Strategic Design

Executive summary

Strategic Design

Strategic design is the application of future-oriented design principles in order to increase an organization’s innovative and competitive qualities. With an eye for the larger picture, strategic design redefines approaches and looks for new opportunities in an effort to build resilience into the organization. In this way strategic design focuses on implementation and driving an organization, so it can thrive. It also creates insulation and resources to bounce back when necessary from outside events. By analyzing trends and data, strategic design develops the organization’s brand and identity necessary to grow and sustain development in an increasing global market. Brand and identity are linked by strategic design to create empowerment and positive memory. Brands encourage creativity and build alliances. Good brands are based on the power of ideas, comfort and insight.

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Service Methodology

Strategic design is the field concerned with looking at overall principles related to keeping the organization competitive by taking an active role to ensure future growth. This is accomplished by evaluating data and trends and driving the organization to “make things happen,” instead of watching things happen or wondering what just happened. This includes applying some traditional principles such as divergence, transformation, convergence, sustainability and articulation. Divergence applies critical thinking through qualitative and quantitative methods to find better design solutions. Transformation redefines solutions. Convergence describes better scenarios. Sustainability manages the solutions over time. Articulation provides a visual description of the result for the users of products, services and environments.

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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

The intent of my service proposition is to provide innovation and uncover opportunities that point the client along the right path, without falling into the trap of over analysis. To create a strategic design that shows the client how to produce better products and services in tourism, health care, education, finance and the consumer market. The benefits will be high quality products and services that will deliver repeat business and growth. Help the client define their target market. Identify opportunities. Differentiate competitors. What products does the client offer? What is their message? How do they present it? How profitable is the brand? Finally, why is the brand unique and what does the brand promise?

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Service objectives

The following list represents the Key Service Objectives (KSO) for the Appleton Greene Operations Management service.

1. Project management
   In designing a plan and organizing a project it is important to know the resources and goals to meet certain criteria. A specific product, service or result with known funding would give a positive change. The scope, time, quality and budget are constraints to work with and the challenge is to optimize them to meet client objectives. These objectives include the description of the project; the planning of a project; the development of a project, monitoring systems and the end point. The objectives have to be measurable. Some functions are analysis, research, strategic planning, financial analysis, re-engineering, business processes, quality assurance, sales and marketing and market research.
2. Market research
   The Market Research process would involve defining the problem, developing an approach to it, designing research, collecting data, analysis and preparing and presenting reports. After articulating the problem and discussing the background information and how it will be used in decision making. Outline with decision makers, with industry experts and focus group research. The objectives deployed in market research are exploratory, descriptive and casual. This information is used to identify and define marketing opportunities and to generate, refine and evaluate marketing actions, performance and improve the marketing process. Unmet needs could be explored to better define the target audience.
3. Business development
   The employment of business development objectives to study products, services and operations of companies provides consulting opportunities. To assess the business environment it is important to develop ways to improve the company’s sales. Another objective would be to determine ideal market opportunities to pursue. Other responsibilities include creating campaigns around product launches. Business development pursues consumer research initiatives to look for new trends, shifting demographics and new or untapped marketplace demands by conducting surveys, focus groups and industry research. Using this information, it looks for ways to tweak existing products or create new ones. For example, as consumers shift from personal computers to mobile devices, it would be advantageous to enhance the company’s online presence specifically as it applies to mobile searches. It would also make sense to review the costs and benefits of different distribution channels, such as wholesalers and distributors, and direct-sales methods, such as online selling.
4. Management
   Management by objectives defines what is needed to achieve them. The thinking is that employees are more apt to achieve goals when they are involved with goal setting. Involving employees in the process of goal setting leads to empowerment, job satisfaction and commitment. Better communication and coordination leads to harmonious relationships within the organization to solve problems. Common goals for the whole organizations is a principle of management. Some objectives are collective for a whole department while others are individualized. .Objectives are to be specific, measurable, agreed, realistic and time bound. What gets measured gets done. Management by objectives emphasized the setting of goals over the working of a plan as a driver of outcomes. It also emphasizes the importance of the environment in which the goals are set.
5. Globalization
   Globalization objectives are used to develop partnerships for international projects in management. This includes knowledge building, global exposure and impact. This is accomplished through strategy, operations management, finance, marketing and entrepreneurship. The interchange of world views, products, ideas and advances in the internet and mobile phones are major factors in globalization. The connectivity of world economies and cultures through trade, capital, investment and transactions are the means through which this happens. Also, environmental challenges such as global warming, water and air pollution and over fishing are linked to the natural environment. Globalization can be located on a continuum with the local, national and regional. At one end of the continuum lie social and economic relations and networks which are organized on a local and/or national basis. At the other end lie social and economic relations and networks which are on a wider scale of regional and global interactions. Globalization refers to human affairs that link human activity across regions and continents.

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Achievements

Milliman

My personal experience with Milliman was as a senior content research manager developing topics for a workplace wellness event. The topic was on bariatric surgery as a weight loss option. Milliman is an actuary and was interested in how employers establish criteria for coverage and recognize cost and safety issues. This was in contrast to traditional weight loss programs for mild cases. I also worked with Milliman on an oncology event in which they were looking to implement cancer care benefits into the human resource structure. They were looking at value based design to lead to better outcomes for cancer employees. Additionally, they were searching for value based purchasing so the employer could purchase the best cancer care benefits for the most value. There are senior executives who work with cancer and so having a benefit structure addresses the needs they have. More and more employees are surviving cancer and continue to work so the establishment of a cancer human resource structure is in line with that of other chronic diseases.

