We always hear that the customer is not buying because the price is too high. Is the price important?
Of course, most clients will say yes in any survey or in sales negotiation. Actually, there are departments at your clients that know only two words: Too expensive!! Give me rebates! That is the purchasing department and it is their job to negotiate the price of a purchase. However, is this true, that even for B2B customers only the price is important?
Observe the jobs-to-be-done of your customers. Don’t ask the customers
Let’s take an example from RWE, a huge German utility firm. Let’s take the case they need to purchase electronic testing equipment. Nothing fancy, just a plain vanilla device for 30 to 50 Euro. Traditionally, this purchase would be a C category purchase. C means not critically important to the firm and therefore the firm usually shops around among different suppliers for a good price.
So you would assume that price is the decisive criteria for a firm to purchase from you. And yes, if you survey customers what is important in their decision to purchase C goods, the price will be on top.
So, all B2B marketplaces of the late 1990s and early 2000s like Onvia had the value proposition that price of the goods are the most important criteria for the B2B market. So they offered everything economics told them what to do in a price sensitive market: Make auctions, offer pool buying for larger quantities or make requests for proposals.
Not the price of the good is important but the whole cost of purchasing
However, they had to learn the hard way (most disappeared from the market) that this is not the case. Let’s go back to the testing device of 30 to 50 Euro at RWE. Saving an extra 20% on a purchase of 50 Euro is great. But is it just 10 Euro. But the costs for the internal purchasing process can easily be 150 to 200 Euro for the traditional process according to Karl Czech from RWE purchasing. (more…)
Dear readers, this time I would like to tap to your collective and swarm intelligence. It’s a bit like open innovation but in a quick and dirty version.
The challenge: boring and uninspiring banking
The challenge is simple. Retail and e-Banking in the current form is quite 1.0. Most eBanking or payment systems use the traditional business model and transferred the traditional model online. So we have a banking 1.0 online. Boring, dull, uninspiring.
Now, the challenge is: What will be banking 2.0 look like?
What would make you say: “Wow, they really got it. You have to try it. It’s cool and just helped me to make my life easier and better.”
Your unsolved or badly solved jobs in personal finance
But before we look at the solutions I would like to raise the questions what are unsolved jobs in your personal finances. What annoys you? What is great and more people should know about? What are needs you think are so obvious, that there should be solutions to it?
Personal finance can anything from cash management, expense management, payments, saving and investing, financing your house or your car, saving for the silver age (pensions) etc… If you have a family, think about your family financial affairs. If you are a patchwork family, what are special jobs there?
Your solutions, please!
The second question is about solutions. What solutions do we need in banking 2.0? What products or services you would love to see?
Please use the comment function for your unsolved-jobs or ideas or the open innovation platform atizo, where I have set up a project “banking 2.0” for us. Please feel free to use both or just the one that suits you most.
Apple is the poster child of business model innovation. Apple has reinvented several business like music with itunes and the ipod, the telecommunication industry with its iphones and currently, the publishing/news/information industry with the ipad. But success is also associated with costs we should consider.
Apple has a market capitalization of 576.79 billion USD. There are 43’400’000 search results at Google when you look up Apple Business Model Innovation. Apple is the household name for innovation for sexy products and services for which people camp in front of stores to be the first to get the latest gadgets.
But it is also interesting to look at the cost associated with Apple’s success. Take a look at infographics made by mbaonline.com.
I had in the last months the chance to apply business model thinking & innovation on several, very diverse industries: the airline and travel industry, the pets industry and some time ago on the media industry, particularly newspaper.
In the upcoming three next posts, I will share some insights I gained from using the business model canvas on these industries. The series will start with the pets industry.
A word of warning to all industry experts: I am not an expert for these industries. I’m not a pet industry expert. I am an expert for the process of re-thinking and re-inventing business models.
Pets Industry – A revolution in the making
The following slide deck is my presentation, I gave on January 27th, 2012 in Berlin at the Pets International conference. Enjoy some insights in a very interesting industry where the core is all around living creatures and the close relation we have to them.
Enjoy also my new design of the business model canvas I have created together with Gottschalk & Ash, a designer with the support of the Wolfsburg AG, an innovation incubator in Germany. You will see more in the future.
