Executive Summary

Specialist Business Development

Innovators with ideas for climate tech, net zero, or carbon-neutral energy technologies often need support to take them to commercial reality and make a positive, sustainable difference. This is where specialist services in business development to support such innovators (pre- or post-investment) to get the business results they need come in; simplifying the complex and getting you the “yes” you want. If you’re looking for expert executive-level marketing or business development capability from a proven leader to assist you in your journey, and help you accelerate your business to realise your full market potential and achieve sustainable growth, then such services are for you. In today’s economic reality, you may not have the in-house capability you require to turn your idea into a commercial reality; this service offers the expertise you need, based on a deep heritage of successful experience with a global blue-chip technology brand.

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Service Methodology

Through deploying tried and trusted analysis expertise, the first step is to help you understand your situation, and then subsequently define how best to put in place a strategy to achieve your goals, identifying and then maximising opportunities for your product or service technology. Typically, the service phases comprise discovery, engagement, and ongoing support; working with you to better understand and define where you are, where you want to go, the value proposition your technology idea offers, and how best to align it to the target market…thus optimising the value for all concerned, not least of whom, yourself. The typical sequence of events upon engagement comprises situational analysis, goal setting, strategy definition, tactical actions, and performance control.

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Service Options

Companies can elect whether they just require Appleton Greene for advice and support with the Bronze Client Service, for research and performance analysis with the Silver Client Service, for facilitating departmental workshops with the Gold Client Service, or for complete process planning, development, implementation, management and review, with the Platinum Client Service. Ultimately, there is a service to suit every situation and every budget and clients can elect to either upgrade or downgrade from one service to another as and when required, providing complete flexibility in order to ensure that the right level of support is available over a sustainable period of time, enabling the organization to compensate for any prescriptive or emergent changes relating to: Customer Service; E-business; Finance; Globalization; Human Resources; Information Technology; Legal; Management; Marketing; or Production.

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Service Mission

Based on over two decades of experience developing and executing product, service and technology strategies within a blue-chip brand, and an accumulated rich and extensive knowledge and understanding of how to develop business and marketing activities through which to deliver positive outcomes, this service has the ability to deliver both strategically and operationally, including ambassadorial expertise. The service mission is to create the climates for you to get the “yes” you want, founded on a demonstrated and consistent path of successfully getting results, fuelled and driven by passion for making a positive difference in today’s world. Aligning passion and purpose with skills and ideas creates unstoppable energy to make positive and sustainable difference. Through a passion for humanity’s sustainability challenge, this service is about using skills and expertise to help those who need support bringing to life their energy technology ideas that will play such a crucial part in enabling fulfilling, sustainable lives for us all.

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Service Objectives

The following list represents the Key Service Objectives (KSO) for the Appleton Greene Specialist Business Development service.

1. Situational analysis
   Answering the question “where are we now?”. Deep analytical skills are utilised to undertake a detailed and impartial analysis of the current situation, both internally and externally. This will be conducted through both desktop work and through communications and interviews with various relevant internal and external stakeholders. Various tools and techniques will be used including an assessment of both internal strengths and weaknesses, and external threats and opportunities via a SWOT. Current performance is dispassionately reviewed, along with customer feedback and competitor benchmarking, to gain a clear picture of the “as is” situation. An assessment can then be made of how your current ambition and value proposition align with your potential market, thus identifying areas of opportunity (to be capitalised upon) or areas requiring development.
2. Goal Setting
   Answering the question “where do we want to be?”. Using similar engagement techniques to Situational Analysis, again conducted through both desktop work and through communications and interviews with various relevant internal and external stakeholders, but this time with a focus on defining and refining your vision and ensuring all your business goals align with it. Objectives are then defined to progress towards achievement of this vision, ensuring that they are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound), and appropriate Critical Success Factors (CSFs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are selected as appropriate to allow tracking of progress and, if necessary, identifying areas requiring intervention. This can be done using dashboards, which would be defined at this stage.
3. Strategy definition
   Answering the question “How do we get there?”. Strong strategic skills and business development experience honed over many years are utilised to provide actionable insight, and crystallise – and continuously improve – marketing plans to translate vision into commercial reality. Through expert use of tried and tested marketing techniques such as segmentation, targeting, and the “Marketing Mix” (the “Seven Ps” – product, price, promotion, place, people, process, and physical evidence), powerful and effective strategies are devised and concisely articulated so they can be used as a roadmap for the organisation’s resources to achieve the desired destination. This will include defining strategic goals for engagement with key audiences, and also for the appropriate experience for prospective customers.
4. Tactical actions
   Answering the question “What do we need to do to get there?”. This is where proven product marketing and marcomms know-how are used to help you to actively create the climate required for you to get the “yes” you want. Here is where a resourced, milestone-driven Marketing Communications plan is created including the scheduling of activities (taking into account relevant and optimised audiences, messages, and channels). This can and often does include activities aimed at building and developing relationships with relevant stakeholders, and includes techniques for achieving and measuring success in this regard, including (but not limited to) identifying decision makers and decision influencers, prioritising improvement or remedial actions, and optimising use of internal resources.
5. Performance Control
   Answering the question “how do we monitor, control, and improve our performance?”. Through tracking and reviewing performance against the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) devised in step 2, we can derive both qualitative, and ideally quantitative, feedback to enable diagnosis of areas of relative good and poor performance and thus propose interventions for enhanced performance. This can result in increased stakeholder engagement (internal and external), and prioritised lists of ongoing actions to increase the probability and level of desired success. Simple but effective dashboards can be created to enable instant insight through powerful visuals. This can then feed periodic repeat of the Situational Analysis to create a continuously live and ever-improving process.

