Blog
The Relationship Economy and the Order of the Million Elephants and the White Umbrella
The Relationship Economy In the emerging Relationship Economy well-facilitated, ongoing customer-supplier interactions have the power to reveal value for both parties, and, In the process, dissolve the instinct for a customer to make choices on the basis of competitive comparisons. In simple terms, customers have traditionally measured value as benefits / costs. In the Relationship Economy, they measure value as relevance / time (“Was this interaction time well spent?) ‘Relationship’ has, of course, always had a place in customer-supplier activities. But it has generally applied to upmarket customer-supplier activities – luxury (or, at least, expensive) goods and services – because, in the industrial age, it was generally true that customers could either have quantity or quality, but not b...
Valuegenie talks to Matt Watkinson about The Grid
The Grid Valuegenie’s David Pinder talks to award-winning business author Matt Watkinson about his new book The Grid. Matt is an internationally-renowned author, speaker and consultant on customer experience and business strategy. His first book, The Ten Principles Behind Great Customer Experiences has been described as the definitive book on the subject, winning the CMI Management Book of the Year Award in 2014. Since its release, Matt has become a sought-after keynote presenter, addressing thousands of industry leaders worldwide. His second book, The Grid was released by Random House in 2017, after four years of research and development. “The Grid provides you with a simple way to look at the complex system which is your business. With the possible exception of Warren ...
Co-creation & AI
Co-creation Platforms Innovation, Consultative Selling, R&D Service-integrated Relationships (SiR) SiR Intel AI We believe that co-creation platforms can deliver the highest level of engagement – and business potential! – This is where your customers join with you and your team to become co-creators. This opens up exciting opportunities to effectively do away with the separation between customers and suppliers so that your customers and your organisation work together, for the benefit of both parties! Our expertise includes: Co-creation Platforms – the development and operation of the ultimate 21st century tool to enable collaboration and co-creation – and much more besides – between all stakeholders, including customers. Innovation, Sales, R&D … – set your prima...
Co-creation for business: An introduction by Olaf Hermans and David Pinder
An advanced aspect of Valuegenie’s portfolio of Customer Value Creation activities is co-creation, where companies and their customers fully collaborate, with the customer as an internal resource or asset, to the benefit of both parties. This is achieved through specialist co-creation platforms that we build and manage for clients, supported, where appropriate, by new AI designed to support and enhance employee interactions. Valuegenie’s David Pinder teamed with SiR Intel’s Olaf Hermans to write an ‘epilogue’ to a book titled The 7 Principles of Complete Co-creation, by Stefanie Jansen ans Maarten Pieters (publication date 30 November 2017). The chapter makes the point that the key difference between co-creation and other useful forms of customer or user-focused act...
The Grid – Matt Watkinson
The Grid – a new book from Matt Watkinson The Grid – My Sunday project, to get my head around the new book from matt watkinson. I was privileged to be asked to review parts of it, so already know some of it, but now getting to grips with ‘the full grid’. It’s a brilliant idea, beautifully written. We will soon be interviewing Matt and talking to him about some of the key concepts in the book. Matt is an internationally-renowned author, speaker and consultant on customer experience and business strategy. His first book, The Ten Principles Behind Great Customer Experiences has been described as the definitive book on the subject, winning the CMI Management Book of the Year Award in 2014. Since its release, Matt has become a sought-after keynote presenter, addres...
The Essential Secret of Effective Value Creation & Delivery
Value Creation: Customer, Employee and Stakeholder value Right now, there’s a buzz out there around the term Value Creation. But there’s also a lot of fuzz. Far too often, companies send out mixed messages about the focus of any Value Creation initiatives. Is the Customer the primary focus? Or the Shareholder? Or the Employee? Or all three? Sorting this quandary out is critical for any business that intends to stay vibrant and profitable. And, as we hope to convince you, it all comes down to a consideration of what happens at the Customer-Supplier interface. That’s where everything that you plan, everything that you produce, everything that you hope for meets the real world. It’s where your business wins or loses. And it’s where, hand on heart, the Value Genie team has world-leading insigh...
Customer Centricity: The ultimate Outside-In lesson for us all
Customer Centricity When companies talk about Customer Centricity it is often from an Inside-Out perspective. A “Look, there are our target customers – go get ‘em” approach, supported by a “Buy what we’ve got, now” marketing and sales stance. In truth, this is a parody of Customer Centricity. Genuine Customer Centricity only happens when an company organises with and around its Customers. This requires, first and foremost, the adoption of an Outside-In perspective; recognition that Customer Value is the value perceived by a customer. In fact, our interconnected, always-on world has made this Outside-In, Customer-perceived-Value-led approach a ‘must have’ capability if sustainable success is to be achieved. The Outside-In view allied to “pull” marketing is the only way that the virtually un...
Customer Value? Who decides?
Customer Value Hello. I recently received a letter informing me that UK vehicle registration number P117 DER is for sale, and that this can be arranged to spell out my surname. You can see the idea from the photo. The letter says: “For the above number we are currently looking for offers in the region of £5750 ono (around $8,600); a price that we believe represents excellent value for money when you consider that this is THE perfect plate for your surname.” The letter illustrates two important points: One: Value – like beauty – is in the eye and mind of the beholder. The idea of owning a personalized number plate doesn’t hold the slightest appeal for me. I couldn’t even be bothered to gamble on the investment element. I don’t write this in any pejorative sense: for other members of the Pin...
Content Strategy: Content vs. Discontent
Content Strategy A recent survey on “The role of content strategy” conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit in association with Peppercomm indicates that all is not well in the world of content strategy. The survey found that two-thirds (67%) of global decision makers judge the success of content on its distinctiveness while 71% of the content-supplying marketers judge success purely on sales. The reasons for this mis-match, this dis-content, are understandable enough … but it doesn’t alter the fact that things need to change. It’s not as if there haven’t already been several alerts to this problem. Back in 2006, in their book “Customer Message Management”, Tim Reisterer and Diane Emo made the point that “Up to 90 percent of the marketing messages and materials created for sales suppor...
Are you brave enough for customer centricity?
Customer centric business It is one thing to say that the Customer is at the heart of any business but quite another to fully embrace the idea and have a truly customer centric business. A couple of stories from the not-too-distant past help illustrate the point. First, ask yourself these questions: To build business with a client or prospect what do you need to know about their business? What are your ‘benefits’? What are your ‘strengths’? What do you need to know about the competition – yours and those of your prospect? Now, here’s the first story about the challenges of having a customer centric business. A large, rosewood, mirror-polished table dominates the boardroom; around it, 20 or so black-leather chairs. Half a dozen dinner-plate sized ashtrays signal that we are in a time gone b...
Value in Use, the new foundation of business success
Value in Use We all recognize the astonishing technological advances of recent years. After all, we all carry supercomputers around in our pockets and purses. And we routinely use the internet, “the largest experiment involving anarchy in history”[i]. And terms such as ‘Big Data’, ‘digital world’ and the like are part of everyday business discourse. And yet, and yet, many companies fail to grasp the profundity of a fundamental change that these advances have both enabled and empowered: the power shift from Producer to Customer. Or maybe it’s just that a lot of folk don’t want to see it. For the leaders of enterprises that thrived in the top-down-drivin’, product-pushin’, profit-hustlin’ milieu of 20th century business, the need for fundamental change may not be greeted with wholehearted en...
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