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We've long known that differential advantage is the product of insight, innovation and execution capability focused on economic and emotional benefit for customers. What's less clear are the ways to systematically build and industrialise those sources of differential advantage that help you consistently 'win in market'. Specifically, what's the discipline that quantifies and communicates differential advantage, that ultimately drives revenue, margin, cash flow and improves intangible asset and intellectual capital value? Many customer experience implementations, brand building efforts, sales and marketing executions are sub-optimal because leaders can't attach value to them. Also, they can't quantify the value they are trying to deliver to the business or to the customer. Quantifying differential advantage, commercial benefits and customer economic and emotional value is what great value propositions are all about. Unfortunately, too many businesses don't invest in the quantification of value and miss-out on potentially significant opportunities to impact customers and commercial outcomes. 6 Guidelines for quantifying value propositions 1. Future customer obsession It may sound obvious but a healthy obsession about market opportunities and customer behaviours is a good thing. And, it's absolutely necessary if you want to develop great value propositions. It's like method acting, you have to live the part, you have to be in the mind and environment of the customer to really understand what they think is valuable. Current customers are important, but 'future customers' are more important. Why? Because, future customers are what your current customers will become, they are the new customer you will acquire. Potentially they have different needs and expectations than you current customers, they behave differently and have different perspectives on value. For these reasons they are an indicator of where the business has to go and the value it has to provide to stay in business. It's a way of thinking to uncover new opportunities. What makes you different and valuable to customers now, is not necessarily what makes you different and valuable to customers in the future. 2. Relentless focus on opportunity A starting point for a quantified value proposition is a quantified and qualified market opportunity. Simply put, from a business perspective there has to be a 'pot of money' to chase, that's at least in prospect could have reasonable returns. From another, customer perspective, there must be unmet needs or opportunity to add value over and above what customers already have. At adaptomy we bring all of this together as a Market Opportunity Statement, a detailed document explaining market dynamics, potential prospects, competitor profiles, influencers, key segments and eco-systems and a range of metrics, measures and analyitics that quantify the market opportunity. For a selection of key prospects in any given segment adaptomy goes further to understand their strategies and objectives, key needs, decision making behaviours and buy factors, key personnel, development initiatives, products and services. We do this to understand 'what makes them tick', find similarities and prioritise specific needs and goals and begin the process of quantifying customer value and commercial opportunity. Would you like to know more about how to transform insight into market opportunity? 3. Clear strategic alignment All value propositions need to be aligned to business, marketing and customer strategies. These strategies prioritise market opportunity and determine which value propositions are more or less attractive. To do this effectively, they must be quantified. Strategists need to understand the contribution any value proposition is expected to make, and consider the business impact, commercial and customer outcomes in terms of potential revenue, cash flow and economic value. Marketing leaders need to know what the economic and emotional benefits are for customers and sales teams need to know what this means in terms of opportunity planning and account management. Well quantified and clearly communicated value propositions are effectively mini-strategies in themselves and can be instrumental in aligning broader strategies and tactics throughout the business. 4. Sources of value Businesses have many sources of value, often more than they realise. The trick is to prioritise these sources of value or 'value assets' with respect to specific market opportunities and their importance to specific customers. It's where customer needs analysis meets business capability, competency and capacity. Products and services are valuable assets, but there is often a misguided temptation for businesses to describe value in terms of product and service functions and features. Functions and features may be important to some customers, for example those keen to learn about the latest mobile phone, but what customers are actually interested in are the economic and emotional benefits and outcomes they can expect. These benefits and outcomes are framed by a range of specific 'value assets' that provide customers with value, such as: utility versus luxury brand positioning, specific cost reduction or margin gain, reputational risk protection, sales velocity gains in specific markets, friction free customer experience or innovation that offers competitive edge. 5. Understanding customer relationships While positioning is strictly speaking a different discipline, value propositions cannot be completed without considering current and future customer relationships. Exactly what will a value proposition do to change the nature customer relationships? Will it help open new opportunities, create more customer intimacy or develop commercial partnership? A simple way to visualise this dynamic is to use a Relationship Matrix that plots proposition attractiveness against business relationship value, a way to understand what it takes to navigate from tough price negotiation to 'selling to value'. 6. Integration with customer experiences Value propositions need to 'talk to' customer experiences, they need to have relevance at specific touch-points and grasp 'mind-share' in decision makers at specific times. This means targeted communication of specific aspects of the proposition, modularising propositions and their communication to particular audiences. New CEO agenda to grow shareholder value New ways for businesses leaders to maximise growth, revenue, cash flow and capital asset value. Read this article

