanced outcomes: To ensure corporate strategy translates into effective action companies need to forge much stronger links between corporate strategy and other key processes. To manage the allocation of capital expenditure and strategic risk new insight needs to be found to strike the right balance between exploitation of external opportunities, mitigation of risk and company capability, capacity, and competence. Quite simply great companies were and are good at this, others are not, but all could improve substantially. And it seems one of the persistent strategic issues then, and now, affecting long term growth remains the ability to build robust, integrated, measurable strategy. Focus from 2011 began to develop around three key benefits. Imagine the benefits of being able accurately and consistently to measure performance of key strategic processes: innovation, knowledge management, human capital, brand building, product & service design and delivery, demand management and customer management – arguably right now (2011) nobody is even trying to do this properly. What if structured insight into different facets of these processes: strategy, culture, relationships, organisation, process, information, and technology could be used to make more informed strategic decision and build intellectual capital? What kind of competitive advantage could emerge from being able to effectively balance capital allocation and risk amongst such processes to meet external challenges? Discover, lead, act, improve In July 2013 Aptimet was dissolved and Brand Intellect acquired all Aptimet intellectual capital. From July 2013 Brand intellect established a new, far more pragmatic approach focused on building strategy, marketing, and commercial capability within a clear planning cycle: Discover, Lead, Act and Improve. Throughout 2013 and 2014 Brand Intellect continued to develop new models and integrating existing Brand Intellect and Aptimet assets and insight to build new strategic assets for key customers and complete another phase of C-DNA development including commercial operating models, workflows, ‘Marketing Ways’, and mapping of key commercial disciplines and processes within the planning cycle: Discover, Lead, Act and Improve. A new four stage framework for innovation, strategy and marketing was developed with 24 disciplines. For the first time key inputs, outputs and primary workflows were mapped between discipline groups: Throughout 2013 to 2016, Brand Intellect continued to develop C-DNA, and in 2016 Adaptomy was founded to commercialise the Brand Intellect C-DNA methodology. In 2016 customer journeys, value propositions, offer portfolio management, product, service, and solutions management, ‘Go to market’ strategy, pricing, experiences, touchpoints, account management and channel management, fulfilment, and risk management were integrated along with management psychometrics to deliver Commercial and Customer intimacy strategies. This and other developments since the foundation of Brand Intellect represented a significant, knowledge base and what was becoming an embryonic framework for today’s C-DNA methodologies, tools, and approaches. Where we've come from and where we are today (To be continued in part II - what Adaptomy C-DNA is today) Adaptomy C-DNA has continued to evolve since 2016 to the present day through a range of customer projects and bench research. It is now a fully-fledged methodology for systematic value management and growth. Adaptomy C-DNA is a unique methodology for systematic commercial scale-up, growth, capability building and value management. It's based on 63 commercial disciplines supported by playbooks for commercial due diligence, fast track strategy, market fit, GTM and scale-up, commercial change and transformation. Just some of the disciplines include customer journey mapping, market opportunity assessment, quantified value proposition, offer, product and service management, campaign, content sales and account management, fulfilment, performance improvement, capability building transformation and renewal of commercial strategy and operations, capability building and key capital asset management. It includes proven diagnostics, templates, process maps, workflows, a range of proprietary tools and support from experienced practitioners. It's used to deliver integrated growth roadmaps, future customer success, margin, and asset value. Part II of this white paper will cover what Adaptomy C-DNA is now, how it works and the benefits it delivers to leaders, practitioners, businesses, and their customers. If you'd like to know more just get in touch, Adaptomy DNA will be rolling out with key customers throughout 2023. We will be running workshops and other events to help spread the word about Adaptomy DNA as a systematic underpinning for any commercial strategy, offer, product and service development, commercial capability programmes, GTM planning, fund raising, Commercial Due Diligence and for those that simply want to improve a specific discipline.

