Value Innovation

Executive summary

Value Innovation

Every company, be it for profit or not-for-profit wants to grow, and grow profitably. The only way companies can grow is by enlarging their pool of profitable customers. Peter Drucker, a world-famous management guru, captured this dynamic succinctly when he declared, “The only goal of a company is to get a customer (customer acquisition), and keep her (customer retention); marketing and innovation.” In most instances, companies can acquire customers by promising to deliver value in the future. But the only way they can hang on to their customers is by keeping that promise and by delivering customer value, and by engineering and delivering compelling customer experiences, which are kept relevant and meaningful over time through innovation. Value innovation is the key driver that makes this possible.

This assertion stands up to common sense scrutiny and is also rooted in hard data. When customers receive value and have a positive experience they tend to share that with others, either through word-of-mouth (WOM), or through social media – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. Formal research, both academic and commercial, indicates that for today’s social, connected, digital savvy customers peer reviews and opinions are a significant input into their own decision making. Additionally, for several years now, marketing thinkers have been urging practitioners to move away from historical product-centric performance measures, like market share, share-of-wallet, and customer satisfaction, to forward-looking customer-centric performance measures like customer equity (CE) and customer life-time value (CLV), which are more closely related to the future growth and profitability of a company. The backbone of these forward looking, contemporary performance metrics is value innovation, since it enables companies to acquire customers, retain them, and grow their business over time.

In short, continuous value innovation is a strategic core competence of a company that significantly affects a company’s growth, profitability, and future well-being. This service operates at the intersection of marketing, strategy, and innovation. It is equally relevant for customer facing and customer support functions, such as marketing, sales, advertising, customer service, product development, marketing research, e-commerce, website and content development, information technology, and business strategy to name a few. Since the customer is a corporate asset, this service can benefit all levels of executive seniority and experience, including C-level leaders and executives.

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Service Methodology

Service methodology comprises 4 distinct steps. The first step is a pre-consulting client engagement with key company executives to understand the principal dimensions of customer value and customer experience being currently delivered. The focus of this step is to understand company aspirations – the kind of value and experience the company would like to deliver; gaps in customer value and experience delivery – where the company feels it’s doing well, areas it thinks need improvement; competitor analysis – which competitors are delivering enviable customer value and customer experience; and target markets – the nature and characteristics of customers who will benefit from the specific value and experience the company wants to develop and deliver.

The second step will focus on developing a solid foundation of customer value, customer experience, and value innovation. Several processes and frameworks currently being used by leading value innovation companies will be presented and discussed. These processes will focus on the two principal dimensions of future growth; customers – current and new, and markets – current and new. Additionally, both continuous and discontinuous models of value innovation will also be shared. Examples from a number of companies operating in different industries, countries, and/or market environments will be provided to enrich the training experience.

In the third step, participants will apply innovation thinking through the processes and frameworks discussed in step 2. The goal being development and design of next generation of customer value and customer experience for select target markets, so that the company can meet/exceed customer expectations and also fulfill its own aspirations and goals. The fourth step will focus on organization and implementation – how to deliver the next generation of customer value and experience to select of customer experience designed, and measurement of the customer experience actually delivered and received by customers in the target market. The service will be delivered in three 4 hour modules to groups of 8-12 participants.

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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

Dr. Bhalla is an experienced marketing, innovation, strategy professional with over thirty years of global experience as a multinational corporate executive, business consultant, entrepreneur, academic, and executive education specialist. During his professional tenure he has worked with companies in over thirty different countries to help them win customers and grow their businesses by excelling at delivering memorable and compelling customer experiences through the co-creation and innovation of relevant and meaningful customer value. His rich and varied experience working with diverse functional groups within companies operating in diverse cultures coupled with his academic and commercial credentials is a powerful asset in enabling companies navigate customer experience and customer value innovation challenges in highly competitive global markets.

Known as a thinker, doer, and teacher he inspires his clients to adopt adaptable mindsets to routine and strategic business problems by listening, engaging, and responding to the market place differently than they have in the past. His leading edge thinking is reflected in his HBR article, “Rethinking Marketing,” and his book, “Collaboration and Co-Creation: New Platforms for Marketing and Innovation,” and is recognized by leading MBA schools around the world, like Duke, Indian School of Business, Georgetown, and University of Maryland, where he serves as adjunct faculty. Additionally, with his passion for collaboration, application of cutting edge knowledge to real life decision making, and continuous learning, he knows how to encourage companies to ask and solve the right questions that have the potential of changing their future well-being. He uses a variety of facilitation, consulting, teaching and coaching approaches in his programs, and is equally comfortable working with small to medium-sized groups. By enabling companies become proficient in designing and delivering winning customer experiences he helps them acquire, retain, and grow customers to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage in today’s VUCA world – volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.