New operating models for strategy, sales and marketing are being developed to deliver seamless customer experiences. As businesses develop more sophisticated customer experiences to meet increasing demands and expectations of customers the organisational and operational models are changing. To overcome the challenges of functional silos and encourage cross-functional and inter-disciplinary team-work companies are replacing traditional strategy, marketing, sales, support and services with unified organisational and operational models. The have suspended belief in sales and marketing functions by appointing Chief Commercial Officers, Chief Growth Officers, Chief Customer Officers. They are prioritising 'things to be done' over structure and organising themselves around customer needs, experience and process. The underlying intent is to align the business with customer experience and expectations and eliminate friction within the business. These new operating models have to be more dynamic and adaptive and at the same time robust and resilient. For most businesses these competing priorities present transitional and ongoing operational challenges that can only be overcome by re-thinking 'front-end' operations. 5 characteristics of modern operating models. 1: Focus on value and outcomes All operating models need to be aligned to business outcomes but too many are only aligned to business strategy and relatively short term business outcomes. Focus on competitors leads to competitive advantage but focus on customers leads to value and focus on future customer leads to differential value. New operating models place particular emphasis on customer and market outcomes like economic and emotional value delivered to customers and differential advantage 'in-market'. They go further to balance short and long term commercial outcomes to include revenue, cash flow, margin, intangible asset and intellectual capital growth. 2: Focus on disciplines Focus on disciplines, that is 'things to be done', the strategic capabilities, customer and commercial outcomes. There are at least 38 disciplines that are currently delivered by strategy, marketing, sales and support functions but many businesses remain unclear about these disciplines and the new processes, behaviours, organisations and operating models that are required support them. Without this clarity businesses will struggle to re-engineer their operations and transition to new operating models. Adaptomy have developed a systematic framework for capability development and operating model design across 38 customer and market facing disciplines called Unified Commercial Engine DNA. Would you like to learn more about adaptomy Unified Commercial Engines and DNA? 3: Cross-functional, multi-disciplinary teams The right combinations of skills and experience is important in any operating model. But, more specifically it's the right inclination, attitude and behaviours aligned to specific disciplines that make all the difference. Traditional role modelling using techniques like RACI are being augmented, even replaced by sophisticated psychometric profiling for individual and teams. The intent is to create high performance, cross-functional and multi-disciplinary teams connected through shared purpose and outcomes and a range of integrated collaboration tools. 4: Adaptability and resilience Customer, market, economic and social situations change rapidly, sometimes unexpectedly and modern operating models need to be designed with this in mind. Leading practitioners are building 'core adaptability and resilience' into operating models at a granular level. This begins with modular definition of the disciplines and processes that need to be supported before considering how the stack of enabling information and technology can be organised. This allows time to fully consider adaptability of business behaviours and prioritisation of strategic capability that will drive better customer experiences and differential advantage 'in-market'. Increasingly, technology is becoming a core enabler in any operating model and emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning are set to transform how modern operating models work. However, there are integration and adoption challenges in introducing new technology alongside legacy technologies. Any new operating model needs to consider the extent of transformation from 'legacy to new' and how it will happen. That means managing behavioural and structural challenges as well as information and technology ones. 5. New management systems New management systems for a post-digital age are likely to be driven by shared purpose, operating principles, knowledge sharing and common collective value driven behaviours. Consequently, leading companies are quickly moving toward different performance systems, new incentive models that recognise capability, productivity and value contribution. They are also developing more interactive networks, to accelerate and socialise real-time communication and feedback between front-end operations. What's required to make you different? Systematic ways to build sources of differential advantage that help you 'win in market'. Read this article

