Ready2Advise? – Capabilities for Digital Marketplaces, Digital Commerce, CRM, Sales enablement & Digital Marketing – Ready2Practise?
Old world legacy Enterprises are now under pressure than ever before to stay relevant as they come under increasing pressure from pure-play digital intermediaries.?We have seen the impact of the change in the Retail industry with the disappearance of high street stores.?We saw the change in the Hospitality industry when online “no assets” firms ended up becoming much bigger than the traditional “assets based” organisations. Some of the “no assets” firms are now entering the hybrid turf threatening the legacy enterprises ever more.?There are many other industry examples.?Digital business models are now becoming all pervasive as even the SMB and Mid-Market segments try to defend turf or go on the offensive with their hybrid business models.?The hybrid business models that are taking shape are in the form of being able to offer their products and services through their own Digital commerce capabilities or co-opeting in Digital marketplaces. These organisations need transformation of their CRM & Sales enablement and Digital marketing capabilities. The top 10 to 15% of legacy enterprises are well on their journey to Digital selling.?The next 60% to 75% of the bell curve is now getting ready to transform but need help to fast-track their entry using ready to adapt SaaS that gives them reasonably comprehensive capabilities to compete in a level playing field.?The good thing going for these organisations is that SaaS products are now available, and they do not have to reinvent.
Are you a Consulting Service provider keen to offer the transformational capabilities that legacy enterprises seek??Or have you set-up a Service Practise [for Digital Marketplaces, Digital commerce, CRM & Sales enablement, and Digital Marketing] and your business isn’t growing??Are your Practises not winning due to silo ’ed capabilities??For example, only a CRM Practise without an integrated perspective of what customers expect around CRM, New accounts Business development and existing accounts farming.?A Digital Marketing Implementation Practise without knowing what makes Digital marketing successful or without the right Sales enablement.?An eCommerce Practise but without the ability to carry the legacy capabilities along through integration.?Are you looking to build or enhance your current Digital & IT Practise capabilities for Marketplaces, eCommerce, CRM & Sales Enablement, and Digital Marketing such that it is relevant to your customers??Do you lack the know-how and expertise to build a Practise and scale, to transform your capabilities or turnaround your capabilities??Connect with @SLN Solutions, @Jagadish Rao Raghavendra
You can choose to use this framework however, as it is said, the devil is always in the details.?I have learnt a lot from being part of new capabilities creation, scale an existing Practise, transform or turnaround several Services Practise capabilities for large global service providers.?I am available to help you with strategy, build, scale, transform and/or turnaround of your Service Practise capabilities in this space.?
Customer FIRST.??Whatever we build must be relevant for customers first.?The customers must be able to derive value from these capabilities. What do they want to accomplish? Are they threatened by pure play Cloud first disintermediating disruptors or have plans to disrupt before getting disrupted??If your customers do not know, are you ready to help them or do you just want to follow their instructions??Market research is vital, not just in terms of understanding the Market or Region size but more from a perspective of their Pains that customers have in their current business model and the Gains they would like from the capabilities that the Customers’ Boards want.?
eCommerce or a Company’s own online store??-??eCommerce is a route to Market for existing legacy enterprises when they have many products and/or high volume of products and services.?What do customers want to hear from IT & Digital service providers???Customers want to know their available options, its pros and cons.?For example, Bespoke web store vs. Buy a platform and adapt.?Customers want to know the fastest time to take the eCommerce capabilities to market.?Customers want to know the most secure and reliable payment options to provide.?Customers want to know what a good MVP would be to take capabilities fast into the market and what should the subsequent sprints be.?The Boards would be extremely keen on Brand value, Customer experience, aesthetics, Data protection, product comparison capabilities and business resilience. The eBusiness Head would be keen on Merchandising, promotions, products comparison, scalability, integration, agility, Data analytics, recommendations, returning customers, Inventory, logistics and delivery, and the ability to frugally support the platform. The customer may not want to limit themselves to just selling products but may also want to sell services through a Digital commerce and/or Marketplace platform.?The customers may need help to know whether their markets are ready to buy through an eCommerce platform.