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Goodyear

My personal experience with Goodyear was as a senior content research manager developing topics for a diabetes management conference involving a business gold standard to prevent diabetes. This involved maximizing insurance accessibility for diabetes prevention. It also includes onsite screening for diabetes, employee assistance fairs, healthy menus and making workplace adjustments for diabetes patients who require it. Goodyear was implementing these types of benefits for their employees because they believed the wellness and prevention benefits were worth the effort. This means higher producing employees, lower claims and lower costs for this disease.

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Target

My experience with Target was as a senior content research manager developing topics for a health industry event in removing boundaries in health care delivery with more efficient and effective care. The focus was on how convenience clinics can offer a range of primary care. This includes physical exams and routine care. These clinics can diagnose and treat common ailments and minor wounds, administer tests and write prescriptions. They also offer wellness programs such as diabetes monitoring, smoking cessation, weight loss, and high blood pressure evaluation. This is all covered by insurance. These clinics perform well for compliance, quality and cost savings compared to standard office visits at a health care facility. They often have no waiting time, no appointment needed, are staffed by nurse practitioners and teach self-care at a very competitive cost.

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Cleveland Clinic

My experience with the Cleveland Clinic was as a senior content research manager developing topics for a health industry conference. It was on a bypass operation for type 2 diabetes in contrast to weight loss and pharmaceutical treatments. The Cleveland Clinic was looking at the clinical and financial implications. I also researched the Cleveland Clinic for a medical tourism conference since the Cleveland Clinic has hospitals and facilities in foreign countries. The thinking on the part of some large employers is to send significant but non urgent cases to another country such as Asia, Arabia or Spanish speaking is that these countries have American trained facilities such as the Cleveland Clinic because they worked out the quality issues and the costs are much lower than in the USA. For a long time, individuals have also arranged their own cash care in other countries for reasons of no insurance, convenience, expedience and costs of 1/5 of what it is elsewhere. Other American trained facilities in these countries are Harvard Healthcare International and Johns Hopkins.

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Verizon

My experience with Verizon was as a senior content research manager investigating topics for a health industry event. This included security challenges of creating electronic data system standards to reduce costs, enhance efficiency and improve patient care. Mobile technology can transmit EKG tests. Employees can now get portable records of their own in a secure location. Technology developed by Verizon can care for large patient populations with smart dashboards, alerts, reports, automated follow ups, data sharing that helps physicians to monitor health. Since technology can efficiently serve patients seeking visits that are informational and require no prescriptions or procedures, health care costs could drop dramatically. Other companies such as Amazon, Google and Apple have transformed the market for music and books into technology based ones with lower costs for consumers. The health care market with the lifetime value of customers is much larger than any tech industry.

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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:

Consumer Goods

The consumer goods market involves research, product innovation, manufacturing, branding and marketing. This requires a highly skilled workforce in the products arena. In the U.S. this market is about half a billion, according to Select USA, a commerce government industry organization. Typical consumers are open to domestic and imported brands Demand is at the top of the market for high quality products and at the lower end of the market where there is value. The middle of the market is shrinking. As more demanding digitally empowered consumers emerge, there is a willingness to serve a niche market. Computers and mobile devices influence 1/3 of retail sales, according to Digital History. Digital commerce and e-commerce are outpacing. Consumers want more transparency and more control. In another country, my research with MedDay, Inc. of UK/Sweden there was a large demand for a consumer product– mobile phones– in the use of health care monitoring of chronic conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular and asthma. Health care instructions were programmed into the mobile phones by health care providers who could be many miles away from the patient in China. Since almost everyone in China owns a mobile phone this turned out to be a very efficient and low cost way to monitor health care conditions. Mobile phone monitoring is a strategy that could be implemented in the United States for follow up care for chronic disease patients, eliminating the need to come into a health facility. E-health and telemedicine allow for the connectivity and transport of communication to facilitate patient centered health care. Privacy is included in the delivery since each patient has their own mobile phone. The company, MedDay, also employed mobile phones in the realm of disaster preparedness where life-saving messages could be programmed by the government alerting citizens to impending hurricanes, snow storms, earthquakes and other natural disasters. In addition, the company provides disease surveillance such as outbreaks in which MedDay’s / Reg Point mobile alert system was deployed. Reg Point won a Graham Bell prize for mobile health. According to Global Edge, the future of this industry looks bright as demand is likely to increase due to the increasing demand for commodities in emerging retailing markets, such as those in China, Russia, and India. There are also the well-established markets of Japan, Western Europe, and the United States which maintain a steady demand. Consumers have become accustomed to having these products in their lives. In another sector, the inexpensive, home furniture section is a growing segment of the industry, reaching a broader, more mainstream market with the successes of manufactures like IKEA International. Cosmetics are also expected to maintain a constant demand as an aging world population seeks to look younger. Prices for commodities that are used to produce these goods have also fallen recently; increasing profit margins to companies. Some top consumer goods companies I worked with include Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Kimberly Clark, Nestle, Johnson & Johnson, Pepsi Bottling, General Mills and Whirlpool.

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Travel & Tourism

According to The History of Travel and Tourism, travel is the basis to connect to countries which leads to economic competitiveness. . For example, Roman resorts and spas were built around 20 BCE in Europe. The arrival of Christianity made travel safer. Industrialization also led to tourism. Railways and packaged tours increased business tourism. The industrial revolution promoted travel to escape to the country from stressful employment .Business travel took off. Hotel chains were pioneered with the railroad companies. Seaside and ski resorts developed. As transportation grew across countries so did travel. Aviation spurred mass tourism. These events reduced barriers to economic growth and jo