As leaders we take responsibility for growing the value of our businesses. But we all know that there are challenges in understanding and growing some of our most valuable assets, such as our intangible assets and intellectual capital. Value Based Management, (VBM) methods have helped draw attention to the failure of traditional accounting practices but they have become a proxy for measurement rather than management. One of the outstanding challenges for business leaders is to identify specific intangibles assets and strategic capabilities that contribute to increased capital value, then to find the metrics and measures that reflect their value contribution. Traditional value management measures like Economic Value Added (EVA)*, Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) help leaders understand the cost of capital deployed and the efficiency of operations in managing capital invested. But they are a reflection of general capital management and generic growth, that is, they don't help identify specific disciplines that created value in the first place. Even more forward looking value metrics like Discounted Cash Flow (DCF), Internal Rate of Return (IRR) and Cash Flow Return on Investment (CFROI) are simply general outcome based metrics. All these tools are indeed incredibly useful in understanding the general health of commercial operations and growth but fall short of systematic management of intangible assets and intellectual capital that often provide the lions share of corporate worth. For too long front-end operations have focused on managing traditional P&L and Balance Sheet metrics like Revenues, Cost, Net Income and EBITDA. While these are, of course important, their relevance for business leaders is diminishing when the economic cost of capital, growth, sustainability, capital value and overall longer term performance are clearly becoming more relevant measures of true success. Progressive leaders are now looking for more systematic approaches and clearer definitions of the specific disciplines and capabilities that drive capital value and growth as well as those that help manage day to day operations more rigorously. * Registered Trade Mark, Stern Stewart and Co. 4 Thoughts on managing value 1. Beyond Value Trees Value Trees are part of VBM and are a useful tool for creating objective hierarchies and understanding the decision-making attributes associated with each choice. However, they are not linked to value creating disciplines and capabilities: adaptomy has identified those key 38 strategic disciplines as part of our Unified Commercial Engine DNA. Each of these disciplines contributes to P&L, Balance Sheet, intangible asset and intellectual capital growth. This 'operational engineering' approach provides leaders with the most effective levers of value. It augments VBM approaches by helping to focus attention on management or the engines that drive value rather than the metrics and measures that simply reflect overall performance. 2. Focus on method not targets Building a collective sense of contribution and outcome, rather than exclusive focus on targets is an essential ingredient in VBM or any other approach to growing intangible assets and intellectual capital. Capital growth targets in the form of traditional or more recent VBM metrics and measures can appear irrelevant to those on the 'shop floor'. There needs to be a sense of shared ownership in setting targets in the first place, but more importantly there needs to be clear process on how targets can be met. This means understanding which levers of value are relevant and the specific actions required to improve their short and long term contribution: the method, not just the decision making process and targets, must be clear. Would you like to know more about Unified Commercial Engines and key disciplines that drive intangible asset and intellectual capital value? 3. Effective evidence based decision making Many business leaders accept that too many decisions are based on 'gut feel' or personal preferences and short-term outcomes that don't contribute to value generation and growth. Creating an environment where 'fact-based' decisions are made to contribute to short and long term growth requires leadership intervention. The first step is to explain the frameworks for short and long term growth, that help people understand systematic approaches to growth and pinpoint specific disciplines and capabilities which contribute to growth. Next, assign short and long term metrics and measures to the engines that drive value and agree performance and contribution management systems. 4. Building a value management culture The first step is to encourage factual debate and challenge to build a shared sense of outcome, target setting and KPI management. However, setting targets and building collective commitment is only the start. There must be deeper endorsement throughout the business of the rationale and relevancy of managing longer term growth and value as a priority. There is always a balance to be struck between short and long term growth opportunities and it's easy to focus on short term gains when there are no clear incentives to develop long term value. Sadly, there are often gaps, if not complete omissions in many incentive programmes to stimulate long term growth behaviours. Real understanding of traditional financial metrics in many 'front-end', market and customer facing operations is limited. Understanding of VBM metrics is typically even more limited and understanding of the specific disciplines and capabilities that drive intangible asset and intellectual capital growth is almost always non-existent. In short, considerable leadership effort needs to be directed toward education and coaching in value management. Managing the levers of value How critical strategic disciplines are unified to drive growth, customer and commercial value Read this article