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Service objectives

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

1. Rethinking Marketing
   The purpose of this service objective is to help companies rethink marketing, and rethink customer. Marketing is one of the most misunderstood management disciplines; it is often equated with selling and advertising. Traditional marketing views customers as essentially a source of revenue and profits. As a result, companies tend to focus more on their products, services, and technologies, and are more inclined to conduct business on their own terms than make allowance for customer preferences. In today’s interconnected, digitally empowered, global world this company-dictating-to-customer attitude could have deleterious consequences on a company’s long term health. Today’s customers are more educated and increasingly unwilling to be passive recipients of what companies decide is best for them. They have a voice and want to be heard, they want to have a say in the types of products, services, and communications that are targeted at them. Consequently, there is a need to rethink marketing from being product-centric to customer-centric. The goal is not push products and services at customers but to serve them. Customers are not mere wallets who have to be won at the expense of competition but collaborators and co-creators of value. A number of case studies and examples will be provided from a variety of companies, industries, and countries to help illustrate how the leading exponents of marketing treat their customers as assets, and how they actively invest in listening, engaging, and responding to their customers.
2. Customer Insights
   The purpose of this service objective is to help companies understand the importance of seeing the world from an external, customer-centered lens, as opposed to an internal product/service-focused lens. Customer value and experiences are always designed for specific market segments and target markets, never for a general market, because one size doesn’t fit all. Consequently, value innovation must begin with a deep understanding of customer needs and behaviors. Companies need to step out of their own operating frames and step into the shoes of the customer. The crucial issue is not what products and services companies can offer, the crucial issue is how customers use the myriad of products and services offered to them to make their lives better, easier, and simpler. Consequently, value innovation focuses on how companies can make the lives of customers in selected segments and target markets better, easier, more convenient, and more satisfying. Concepts, methodologies, and frameworks that companies can use to step into the experiential world of the customer will be presented and explained so that participating executives can put aside their own biases and preconceived notions and focus instead on understanding the broader context of customers’ lives and/or business customers’ enterprises.
3. Designing Value
   The purpose of this service objective is to help clients relate to the strategic management of customer value and customer experience as a structured business process. Compelling customer value and experiences do not happen by accident; they are intentional, the result of investments in time, money, effort, and people by companies to fulfill a wide variety of functional, economic, emotional, and aesthetic customer needs. In order to achieve this goal, and as with any business process, a structured, systematic framework is necessary. All companies have aspirations concerning how they would like customers to perceive them and their products and services. Customers in turn have experience and outcome expectations. The two, company aspirations and customer expectations, can often conflict. Consciously and systematically designing value enables companies to engage with customers in such a way that potential conflict is either avoided or minimized, and instead customer delight, satisfaction, and loyalty are maximized. Inputs from the rethinking marketing and customer insights service objectives will be used as inputs to help design targeted value and experiences that can meet, or exceed, customer expectations, and deliver on company objectives.
4. Innovating Value
   The purpose of this objective is to impress on clients that investment in ongoing innovation of customer experience is a non-negotiable business necessity for the future survival and well-being of the company. Today’s business world is often described as a VUCA world – volatile, uncertain, ambiguous, complex. In such a world, where the pace of change in markets, technologies, nature of competition, and customer needs and preferences has quickened dramatically, it is impossible for any company to take business success for granted. Being best at something today is no guarantee for future success; the only thing that #1 guarantees a company is a bigger target on its back. Given this scenario, the most prudent options is to invest in continuous innovation to constantly renovate, augment, and enhance customer experience, so that companies can not only keep pace with emerging competition and changing customer needs, but be one step ahead. Getting there early where customers and markets are headed is an enormous competitive advantage in today’s VUCA world. Concepts and strategies used by the world’s leading customer experience innovators will be presented and explained to inspire participating executives to embrace and adopt continuous innovation of customer experience in their own workplace.
5. Delivering Value
   As the old saying goes, the proof of the pudding is in the eating; companies can claim all day long that they are delivering best in class customer value and customer experience, but at the end of the day what customers believe and perceive they have received is what really matters. Consequently, the purpose of this objective is to acquaint clients with major vehicles of value and experience delivery, like platforms, brands, customer service, digital interfaces, apps, websites, and content, so that there is minimal loss between what value and experience companies want to deliver and what value and experience customers actually receive. Even delivery vehicles can be the object of value innovation as we see so readily in banking (digital wallets), healthcare (tele-medicine), and education (hybrid and online courses). There is also the need to establish perspective concerning the roles played by humans and technology in the delivery of customer value and experience. Despite the phenomenal increase in digital disruption and how technology is used to engage customers and drive business transactions, humans are not irrelevant in the value innovation equation, especially when it comes to delivering and executing. The issue is not of replacement – technology vs. humans, it is one of augmentation and coupling – how best to combine technology and human beings to deliver the optimum customer value and experience, either remotely or proximally, across all touch points and through all phases of the customer decision making journey. A variety of concepts and case studies from several companies, industrial sectors, and geographies will be used to illustrate leading edge thinking concerning how customers consume and use value in their daily lives, and how they engage with and experience companies and their offerings. Participating executives will also be exposed to contemporary methodologies like customer touchpoint analysis, customer journey mapping, service blueprinting, brand equity assessment, and four quadrant analysis to analyze how their companies are delivering value and how best to build on current strengths and fix/eliminate weaknesses.

