Monday, April 9, 2012

Strategic Questions for an Accelerating World


Change is coming are you prepared? Aivars Lode

11:21 AM Monday April 9, 2012 

1. Expect consumer conversations. As the number of channels through which you can connect with customers increases, it becomes more difficult to out-market and out-advertise your competition. Today, the brands that set the pace are the ones that build a deep understanding of the needs, desires, and motivations of their customers--and then engage their customers in authentic, two-way conversations. Investing in deep consumer insight and designing your organization to connect with customers in more meaningful, relevant ways always earn you an advantage over your rivals.
Ask yourself: How deeply do you understand your consumer? Have you designed your offerings to promote meaningful engagement?
2. Anticipate competitive experiences. As Joseph Pine and James Gilmore rightly cited in 1998, we live in an Experience Economy. Consumers are driven more by the experiences that companies create than the individual features that products offer. Today, we are almost overwhelmed with offerings that connect on an emotional level, and we frequently substitute experiences across category. (We might trade a night at the movies for a rental watched on a large-screen television.) As consumers reframe choice, this reframes competition. Understanding how customers might trade other experiences for your own gives you a better handle on your actual competition (and will help you to become a stronger competitor).
Ask yourself: Do I understand my competitive field as defined by my consumer? How well am I delivering, and what impacts outside my industry should I anticipating?
3. Run fast, adaptive experiments. Over the past decade, through a natural evolution of software systems, we've gained access to new levels of analytics and data. Real-time tools allow us to rapidly measure and react to our environment, creating tighter feedback loops that deliver the evidence needed to create change. In the past, we've often relied on analytics to understand how our operations track against a plan. Today, savvy organizations use real-time analytics to constantly ask different questions of their data, using the answers to evolve their strategy. They regularly run rapid experiments, learn, and refine their offerings in rapid iteration cycles.
Ask yourself: What are you *really* learning from your data? How is it helping you to improve your offering?
4. Reframe partnership networks. There is a competitive nuance to today's markets that can create interesting bedfellows; many companies often serve the same customers with different complementary experiences. In these moments, savvy businesses are able to define themselves by their direction, not by their competition. This enlightened view of competition creates a new lens for opportunity and subsequent partnerships. These collaborations can happen very visibly (Apple's iPhone hosting Google Maps), or quite subtly (Amazon's web fulfillment for large brick-and-mortar retailers). As companies reframe partnerships in order to deliver superior experiences, they create new and often staggering competitive pressures that cause markets to move faster.
Ask yourself: Are you defining your direction through your vision or through your competition? Could rethinking how and with whom you partner improve your business?
5. Leverage software service platforms. Ten years ago, enterprise software required a major investment in technology, configuration, and training. Today, software functions can be "rented" though cloud solutions. Through this model, businesses gain scale and service at lower cost almost immediately, creating more capital for other investments and more focus for core offerings. If your competitor has a better handle on how to bring the right software service platforms into the organization, there's a good chance they're running leaner than you are, allowing them more time and money to focus on their customers.
Ask yourself: How can you redefine the way you leverage software? How can new digital offerings serve your business, reduce distraction, and improve your overall level of service?
Of course, these are just some of the strategies that successful companies use to evolve toward greater success. Based on your own experience, what questions and strategies would you add to this list?

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