Marketplaces -??Marketplaces is another route to market when legacy enterprises want to enhance the visibility of their products and services beyond the known clientele.?What do customers want to hear from IT & Digital service providers??Customers are keen to know of any existing Marketplaces that they can easily plug into, if they already have an eCommerce platform, to have a quick start.?Alternatively, customers are keen to know how they could plug into one without having an eCommerce platform.?They would like to know the pros and cons such as Faster entry to online markets vs. Personalisation constraints.?They seek consulting advise on Products or Services configuration capabilities.?They need guidance on Brand identity, margins sharing with the Marketplace provider, exports compliance, easy of entry into foreign markets and much more.?All the while making sure that Customer experience is reasonably consistent between the eCommerce and the Marketplace platforms. They are concerned about having integrated delivery logistics, integrated data and analytics, customer feedback management and other products and services recommendations. A key focus is also fraud detection and fraud prevention in both Digital commerce and Digital marketplaces world. The customers are particularly worried about copycat products and services, which would infringe their Intellectual property, trademarks and brand reputation.
CRM, Customer Relationship Management, Sales Enablement & Communications – CRM needs from a B2B or B2C perspective is well known and chiefly used for knowing more about what the Customers are buying, how much, when, and why.?It also helps to assess Sales teams performance.?That is what is mostly sold and implemented.?However, Boards are keen to know what the customers are not buying from them, the wallet-share they are missing and what Strategy they want to adopt for the future.?Customers are no longer just keen on the CRM for the traditional B2B.?They are keen to maximise the knowledge of the customers across B2B, B2C and X2X2X to maximise Revenues & Profits per customer, per touchpoint and per salesperson.?CRM on its own is effective to a limited extent.?Your customers may benefit from a force multiplier of also participating the Digital marketplaces and/or Digital commerce.?Sales management would be keen to have direct assessment of customers, social media contact capability, stakeholders’ preferences, Sales enablement platforms integration, Partners integration, communications platforms integration and more.?Your customers may want to flex their products mix and/or services mix based on what their customers are buying thus refining their overall business strategy.
Marketing in general and Digital marketing – Marketing is a classic; everyone knows about it and yet, not many are savvy at optimal Digital marketing.?Traditional marketing is either localised, regionalised, or reduced to limited viewership and very difficult to measure.?Digital marketing is becoming more and more specialised with the target market audience working from anywhere.?Social media platforms have increased and the social media platforms have also diversified into offering similar capabilities.?The number of platforms for campaigns, events & virtual conferences and audience choice have also proliferated.?The outreach modes have increased, and capabilities needed include Inbound, Outbound, Search engines, partners integrated marketing and lateral marketplaces.?Customers need capabilities for broad-based as well as targeted marketing.?Customers need the ability to measure the outcomes of Marketing right from measuring the value of marketing tools, conversion to leads to demand to bagging the deal and later, farming success.?Justifying Marketing spend is crucial.?
The above is only meant to be an illustration of customers’ pains and gains.?Have you seen Service Provider organisations align themselves with vendor capabilities and lost opportunities??Have you seen Consulting organisations align themselves to silo’ed business outcomes capabilities and ended up delivering a poor customer experience??Have you seen Service Provider organisations pitch for implementation or upgrades without robust MVP and subsequent sprint recommendations??Have you seen Service provider organisations pitch for the technical implementation and missing out the details of the business adoption??Have you experienced Service Provider organisations missing out the adoption of the pre-existing Data & Analytics capabilities within the products??Have you seen Service Provider organisations having insufficient understanding of the native Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence capabilities available within SaaS products? Have you experienced Service providers recommending bespoke solutions which delay Time to Value and Time to Market??Even when it is the right thing, not providing a value realisation MVP and sprint journey.?Have you seen Service Providers not offering Decision Intelligence, not understanding the variety of Data integration that may be required, not knowing the APIs that need to be presented, underestimating Identity & Cybersecurity protection needs??Many more.?
Do you also see this in an organisation already offering these capabilities??Why do these Service Provider organisations fail??Or do they know what they want to offer as new Services capabilities to the market??Do they know what it takes to do the right thing and do it right??The root causes are: (a) a poor understanding of Practise capabilities, (b) starting in earnest and losing heart midway thereby leading to chaos, (c) started off with the right strategy but lacked execution rigour.?
Practise capabilities.?A comprehensive Services Practise capability build out takes time however, one can choose to start small with an MVP but with a clear roadmap to build a robust capability for the future.?Let us consider all facets of what constitutes Practise capabilities and then also consider recommendations for what should be part of an MVP.?When building Service Practise capabilities, I would strongly recommend use of the “Ready2Practise?” framework duly enabled by “Ready2Advise?” framework for consulting purposes.?Let us review briefly what it entails specifically in the context of Digital enabled selling Practise capabilities.