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Testimonials

Capital One

“Dr. Bhalla invests time in open listening and observation, and quickly absorbs critical information and details. Once having formed thoughts and opinions, Dr. Bhalla is a thoroughly engaging communicator, whether addressing a large group or an individual. He effectively shares his ideas and recommendations with a personalized and customized approach that is always on target, leaving a listener inspired! A few examples follow: By leveraging Dr. Bhalla’s professional expertise at integrating qualitative and quantitative data into insightful findings, I was able to bring added value to my larger team. This greatly benefited my organization from a business perspective, and allowed me to grow personally. Dr. Bhalla also worked effectively with senior leadership, and staff at all levels, to collaborate and advise on effective solutions to problem issues as an internal advisor. His sought-after counsel was a key input in organizational decisions.“

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Robert H. Smith School of Business

“Dr. Bhalla is a leading expert on customer value innovation. I have been fortunate to have him teach modules on customer value innovation in several executive education programs offered by the Center for Excellence in Service (CES) here at Smith. Managers in our programs rave about the high quality and relevance of his course content and his vivid, timely examples of how firms innovate to offer continuous value to their customers. Dr. Bhalla practices what he preaches. He continuously updates his course content to offer the latest information on best practices in customer value creation. He receives the highest ratings of any of our consultants and trainers on the practical implications of his content. Perhaps the greatest compliment is that managers leave his sessions planning to take back what they have learned from him to their firms.“

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Permissionbit

“In the 12 years I have known Dr. Bhalla we have discussed a wide range of topics. In particular, I enjoy how during those conversations even poetry becomes relevant to business strategy. In helping me with management issues, his advice not only leads to a positive outcome, it comes with suggested readings well suited to my background to help me fill the knowledge I was lacking. In my recent startup, his experience has helped us mold our marketing strategy. Two months of planning were completely changed by a few sharp questions from Dr. Bhalla. We had not considered the need to incorporate features that, while not necessary for the product’s functionality, would help better sell it to a large corporation.“

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JLL

“I had the wonderful opportunity to meet and get to know Dr. Bhalla as a professor during a professional leadership program at University of Maryland School of Business. The course was designed as two intense week-long sessions several weeks apart. Gaurav made such an impression on me during the first session that when impending weather threatened to shorten the program, his module was the one I was truly concerned about missing. Dr. Bhalla’s client-focused curriculum helped me identify major areas of improvement in our current client pursuit efforts, and we have informally expanded new client preparation protocol to continually direct the preparation efforts towards a more prescriptive strategy development customized for each new client opportunity. Another key inspiration for me was Dr. Bhalla’s focus on client experience. Dr. Bhalla had our class explore the buying experience from the client point-of-view and presented practical and applicable processes for mapping the client journey. This is a wonderful exercise to identify where we can simplify the process for our clients. I am currently exploring how we can implement these changes within our firm. I highly recommend Dr. Bhalla’s consulting and training programs. They are insightful, relevant and applicable to the current business climate while presented in a fun, engaging manner that makes everyone eager to learn more, and apply that knowledge.“