Content has always been an important component of marketing, but increasingly business leaders are beginning to see the value of content as an asset that can drive longer term and more sustainable engagement, acquisition and retention. But, while it's popular today to talk about treating content as an asset, the actuality of doing so, managing content as an asset, building measurable economic value through content, is less clear. Why manage content as an asset? Quite simply, it's about using content to secure more value and revenue at the least possible incremental increase in cost or investment. This is especially true in knowledge based businesses that are able to exploit rising returns as they scale, that is where each incremental sale drives more revenue at little or no additional cost, the bigger the market, the bigger the opportunity, and so the greater the potential relative gain. Increasingly, it matters to decide why to measure and, what to measure as well as how to measure it. It matters because companies need to think about the value of the resources they have, their productivity, performance and fitness for purpose. Relative investment in different disciplines, capabilities and assets that create most value depends on having a system in place to direct and evaluate that investment. At the moment measurement systems tend toward myopic, increasingly tactical measurement of smaller and smaller proportions of an organisations market value. What is content, what is an asset? Before we go any further it might be useful to think about what content actually is. Perhaps the simplest way to think about content is as information, distribution of knowledge, a use-based or functional perspective. Another way to think about it is, content as an experience, with a purpose or outcome in mind, engagement or entertainment. Content can be expressed in a variety of formats: text, images, video, audio. It can appear as marketing copy, reports, photos, poetry, presentations, white papers, blogs. Content marketing, is also worth defining, it can be seen as the strategy, governance, creation, curation, management, distribution, optimisation and improvement of content. For anything to be considered an asset it must qualify as something that has positive economic value and is useful to the business. For example, something like a building or property, where potential sale value exceeds any mortgage secured against it. Anything with negative economic value would be a liability or negative equity. Or, it could be something intangible like brand equity or goodwill, the premium that may be paid beyond the book value of the assets, which whilst not necessarily the most accurate measure, is a reasonable way to explain what an intangible asset is. Other, better measures are available that eliminate variability in market value, like: Calculated Intangible Value or CIV. What does managing content as asset actually mean? Generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), recognise two types of assets: tangible and intangible. These accounting principles provide some guidance to determine what assets can be considered financial assets. However, one of the main challenges in treating content as an asset is that many organisations treat internally generated assets like content as operating expense, being recorded in the Profit and Loss and don't record the assets as having any value. One of the first principles to be established, therefore, is to recognise content as an asset not an operational expense. Another primary principle is to establish clear policies to evaluate and monetise intellectual property and intellectual capital. This means shifting strategic thinking from being focused on 'impact on earnings' to generating incremental value and future cash flows from investment in content portfolios. What value does content actually have? Content may be seen to have tangible value through some of the physical medium in which it appears, (books, reports, photographs, original art works) that could be considered physical 'content stock'. This isn't strictly a content asset, it's arguably a channel asset or liability, a reflection of channel management capability to distribute and dispose of stock. Content is predominantly an intangible asset which includes value associated with specific media, art, stories, video, photographs, brochures, reports, blogs and films. This might include patents, licences or rights associated with the content. There's inherent value of content for customers and consumers, entertainment value, shareablility, engagement and more compelling experiences. Then there's content marketing capability, which includes: people that generate, manage and distribute content, storytelling, ongoing narrative, process, policies, procedures, leadership, customer relationships and connections. Finally, there's content portfolio management that can offer additional economic value attributed to internal ease of use, re-use, efficient and effective distribution. Content as asset or commodity? There is a lot of talk about treating content as an asset or a commodity. The fact is that commodities can be considered assets, perhaps just less valuable ones. Utility or commodity content may be less valuable than premium content proven to have high re-use, longevity or impact in the market but it can still be uniquely creative, high quality and engaging and therefore still have value. What's perhaps more significant, is the inference that content as a commodity is less useful, less impactful and perhaps less important. It's highly likely that in managing a portfolio of content there will be a mixture of high value signature assets, as well as commodity assets. High value and commodity assets both have their place and purpose in the content portfolio. Content needs to be developed to suit the needs of specific