Adaptomy is delighted to announce completion of another offer, product and service strategy and management assessment. Over the past few months we have been working with a global corporate to assess market opportunity, product viability, go to market and scale-up and management of one of its key strategic products. Working with project, programme and product management teams from throughout the business Adaptomy completed a comprehensive review of product strategy, management and tactics. The review was designed to inform ongoing investment decisions. Adaptomy used its 'fast track' strategy and Commercial Due Diligence (CDD) model to systematically review: Market & customer opportunities Product market fit Product leadership & strategy Go to market readiness, strategy and tactics Scale up opportunities Product management capability Approach and methodology This tried and tested approach has been developed and used in Adaptomy projects with SaaS, IT, Content, Demand Management and Anti-piracy businesses to help develop their offer, product and services strategies and to complete due diligence on behalf of Private Equity and Venture Capital firms. The approach focuses on evaluation of key disciplines extracted from Adaptomy DNA, our proprietary methodology for commercial strategy, operations and capability building. These disciplines include: Customer journey analysis and structured interviews Development of market insights Quantification of market opportunities Assessment of product and go to market strategies Quantified value propositions Assessment of product management capability, operating models and workflows Review of product management leadership Brand building assessment Offer portfolio review Risk management assessment Product management review Service management review Communications planning and execution Customer feedback management Performance improvement assessment Outputs Key outputs from the project included: Opportunity on a page Detailed progress review Strategic priorities Significant opportunities (functional and in market) Challenges and recommendations to overcome them Focus areas for further investment Customer interview and feedback analysis Learn more If you would like to know more about how Adaptomy can help drive systematic product management, help improve commercial capability using Adaptomy DNA or simply understand more of what Adaptomy can do then please contact us.

For years Commercial Due Diligence has focused on market assessment, product fit and competitor analysis. It's basically a market study, and there's nothing particularly wrong with that, in developing an objective view of the market, the market size, growth, risks and opportunities. However, Commercial Due Diligence could and should be much more than this. It should be a commercial assessment of value creation opportunity, and an assessment of the businesses capability and capacity in delivering those opportunities. It should be a launchpad for post-investment scale-up, growth or integration. It should be part of strategic planning and standard operating procedure for any investment. A New Growth Roadmap We've been working with Venture Capital companies, Private Equity firms, portfolio companies and businesses seeking investment to create a new kind of pre-investment commercial assessment. It's a new systematic approach focused on the viability of market opportunities, offer, product and service fit and a business's commercial capability to realise them. It's based on 18 disciplines extracted from Adaptomy DNA, a proprietary methodology for systematic quantification of value, commercial strategy, opportunity and operations. Commercial capability, a business’s ability to identify and deliver current and future value, has become one of the centre-pieces of investment strategy. Even more so today, where the competence to re-imagine markets, find new customers, pivot ‘in-market’ and re-sequence operations quickly without losing commercial traction has become a significant differentiator. Adaptomy’s Growth Roadmap is a complete and ongoing value management system to drive differential advantage, ARR, free cash flow and capital value for investor-backed businesses. It’s a template to focus on current and future customer value delivery and adapt quickly to changing environmental, economic and market conditions. But for investors, it’s also a blue-print for repeatable, systematic value creation in more traditional and impact investment portfolios. As a managing director of Strategic Equity said in one Private Equity firm: "We needed an integrated approach that amplifies the value of commercial due diligence and feeds seamlessly into post-investment success." The value of a systematic, modularised approach Codifying learning through multiple deal cycles, taking an end-to end perspective and using integrated deal and post-investment teams can offer investors earlier and more extensive insight into commercial opportunities and capability to deliver against them. We tackle due diligence, scale-up, integration and growth as one programmatic process - a growth roadmap for integrated due diligence, value management and exit. Our modular approach lends itself to efficient scoping, effective focus while still remaining flexible enough to cater for different investment needs and portfolios. Advantages for investors Key advantages for investors in addition to market analysis, competitor assessment and determination of commercial risk, opportunity, capability and capacity, commercial strategy and operations (Marketing, sales, support and performance improvement) include: Modular design to support a variety of investment thesis and projects Critical paths that offer transparency and a clear sense of direction Diagnostics that help focus on specific problems and opportunities Pre-defined disciplines to encourage meaningful measurement Clear structure for informed decision making Pre-configured processes