Pets are man’s best and dear friends
Pets are highly emotional and men’s best friends. Pets are members of your family. Sometimes they are treated better then human beings. (more…)
We have a great tool for visualization of a business model: the canvas. There is a hype on visual thinking and business model design. But can the tools deliver?
In the last years, I have seen many uses of the business model canvas to real cases. Some showed astonishing results, others were disappointing. Why? Any tool is only as good as the user. A fool with a tool is still a fool. But also: A genius without the right tool might be a fool. So let’s see, what makes the difference.
Visual Thinking = Thinking with Visual aid
Visual Thinking is often mistaken as nice visualization. A bad idea does not become better by visualization. Visual Thinking is great since you think in pictures. Visualization can help to make your thinking better, to see more options and see the interdependencies among all components. But you still have to think!
There was a reason why god gave us two brain hemispheres: Visual Thinking is the combination of analytical and creative thinking. So do the thinking.
Be precise in your thinking
Due to the limited space, people tend to be pretty imprecise when filling out the canvas. They fill the canvas as if it is just a form, not the master plan for a venture or for the future of your firm. That happens particularly often in large corporations where the people are so stuck in their old thinking. (more…)
“What business are you in?” sounds like a simple question. But it’s not. How you define your business determines which direction your firm can go. Based on your answer, you define and limit your strategic options.
In a company, the business model is defined by a dominant group of people. They have a common understanding of what business they are in and how they create value. However, the business model is not an absolute reality. It’s a social construct of dominant opinion makers, e.g. your top management. This is important to understand.
By taking a different look at your business, and thereby challenging your dominant logic, you can identify more and different strategic options for your firm. But beware; by doing so, you are also challenging the top dogs in your firm.
Life is not that simple. Changing perspectives by xkcd.com
How you define your business depends on the dominant logic of your management
Considering the definition of what a business model is, it seems easy to describe the business model of a company. You can use the business model canvas (Alex Osterwalder‘s or mine) and then you describe how value is created. Often we assume that regardless of who describes the business model, we will end up with the same description. This is a mistake.
Particularly on the web, we see a lot of copies of successful business models. How many clones are there of Groupon? How many competitors and incumbents wanted to copy Amazon in the late 1990s and failed? The core question is: Is it possible to copy a business model? In this post, I will elaborate on this topic.
During a recent interview for a bachelor thesis, I was asked: Under which circumstances is the transfer of a business model e.g. from a different country or from a competitor a useful strategy?
I must admit, I am skeptical about the outright transfer of business models from one firm to another. The reason is very simple. A business model is more than its technical components like your value chain, revenue model, your product etc. The business model also includes soft factors like the value proposition, your values and corporate culture or your core competencies. Remember the definition of core competency: core competencies have to be rare, difficult to copy and valuable.
Many strategists, VCs and purely analytical people think that it is easy to copy a business model. What they forget is that a business model is not just a technocratic combination of components, in fact, humans are involved with their values, cultures and hidden assumptions. You can copy the hard components, but the human aspect of a business model –values, culture, tacit knowledge – is difficult to copy.
Business Model transfer from Start-ups to Start-ups
I just had the pleasure to spend sometime with two passionate freaks and both have built a business around their uniqueness and idiosyncrasies. The idea behind this post is to inspire you to find YOUR business model for YOU. Do not copy somebody else but find something that fits YOU and YOUR unique skills.
I spent the last week ski mountaineering in Italy in Valle Maira (south east of the piedmont region, east of Cuneo). It was a very enjoyable vacation with lot’s of fun, work and pleasure but also with learnings I want to share with you.
I learned from two people, Lucas Iten, our mountain guide and chef Enrico Crippa from the two Michelin star restaurant Piazza Duomo in Alba. Both are passionates. Both are freaks.
Mountain guide Lucas Iten
The first freak I encountered was our Swiss mountain guide Lucas Iten also called Mountain Geier. Actually, Lucas is not really customer-oriented; he is just the best in finding the best run under the present circumstances. And the best run is not really defined by the customer but the possibilities of the day. And if that means to climbed 1700m than you better ascend.