Achievements

Rolls-Royce plc

Launched new business aviation engine family – the Pearl. In 2018, the company broke cover on a six-year secret project to create a brand-new family of engines for the Business Aviation sector. After once being dominant as a powerplant provider to airframers in the long-range large-cabin sector, and an exclusive supplier for one of those, the surprise loss of a couple of berths to competitor engines had caused the market to question the company’s strategy and future. However, much work had been going on behind the scenes to ensure that the new top-of-the-range products being worked on separately by the three largest airframers in this sector. The launch was a huge success, and was both the star of the show at the first member of the family’s launch at the EBACE show in 2018, and subsequently lauded by the market when the second member of the family broke cover shortly thereafter.

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Rolls-Royce plc

Launched new variant of flagship aftermarket service provision, TotalCare Flex. After many years of success (achieving customer penetration rates in the 95%+ region) with the original TotalCare service package, having pioneered this as a new business model for the provision of aero engine aftermarket care, the needs of its customers had evolved as the engines moved through their natural product lifecycle. This led to a growing disconnect between the characteristics and benefits of the service offering and the needs of its target customers, which led to a small but not insignificant yet growing level of customer dissatisfaction and market chatter. The company listened to the feedback from the market and created a new variant of the service catering for the changing needs of the relevant subset of the customer base. The service was a great success and once again customers’ needs were met and the market reaction was very positive.

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Rolls-Royce plc

Launched a brand-new aftermarket service created specifically for the needs of the aircraft lessor community, LessorCare. Further to the example for “Company 2” given above, the growing success, take-up, and influence of the aircraft lessor community in the engine aftermarket space became a key factor in determining the success of engine aftermarket packages. So the company once again listened to the market and this time designed and offered a service catering specifically for the needs of this segment of the market. Launched at a large industry conference at the start of 2017, it quickly gained market traction with competitors even admitting that the company was miles ahead of them in this area.

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Rolls-Royce plc

Achieved exclusivity for the Trent XWB on the A350-1000. Securing berths on airframes is massively strategic for engine manufacturers as it defines their route to market on the one hand and plays an enormous part in determining the commercial success of a particular engine programme on the other. These opportunities for engine manufacturers are few and far between, so are pivotal. When Airbus was reviewing its design for the A350-1000, it presented an opportunity for an engine manufacturer to change the game by working closely with the airframer to define a uniquely attractive solution. This was achieved and the market responded very favourably to the airframe/engine combination.

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Rolls-Royce plc

Launched IntelligentEngine as the branding and communications vehicle for future-related technology activities including digitalisation and electrification. The pace of change associated with Industry 4.0 affected the company and its external stakeholders as much as anyone else and it was becoming increasingly challenging to tie together the marketing communications needed to ensure these stakeholders were able to continue the cognitive-affective-behavioural journey required to enable their continued custom. The company thus launched an overarching communications vehicle with the IntelligentEngine, which not only enabled the intended audiences to understand the depth and breadth of the company’s extensive capabilities, but also how they would be of benefit to them and thus persuade them of the overall value proposition.

More detailed achievements, references and testimonials are confidentially available to clients upon request.

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Industries

This service is primarily available to the following industry sectors:

Technology

A very pragmatic and helpful list of what is meant by the term “Technology” in today’s modern world is one such as that offered by Klaus Schwab in his excellent book “Shaping the future of the fourth industrial revolution – a guide to building a better world”. This includes technologies that might be traditionally classed as IT, such as new computing technologies, Blockchain and Distributed Ledger technologies, and the Internet of Things (IoT), but also other critical technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotics, advanced materials, additive manufacturing and multidimensional printing, drones, biotechnologies, neurotechnologies, virtual and augmented realities, energy capture (and storage and transmission), geoengineering, and space technologies. As the world’s population wakes up to and acknowledges the seriousness of climate change and its potential to make irreversible damaging changes to our current way of life, this list much better reflects the myriad activities being undertaken to attempt to solve society’s problems through the application of technology, and the crucial role of Engineering to harness the miracles of nature for the benefit of mankind (while not overlooking that we are not the only species on this planet). As we seek as a race to continue to prosper while acknowledging that the enabling resources are finite, then the need, desire, and investment to make progress will all intensify. Public consciousness is being awoken by not only the growing number of influential leaders and popular figures such as President Biden Greta Thunberg, Bill Gates, and David Attenborough, but also the increasing frequency and magnitude of natural disasters such as heat waves, floods, and wildfires. Consequently, there has been and continues to be a commensurate rise in activity and funding in the space of trying to bring to bear technology solutions to help mitigate the situation. In areas as diverse as agriculture and food, enabling technologies, energy and power, materials and chemicals, resources and the environment, and transportation and logistics, both existing companies and new and exciting start-ups are racing to help address the challenge with their ideas. The sector has moved from being one driven purely by conscience or altruism, and now, thanks to an increasing level of scrutiny on ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) performance of companies, as well as simply the bottom line, investors are becoming more particular about where they place their money. Large and influential investors such as Blackrock are taking public stances that are driving companies not only to take the ESG challenge more seriously, but also create are creating a groundswell that means only companies that do perform well in this area will be financially successful beyond the short term. This is accompanied by growing recognition from governmen