customers, channels and touch-points. Inevitably this requires a range of assets, some which are almost 'disposable' and have short life spans, others that are more significant, require greater investment and are expected to generate greater returns. What's important here is not whether content is an asset or a commodity, but how to use a portfolio of content assets to greatest effect and maximise their collective value to the business. How can content marketing value be measured? Just like other intangible assets content value is notoriously difficult to measure as its value depends on the organisations ability to use content and identify the specific economic value associated with it. Some of the valuation approaches that could be used for specific content assets include: Cost based valuation - an approach based on costs of creating similar intangible assets, the only option if income based or market based valuations are not possible. Income based valuation - an approach based on income and expenses associated with specific assets. The next best option if income and expense can be clearly attributed to the asset. Market based valuation - an approach based on the market value of similar assets. Perhaps the best option beyond cost based and income based approaches where there are opportunities for relative competitive valuation of similar content, such as content production agencies, content markets or content stockists like iStock and Shutterstock. Measuring the value of content marketing capability is also challenging. It demands clearly communicated strategies, processes, roles, responsibilities and well developed operating models and frameworks for systematic performance improvement and valuations like Adaptomy's Marketing DNA. Two methods of measurement lend themselves to this kind of capability based asset: Direct intellectual capital measures - an approach where estimated value of intangible assets is identified by attaching value to specific components. Normally done through diagnostics that assess responses to specific questions regarding management of intellectual capital. Score cards or performance management measures - and approach we're specific indicators and indices are generated or monitored as score cards and KPI's, indicating relative increase or decrease in capability. This approach may provide more insight into the health of content marketing than purely financial metrics and consequently, offers better measures of content marketing capability as an asset. There are other approaches which are also useful to look at, like Economic Value Added (EVA). Skandia Navigator, or Total Value Creation (TVC) and Accounting For The Future (AFTF) which both use discounted projected cash flows. There are many others. This demonstrates that there is growing interest and development of intellectually robust methods that can perhaps soon, help determine the true value of content and content marketing. What about the analysis? There are two main components to analyse: content (intangible asset) and content marketing (intellectual capital). Perhaps the main objective of any campaign is to engage prospects and customers, connect with them to generate continued dialogue (engagement, acquisition and retention). To support this specific content, is pushed or pulled through 'preferred' channels or touch-points that maximise interaction, consumption and onward distribution. We'd argue that analytics here focus on interactions between customers and specific content and the 'next customer action' that takes place - the connection (causation and correlation), the behaviour. That's not really news, but it can be the basis for further analysis that leads to measuring incremental cash flows (Discounted Cash Flows - DCF) and Net Present Value (NPV) - not commonly adopted by marketing. This is a way to calibrate asset value of content and provide a better proxy for campaign and channel performance than less useful metrics like campaign ROI. The focus of analytics above provides some measure of current asset value. It does not give any indication of the sustainability of the asset or cash flows. This is where analysis of intellectual capital matters. Analysing and bench-marking key strategic processes like campaign management, channel management and content management using diagnostics, performance improvement and capability building road-maps provides some insight into the sustainability of assets the capability of the business to deliver more effectively in the future. Adaptomy offer a range of Rapid Diagnostics embedded in Adaptomy DNA to help improve performance, build capability and measure intellectual capital embedded in strategic processes. Why is content portfolio management so important? Managing a portfolio of content is not the same as Digital Asset Management (DAM), or librarianship, although it is clearly related. It's about managing the collective asset called content, all content to maximise cumulative asset value and economic return for the organisation. This includes managing content currency, relevancy and poignancy, ensuring the narrative remains clear, consistent and aligned to the brand. It means facilitating the introduction and distribution of new content, refreshing old content, archiving, improving accessibility and availability, finding ways to amplify the value of content, manage value accumulation and deterioration, amortisation and residual value. It means developing specific policies to manage value of signature content and commodity content. It's an important facet of marketing let alone, content marketing, just like managing a brand or product portfolio. Content portfolio management generates value through efficient and effective access to content, supporting better content awareness and distribution but more importantly by aligning all content with one objective: generate incremental value