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iPlace USA

“Our company provides recruiting services for American corporations from our internally operated offshore recruiting center in India. Our business faces a number of challenges and not just related to geography and difference in time zones. Getting our Indian managers to perform as trusted business partners to our American clients is very challenging. Yet, it is imperative we achieve that goal if we are to meet or exceed our corporation’s extremely ambitious 40 percent annual growth objective. Dr. Bhalla was able to size up our business challenges very quickly from multiple perspectives – motivational, operational, and cultural. His work with our executive team has helped us think differently about how to get our managers to align their personal goals with the company’s goals of serving our clients, and achieving a service mindset that will enable our clients and our company to increase sales and profitability. Dr. Bhalla’s approach has been highly practical, with a constant emphasis on rapid implementation to improve both operations and customer intimacy.“

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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:

Technology

Technology is all pervasive and omnipresent in today’s world, and is radically reshaping all aspects of work and life from everyday essentialities of cooking, cleaning, transportation, and security to discretionary needs, such as healthcare, education, and entertainment. In the business world, technology is the backbone of the operations of virtually every business, and is also helping shape business strategy, and transforming business, revenue, and growth models. There was a time when technology was equated with the IT department and the hardware that sat on our desks and the software that helped us operate the hardware. Today, there is scarcely a department in any business that doesn’t use technology; even HR departments uses technology for managing and developing the human potential of their respective organizations. In fact, according to Gartner, marketing, not IT, will be the largest buyer of technology by 2018. Additionally, technology is also ubiquitous and essential to the day to day lives of typical customers. Cars today have more code than the computers of a few years ago…and there is no turning back. We live in an era of digital disruption, an era in which technology simultaneously creates and destroys customer value and customer experience. Consequently, it is important for companies to embrace technology and leverage it so that the value and experience they are providing to customers doesn’t become obsolete.

We use technology as if it were a common noun, it is anything but that. Cloud computing is technology, as is a common app, as is virtual reality, and as is IoT (Internet of things). However, each of them are a source of differentiated customer value and the basis of a differentiated customer experience. Which is why as the world of technology expands and dominates businesses and people’s lives, the all important question of value innovation will become even more relevant. As Steve Jobs likes to remind technology fanatics, “Smart companies don’t push technologies on unsuspecting customers, they work backwards. They begin by asking what great value and experiences they should deliver customers and then ask their engineers and designers to develop and deliver the targeted value and experience.” The number of trends that characterize technology – robotics, AI, nanotechnology, etc. – are too numerous to enumerate and discuss here. What is important to note though is that the world of technology is constantly morphing and converging, making it even more demanding for companies to stay connected with the customer and tackle issues related to value innovation.

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Healthcare

Like education, entertainment, and a host of other industries, healthcare is in the throes of radical transformation. The industry is being asked to cater to exponentially increasing demand, which is both varied and complex, without passing on ever increasing costs to the end user. Not surprising therefore, that for several years now, the pharma companies have been urging themselves to migrate from being pill centric to becoming patient centric. Hospitals and other healthcare providers have been seriously rethinking their business models and moving away from treating diseases to championing wellness, and payers have been focused on pharmacoeconomics to balance costs and relative efficacy of alternate treatments. The number of moving parts grabbing the industry’s attention have increased dramatically in the past few years. New technologies, ranging from electronic health records, and digital tools for supporting diagnosis to telemedicine and robotics are being embraced aggressively to cater to the burgeoning demand. The changing demographics of the population, especially the needs of the elderly and the terminally ill, are posing fresh caregiving challenges, which are not easy to solve. Costs show no signs of abating, even as voices in support of individualized medicine are getting louder. Not only are new specialty drugs highly costly to produce, new viruses, like the Zika virus, and old standards like the flu, which have adapted and become more resistant to commonly available antibiotics, are stressing the system constantly, diminishing the ability of the healthcare system and industry to provide real, meaningful, timely, and tangible value at an affordable price.

Consequently, the industry is under greater public and legislative scrutiny. As more health care data, particularly financial, such as physician fees, comparison of insurance plan premiums, and payments by drug and medical device manufacturers to physicians and other care providers, becomes public, the power of the public to influence important medical policies and decisions is increasing, eroding the power and sole authority status of traditional gatekeepers, like physicians and hospitals. As the focus of the industry shifts from treatment to prevention and wellness, from individual health to social and community health, issues related to value innovation – customer value and customer experience – will become even more important. The word customer is used deliberately, because not everybody the healthcare industry will and sho