to accelerate operational improvements New operating model for systematic value management How businesses can out-perform expectations We see this new kind of pre-investment assessment as a way to quality and quantify an investment but also platform for accelerated post-investment scale-up, integration and growth. It's the start to building responsive commercial operations find and develop new market opportunities and consistently deliver long-term commercial and customer value. Benefits for business of pre- and post-investment approaches like this include: Clear definition and roadmap to systematically build differential advantages Aligned customer, business, commercial and operations strategies Quantified opportunity and value propositions Effective Go To Market planning, pricing and and 'in-market' operations Tight integration of financial and commercial performance metrics Continuous, systematic performance improvement Higher cadence strategy and execution New 'value centric' operating model Why have we developed this? We developed this new pre-investment assessment, the Adaptomy Growth Roadmap, a new form of Commercial Due Diligence to change the way commercial determinations are made. We did it to more accurately, more effectively assess both risk and opportunity, in markets, strategies and operations. We did it to inform decision making, to ensure the right recommendations were made to build commercial teams, capability and capacity. We did it in a way that introduces systematic, repeatable, measurable results and tangible benefits for investors and the businesses they invest in. But most of all we did it, because that's what investors, their advisors and the businesses they invest in, asked us to do, to fix the problems and overcome the limitations of existing CDD approaches. Get in touch If you want to find out more, if you're an investor, a business looking for investment, a merger and acquisitions team, just contact us, call us, we'll be happy to talk through the details.

This is the first article in a series looking at effective SaaS metrics and measures, what they mean, how they can be used in scorecards and how SaaS benchmarks might work. In this article we introduce some of the common metrics used by most SaaS businesses. In subsequent articles we will explore what these mean, where they are useful and where they are not. We'll also look at how SaaS scorecards can be built for different businesses at different times in their development life-cycle. The top 10 Most SaaS companies focus on a relatively small set of 'primary metrics' to measure performance and growth. Although there are some differences in priority, typically, these include: Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) and Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) - annualised Monthly Recurring Revenue Active customers - the number of customers or users paying for services Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) - the average revenue per user Acquisition - either customer or revenue gain, showing customers or revenue gained in any period Churn - either customer or revenue churn, showing customers or revenue lost in any period Monthly Recurring Revenue Variation - relative increase or decrease in MRR from one month to the next Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) - the total costs associated with acquiring customers in any period Life Time Value (LTV) - average revenue per customer throughout their life-cycle with the business. LTV: CAC ratio - a test to ensure customer acquisition costs do not exceed customer life time value. Daily Active Users (DAU) - the number of users engaging with your software in a day Other metrics Some other metrics often used include: Quick Ratio, Activation Rate, Net Promoter Score (NPS), Average Contract Term, Average Contract Value, CAC Recovery Period. Then there are common financial metrics like revenue, cost of goods sold, margin, opertaing expenses, EBITDA, cash flow, (change in cash, ending cash, deferred revenue), cash runway. There are also funnel metrics like leads, conversion rates, win-loss ratios and sales velocity. And finally operational metrics like FTE productivity, sales quota management, sales capacity and coverage ratios. What's missing Despite the amount of effort dedicated in start-up, Due Diligence, scale-up and growth planning directed toward TAM, SAM and SOM, relative market penetration or growth in segments or categories rarely features in any scorecard or analysis. Given that the route to growth for any new business is almost wholly predicated on market share, it's surprising that there is relatively little focus on market share. SaaS metrics for a start-up are not the same as those for a more mature, high growth business. What's often missing is appropriate prioritisation of the metrics and associated scorecards to reflect the maturity of a business. For example, a start up may need focus as a priority on ARR or MRR. However, a more mature scale-up or growth business may need to prioritise positive cash flow. They may also need to focus on key account penetration and at the same time accelerated growth in less valuable but high volume customers. Relative prioritisation and selection of metrics and measures aligned to the business and investment strategies at a point in time is essential for growth but rarely identified in the many SaaS Scorecard examples. Sometimes there is limited understanding about the meaning, calculation, value or contribution of certain metrics to the management and growth of the business. This includes metrics like NPS, LTV, CAC and Churn. Another challenge, particularly for younger companies is simply a lack of accurate data, or data for a long enough period to make any metrics useful. What's next This is only an introductory article. Over the next few months we'll try to explain what an effective SaaS scorecard could look like and how to manage it over time.