and future cash flow from investment in content. Conclusion Just because content and content marketing may be difficult to measure does not mean that they shouldn't be managed as assets, intangible, intellectual assets. It is likely that the need to measure intangible assets and intellectual capital like content will become more important as accountants, investors, business leaders and regulators seek to quantify current and future business value. Managing content as an asset is a more progressive, longer term strategy that encourages content managers to focus on value generation and future cash flows driven by effective management of content portfolios. It helps eliminate unnecessary short term bias in investment strategy, ensuring precious resource is allocated to activities that generate sustained long term value. If you plan to manage content as an assets there a few important, relatively simple steps to take: Recognise content as an asset, not an operational expense and shift thinking from being focused on 'impact on earnings' to generating incremental value and future cash flows from content customers want to consume Make sure you know why your creating specific content, what it's expected to do, who it's targeted at and the context in which it's got to be delivered and consumed. Make sure you have crystal clear processes, roles and responsibilities with effective execution standards and KPI's for content marketing and content portfolio management. Start developing metrics and measures that are aligned to business, marketing and customer objectives that contribute to understanding content as an asset: capability, capacity, credibility, consistency, reputation, relationships and market impact. Make sure you measure what matters most and that you have adequate insight into consumers and their behaviours (leads, acquisition, retention, referrals, relevance, reach, sentiment, shares, preferences). Get the analysis right, focus on measuring DCF and NPV of content rather than ROI, analyse intellectual capital of strategic processes to help determine the sustainability of asset values. Build operating models to improve content marketing process and operations based on performance analysis of processes and key metrics and measure you have developed. In the end analysis, this is all about managing the levers of growth, the systematic management of strategic disciplines that drive asset value for the organisation, building balance sheet and generating more sustainable, longer term returns. Effective content marketing is one of those levers. For knowledge based companies in particular, on a journey to own less 'physical assets' and, at the same time generate much more value, effective management of intangibles like content and content marketing will become more important as the greater proportion of business value is tied up in intellectual capital. Note: Economic Value Added (EVA), Skandia Navigator, Total Value Creation (TVC) and Accounting For The Future (AFTF) are approaches and methods developed by: Stern Stewart, Edvinsson and Malone, Anderson & McLean and Nash, respectively. Adaptomy UCE DNA is a proprietary integrated road-map to systematically focus, connect, process and optimise: strategy, brand, marketing and sales capability and operations. It is supported by detailed process models and diagnostics that can help assess intellectual capital in organisations. Other references and articles: Forbes: How intangible assets are affecting company value in the stock market Forbes: Most leaders fail at capital allocation CIMA: Understanding corporate value - managing and reporting intellectual capital University of Insbruck: The 3 M's of intellectual capital - measuring, monitoring and managing IRFS - IAS 38 Intangible assets ICAEW: Introduction to the use of DCF and NPV #marketingstrategy #strategy #operatingmodels #storytelling #contentmarketing #content

Customer futures: earning the right to lead customers to a better future they may not be able to see themselves Leading marketers are getting back to their roots, re-focusing on the things that really matter - creating customers. While there are a number of challenging operating priorities for marketing, there's a higher purpose too. Obviously, there's a need for marketers to live in the 'here and now' but at the same time they need to be inside the dreams and aspirations of customers, they need to see customer futures first. But, its not enough to understand customers and their aspirations, it's not enough to 'focus on customers'. Marketers need to be 'in a better future', develop capability to see and deliver possibilities, many of which the customer will not be able to see themselves and most important of all, be able to engineer a path for others to join them in that future - a synthesis of customer obsession and innovation. When companies become distracted by what they think they're good at, the lose perspective. When companies focus on what their customers perceive to be valuable they win. Al Ries, way back in 1996 in his book Focus, said: "specialisation drives quality...you need to communicate your leadership not just your quality". We'd like to think, customer obsession drives quality and you need to become known for: leading customers to a future they may not be able to see themselves. What is 'customer futures' Customer futures is a way of thinking and a way of operating that commits an organisation to creating better futures for their customers. Some might argue this is what their organisations already do. In some companies that are obsessed with customers and innovation, like amazon, that might be true. However, in many organisations that's simply not the case. Most companies don't have a customer strategy, let alone a vision for where their customer want to be or an operational plan to get them there. Jeff Bezos was spot on, when talking about true