Here is the start of a series of posts and discussions that I would like to share regarding Business Model Innovation. You will find my first post on this here: Business Model Innovation: Music to my ears
Most of our customers are going through a business model transformation, with different levels of maturity:
- Some are still on the renovation stage, which can translate at first into streamlining and automating their business processes to reduce their cost. One of the impact for their search for improved operational agility, is the introduction of digitalization on some key processes (i.e online ordering, customer self-service, automated call centers etc …) .
- Some are going through an enhancement stage, developing additional services to enhance their core. This can be adding services to their products, such as consulting services, maintenance services etc. This might also mean adding complementary services and products from partners to enhance their core. In quite a lot of cases, this would induce a shift from selling product to selling services, where the products no longer exist per say, but an integrated solution is sold, with an associated business model of a consumption of service (i.e Software industry obviously, printing industry, car industry, etc…).
- Some would finally go for an innovation stage in their business model, where they may want to expand beyond their core solutions, into new industries, or yet into new products.
In the last two cases, we can obviously see that having a customer centricity approach will be key to enhance or innovate on their business models. Here also digitalization can play a key role in different manners:
- Harvesting a mine of data on the customers to better know and understand the customer
- Being able to analyze these data in real time to propose contextual offers
- Introduce an omni-channel approach for reaching out directly to the consumers, while the company was used to do that through a network of resellers
- Introducing social media to listen to the voice of the customers etc..
We can see that business model transformation and digitalization are often inter-linked and have two major impacts:
- Putting the customer at the center of the transformation strategy and leading to a deeper knowledge of his insights and journey
- Improving the operational excellence
These two axes are precisely what the CEC portfolio is covering and centered around with solutions for
- Omni-channel approach for the customer
- Audience listening solution
- Better sales force automation
- Monetization of usage-based service
- Front-end with e-commerce
- Self-service etc …