Ready to market
Websites –Customers perform more research on their Suppliers and Service providers now.?We used to test offerings with customers first long ago before publishing the offerings.?Customers now expect that commitment to be also made in public to seek assurance that they are not engaging with a one-off fly-by-night operator/service.?It is an absolute must to showcase offering capabilities for each of Marketplaces, Digital commerce, CRM, and Digital marketing as when the Practise is ready to offer to market.?Co-Opt/Co-opete to win.?When ready, there must be a showcase of Partner specific and Industry specific offering capabilities.?There should also be a showcasing of Industry specific differentiated adoption capabilities.?Following completion of or as part of ongoing services, customer specific use cases must be published to demonstrate maturity improvements. Microsites enable to pique and understand customers’ interest.?Are your services available via a Marketplace or Digital commerce portal?
Industry analysts & Sourcing advisors – Industry analysts and Sourcing advisors have the collective wisdom gained from years engaging several Service providers, Consulting companies, Product providers and Customers.?Engaging this community frequently would help in terms of gaining valuable feedback but also to plan for an improvement timeline for offering enhancements. Their feedback may feel harsh at first but in the long run, you know they have been fair!?For example, not all Digital commerce products are at the same level, i.e., some at the MVP stage whereas there are some which were far mature with many built-in integration capabilities. Not all CRM & Digital marketing products had/have XCaaS integration [Communications, Contact centre, Chatbots, etc.] with native analytics availability.?We will deal with Service management as part of another suite of Practise capabilities but the intent of bringing it here is to make sure that XCaaS capabilities are brought in with the bigger picture in mind.?We used to engage frequently with the global, regional, and sub-regional communities and this had helped to not only be competitive but also get ahead of others in a few of our offerings.
Social media & Media – Engagement on general media is a well-known Practise for those who have been adept and taken advantage of it early.?This is not to say that Traditional media does not have its audience anymore.?Strong Go-to-Market via social media is the norm now especially with a work from anywhere workforce.?Almost everyone is on social media these days – they follow companies, leaders, or hashtags.?Engagement on social media particularly through virtual conference, live virtual events, publication of articles, blogs and customer use cases ensures a broad-based coverage.?I have learnt the hard way that Authentic shares and likes do tend to catch prospective customers attention since when employees share, they share it with personalised comments.?The campaigns must be optimised for traditional channels and social channels subject to the audience.?A crucial lesson learnt was that a Service provider cannot be backward in its own Digital marketing and then expect to serve a customer who wants to implement Digital marketing.
Ready to engage customers
Evangelisation – Do you still go with a generic pitch of capabilities and talk about skills & competency availability and expect customers to buy from you??Customers today expect Evangelisation but with considerable alignment to their Industry and their specific business.?Marketplaces for selling to customers are possibly relevant when there are many providers for the same product(s) or service(s).?For example, an Industrial manufacturer may want to participate in a Marketplace for the Supply chain if there is scope of multiple product(s) and service(s) suppliers for the same product or service.?Digital commerce may not be relevant at all for a company who have a very small captive customer base unless they foresee expansion into new markets.?The scale of change of CRM and associated Digital Marketing could be very different for a company selling goods and services to a variable clientele vs. a company selling goods and services to a limited clientele.?Being customer relevant with focused thought leadership, use cases with specific pains and gains is therefore vital to create a sticky contact following the first evangelisation pitch.?
Sales and/or Solution consulting – Thought leadership articles and blogs are an essential feature of how customers perceive the expertise available within an organisation.?They also often validate whether such articles have shown adaptability rather than a mere generic paper.?When a customer has not already thought through, there is always the possibility to create a sole-sourced consultative engagement to assess and recommend what is right for the customer organisation.?A robust Sales and/or Solution consulting capability should be created to build a qualitative and quantitative business case for the customers.?In the case of Marketplaces and Digital commerce, the focus of the business case could be on new avenues for growth and the business case should demonstrate a strong Revenue growth and Profitable return on Investment curve.?In the case of CRM and Digital Marketing, it could be a mix of incremental revenue and robust sales efficiency improvements.?The customers would need Insights on frictionless shopping experiences, Omnichannel, Loyalty programmes, Content management, Delivery tracking, Order fulfilment measurement, and a lot more.?In any case, the business consultants should draw out all the high-level business requirements including an MVP plus agile sprints approach to continuous capability improvement and incremental value returns journey. Do not call it consulting if there is only one option!?Make sure there are options and provide a recommendation as to when each option would be applicable. Your customers may want to know if they could run their Digital business adjacent to their established model or a model which is intertwined.?Here are a couple of examples of Digital enabled business models.