customer obsession, when he said: "Even when they don't yet know it, customers want something better, and your desire to delight customers will drive you to invent on their behalf. No customer ever asked Amazon to create the Prime membership program, but it sure turns out they wanted it, and I could give you many such examples." Jeff Bezos, Business Insider UK So what's essence of Customer Future thinking and operations? Customer futures is a creative, dynamic culture, an urgency, and obsession with customers and innovation Customer Futures is an externalised future perspective, it shifts thinking from 'current customer context' to to desired future state - that, which would make a customer very happy Customer Futures creates clear line of sight and focus, aligning operations around building a better future for customers, one they may not be able to see themselves Customer Futures provides a catalyst for innovation and creativity, synchronising operations, brand, product, service, experience, social mission......everything, around delivering desired, and often unmet, unplanned and unknown customer outcomes as quickly as possible The top priorities of marketing Arguably there are three priorities for marketers: creating customers, persuading people to do something and managing behaviours. We think there is one more higher purpose: 'earning the right to lead customers to a better future they cannot see themselves'. When you think about it like this it becomes clear that marketing is strategic, mission critical and all about keeping the organisation focused on what really matters - customer futures. We also think the same mantra applies to staff, shareholders, partners, suppliers. In other words marketing is about leading everyone to a future they may not be able to see themselves. And why not? Marketers have all the tools, experience and capability to do this. They are masters in the arts of storytelling, persuasion, articulation of value, interpreting behaviours, they know what customers expect, they are the 'customer in the business'. In short, it's a significant part of marketing's job to make sure that customers get the value, access and choice they expected. Otherwise, brand, value propositions, customer experience and fulfilment are just empty promises, or lets just say, sub-optimal. What should marketing be? Is marketing a tactical tool to generate sales opportunities, run campaigns, communication projects and PR, a function to generate more customers, to retain customers. Or something much more? Is it a collection of strategic disciplines deployed to build compelling visions, engage people, encourage interaction around ideas and connection between people, a conduit through which people and communities are aligned and connected to common purpose and shared outcomes? Is marketing as much about motivating and engaging staff as it is customers. Many great marketing leaders, like Richard Branson would likely agree with this. Remember when he famously said: "If You Look After Your Staff, They'll Look After Your Customers. It's That Simple". Clearly, marketers have a critical role to play in ensuring that staff can see the future as well as customers, they have a responsibility to provide staff with 'organising thoughts' that help them navigate to that future. Done well, this prepares the organisation and it's staff, equips them and gets them ready to support customers in realising this future. A combined internal and external perspective doesn't in any way detract from healthy obsession about customers, rather it explains why marketing must be engaged to help align the organisation around customer value. It emphasises the need for marketing to be involved with operations that deliver value to customers, touch customers or any other 'high priority' stakeholder group who's perspective or behaviour will have an impact on the customers future. Customer futures | customer innovation operating model Key strategic choices were well articulated in 1995 by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema in their seminal work: The Disciplines of Market Leaders. They explained how different customers buy different kinds of value and why these different kinds of value need different operating models, a must read for every marketer.Customer intimacy, client intimacy, whatever you want to call it has become a jaded term. It doesn't resonate with an outside-in perspective and is almost meaningless to customers themselves. Who ever heard of a customer asking for more intimacy? Customer intimacy and customer focus approaches all started out with laudable aims, but they've been corrupted over time, hijacked with intent, to increase account penetration, share of wallet, up-sell, cross-sell. It didn't start out that way. Once upon a time it was about really understanding what customers needed, their behaviours, their aspirations, getting close enough to their business that you became an indispensable trusted partner. We need to get back to that, and perhaps go further to innovate, co-create, collaborate with customers to uncover unmet needs. Their original model had three axis: operational excellence, product leadership and customer intimacy. Each of these represents a different operating model, different management systems and cultures. The essence of the approach was about making strategic choices between relative investment in each operating model that would ultimately drive differentiation and brand 'in market'. All companies would be expected to have competence in all three dimensions but should exhibit excellence and therefore build reputation in at least one. About 10 years ago we modified this model to include social mission and determined that all four axis were actually forms of innovation. The essence of the models remained the same, except that innovation became the main underlying process and culture. This