You have to fit to Lucas. When you do, you have one of the best times possible in the mountains. He loves the runs; he is like a child with all his enthusiasm and joy. He is childlike but very professional in regard to planing and the risk of avalanches. He loves the days out in the mountains and loves to share his enthusiasm. We found runs local alpinist were surprised that you could make them.
Early in life, Lucas knew that the mountains will be his life. In a young age, he climbed the Eiger Northface and did everything to avoid things he was not the best at like school. (more…)
Architectural innovations are often what customers do not see immediately but there are core of any good strategy. While in the last years we saw a trend toward concentration on core activities like marketing and branding, some companies take the opposite route. And that is good.
I was recently in Egypt to give a workshop on business model innovation. I received an invitation from the Executive Institute, a young and upcoming executive education institute based in Cairo. I was absolutely intrigued by the participants and their entrepreneurial drive. We can all learn from them in the so-called developed countries since they are true entrepreneurs and risk-takers. Participants came from different backgrounds ranging from food and telco, real estate development to plumbing and fixings.
Concentrate on the core
The traditional view on the value chain is to concentrate on the core activities. So almost all consumer electronics, computer or mobile equipment firms have outsourced their production to specialized manufacturers, so-called contract manufacturers or electronics manufacturing services (EMS). The western firms like Apple, Dell or IBM concentrate on the design, R&D, marketing and sales of the devices and leave the manufacturing to EMSs like Flextronics(165.000 employees) or Foxconn (113.000 employees). Outsourcing manufacturing to specialized firms is the norm in their industries. Foxconn manufacturers for Apple and Intel while Microsoft is a customer of Flextronics.
This architectural or operational model looks very convincing since the story line “Concentrate on the core” sounds very plausible. By concentrating on your core capabilities, you focus on what you are strong at. In the case of Apple, that is design, usability, marketing and branding.
The perils of the “core”
However, there is a peril in this model as well, particularly when you are not as strong in core capabilities. E.g. Hong-Ta Corporation was the manufacturer of the innovative Palm Treo 650 or of the Compaq iPaq, one of the first smartphones. Today, HTC as the firm is known today is very strong in smartphones and was one of pioneers in phones with Google’s operating system Android. Interestingly, Palm and Compaq are today irrelevant in the growing markets for smartphones. And both former pioneers are now part of Hewlett Packard.
Backwards Integration: You can do the opposite as well
At the same time as the IT and electronics industries are following the mantra of “concentrating on core competencies” other firms in other industries do just the opposite. Let’s look at food companies. (more…)
How do brands and business model work together? That is a key question for successful companies because if they do not align brand and business model it will backfire, probably not in the short run but surely in the long run.
Branding is a hot topic. Brands give products the magic touch. With branding regular, normal products morph into highly desired status symbols customers are willing to pay a premium for. Branding worked very well in the last years but is branding sustainable?
Brands are not sustainable if the foundation is missing
Branding is not sustaining when you have a business model that does not support your brand or vice versa, your brand promises something you cannot fulfill. If you focus too much on branding you create over the long run, a perception gap between what you promise and what you deliver. It is like the icing on the wedding cake. It looks great but very rarely does a wedding cake taste as good as it looks.
Let us look at one example.
The Ergo Insurance Case
The German insurance company Ergo Gruppe is the holding company of the well-know household brands Victoria Insurance and the famous Hamburg Mannheimer Insurance. Lately, Ergo decided to consolidate its brands under the fresh brand Ergo. Ergo tapped into people’s discomfort that insurance companies are great in sales but very bad when it comes to ease to understand the policy condition and in the case of a claim.
From this customer insight of discomfort with traditional insurance companies Ergo created the claim “Versichern bedeutet verstehen.” or in English “To insure means to understand”. Ergo used all communication channels and very well made commercials to establish the brand Ergo among German consumers. In the ads, people ask why it is so difficult to get insured, why the agents do not take them serious. (more…)
Of course, most clients will say yes in any survey or in sales negotiation. Actually, there are departments at your clients that know only two words: Too expensive!! Give me rebates! That is the purchasing department and it is their job to negotiate the price of a purchase. However, is this true, that even for B2B customers only the price is important?