was in response to the increasing pace of change and technological disruption in many markets. This has proven to be a useful path to follow as more complexity, instability in markets, new technology and significant shifts in social culture and customer behaviours demand more imaginative quick responses. In short increased pace and scale of change requires an innovative response. After many years applying these models to real world strategic challenges we have developed a new model which we think supersedes them all. It is an evolution that focuses on customer innovation and customer futures. It wraps all organisational capability and competence around customers. We created this because, increasingly we found it difficult to justify any sub-optimal performance with regard to customers, that deep customer insight and innovation were paramount and could not be subjugated with respect to any other operating model. What we're left with is an customer obsessed - innovation operating model. An integrated operating model: Obsessed with bringing innovation to customers, obsessed with what customers need now and in the future. Leadership that are progressive, creative and able to co-ordinate investment and resources across a number of operating models and strategic processes to focus on customer futures A business structure that's adaptive, fast to change when required but able to maintain a level of stability and cadence that avoids calamity - long term innovation Management systems that are driven by innovation and a vision of a better customer future, that measure strategic processes and intellectual capital that add value to customers A culture obsessed with innovation and customers, that avoids, perhaps eliminates anything that doesn't add value to customers It's challenging to blend different operating models, different cultures, different management practices, but it's possible, it's been done. More importantly, it's become necessary. The stable economics, political, commercial and social systems we were all so used to are no longer with us. We face a world of increasing complexity and disruption, where the linear management approaches of the past just don't work anymore. Knowing the art of the possible The truth is that customers do not always know what they want, they don't know the art of possible. Customer innovation, customer futures creates a partnership between customers and organisations, a bond, a common purpose and shared outcomes where customers explain their needs, wants, dreams and aspirations and organisations provide the foresight and mechanisms to realise them - getting customers to a future with products and services customers could never have envisaged. It's a continuous iterative dialogue, a never ending journey of joint discovery and innovation. Conclusion Even for the most mundane products and services, the most regulated, risk averse industries, organisations where the need for stability is absolutely essential, the model works. Innovation isn't always a fantastic leap into the future, there are many forms of innovation. Some are highly disruptive, unbelievable leaps forward, some are far more modest. All are predicated on seeing a better future, fixing a problem, meeting a need, exploiting assets and capability to get there. What we're talking about here is an organisations opportunity and perhaps responsibility to lead customers to a better future. Increasingly demanding customers have come to expect very high levels of service, flawless experience. Though they might not be able to tell you how, they expect be delighted, they expect efficiency, innovation, social conscience. They want to be pleasantly surprised, entertained, rewarded. They want your organisation to get them to a future, to help them realise their dreams. Companies that meet or surpass these demands by inventing the future customer want are rewarded with loyalty and revenue. Regardless of how far removed you are from the ultimate bill payer, you need to become obsessed with customers and their futures. #strategy #marketing #operatingmodels #tom #customerfocus #customerintimacy #customerconnections #customerfutures #customerinnovation #innovation #customerstrategy #marketingstrategy #businessstrategy #futuremapping #customerexperience

Businesses the world over are struggling to make sense of what and how to change to meet the needs of the new digital consumer. Yet at the same time, the traditional, monolithic models of consulting have failed to adapt too. Their vast, bloated cost structures inherently obstruct an agile, adaptable and collaborative approach which puts the client and their customer at the heart of transformational change. Adaptomy is a change accelerator: a new type of consultancy for this new era. We are a catalyst for insight, innovation and change, a new collaborative model using an adaptive, cost effective and eclectic network of skills and services – engineered from the ground up to be different. Combining coaching, business expertise and creativity, we adapt to every project and client to simplify challenges and implement change that delivers the future of work. By working collaboratively with clients and our tight network of people and partners, we accelerate change, embed adoption, nurture collaboration, and transfer capability. Business know they can no longer afford to ignore the needs of their changing customer base but to help them get to that brighter future they need a consulting partner that is prepared to range with them – and rejects the dogma of the ‘just tell them what to do’ approach and convenience of recycled, packaged solutions. They need a partner that can assemble and engage the very brightest and most capable minds to travel with them on that journey towards successful digital change. Adaptomy is that partner. Join us on the journey. Change starts here. #change #disruption #innovation