Ready to partner
Product partnerships – Product partnerships are crucial from a few perspectives.?From a customer perspective, the customer feels reassured that they are talking to an organisation who are accredited. From a service provider perspective, there is the route to training and certifications for the people as well as access to a lot of content from the Product providers.?Some product providers have also created platforms through which additional “apps” could be readily procured and implemented to maximise benefits to customers.?From a value perspective though, the service provider must have multiple product partnerships to be able to demonstrate a comparison of products’ capability, costs, time to implement, time to value, ease of integration and therefore why you would recommend a specific product.?Product partnerships are also helpful when customers seek a single point of contract, and therefore, for tagging the license or subscription revenues and commissions.?Critical efficiency lever is having direct API for back-to-back Digital commerce-based services or subscriptions or license deals, if not there already. As a service provider, are you ready to contract with customers via a Digital commerce and/or Marketplace capability? Having Product partners affirm your capabilities would provide customers the assurance that when there are issues, the service provider can lean on the SaaS provider or vice versa for issue resolution.
Services partnerships – You can start your Service Practise small and grow the capabilities as your business grows.?I do not know of any one service organisation which can deliver all the services.?A CRM implementation may appear to be the simplest until one starts off the integration with ERP [especially if this is legacy], Digital commerce, Partners, XCaaS or Decision intelligence data feeds.?It is often imperative to build a portfolio of Service partners for niche capabilities as well as for scale.?The latter for global rollouts. You may have a niche service partner who can possibly spin off a customer’s Digital commerce platform fast especially when they have templates specific to an industry.?Customers have fed back that it is better to acknowledge the limits of what we have in our portfolio and how they expect the Prime service provider to demonstrate how the gaps will be augmented or supplemented in a transparent way.?The key though is to ensure they are ready to contract, ready to integrate and ready to implement or deliver the services within the timescales desired by the client.
Ready to sell
Sales enablement for Customer engagement – There are excellent Salespersons who are fantastic with customer relationships and can make a good consulting sale or an implementation or ongoing Managed services sale provided they have been imparted with the requisite training.?Salespersons who have matured from Delivery to Solutions and then on to Sales would know what to say however, as capabilities and requirements evolve, even such Salespersons need constant updates.?A framework for salespersons certification should be in place to provide assurance they know what they are selling. Sales enablement should comprise of short snippet content for the Elevator pitch, detailed customer engagement slides until the customer is mature enough for conversations with Solution consultants for Business transformation and/or product capabilities introductions.
Mock-up demonstrations – Being Sales ready is not just always readiness to engage with content.?Several studies have revealed that most people understand through a visual and/or a tactile mechanism, i.e., by experiencing it.?Customers now have all their products listed on their websites.?It is not uncommon to know the key partners they work with.?SaaS products are particularly known for offering a short free period trial.?It should be quite easy to have mock-up business process maps, mock-up operating models and sample products and prices configured for demonstrating Marketplaces and Digital commerce.?An indicative Digital marketing campaign can be sprung up for demonstration.?Similarly, customer contacts, mock orders and reports can be created for demonstration.?A cool Sales enablement toolkit for demonstration. Get ready to get into the buyers’ shoes.?Through these demonstrations, one can much easily gather customer requirements or get to know any objections which must be managed.
Sales and/or Solutions consulting – A perceptive customer may want to act fast. An expert Sales or Solutions consultant can help conduct rapid workshops with key customer stakeholders to establish business needs for business case modelling and validation. The last thing is to bog them down with protracted negotiations.?A service provider is never Sell-Ready if not having standardised MVP recommendations, Statement of works, Terms & Conditions, a reasonably good T-shirt sized price catalogue, and a business case modeller.?These are particularly helpful when engaging Board Execs who are keen to get a quick proof of concept business case done for validation purposes.
Bid to win – Foremost of all, choose what to chase and win.?Qualify hard against ability to fulfil directly and through partners, stakeholder emotional relationships and stakeholders influence through thought leadership.?Once you have chosen to bid, your Bid teams must feel the win purpose through collaborative Sales strategy workshops, Partnership strategy workshops, Solution strategy workshops, Contract & negotiations strategy workshops and Delivery onboarding workshops.?Teams do not blend on their own; it must be facilitated.
Ready to solution, propose and contract
Not all customers are likely to be agile to award deals, especially, when the deal is large or transformational.?A service provider must be ready to go through a gruelling and competitive RFE, RFI, RFP and BAFO process to be selected to consult, implement, deliver, and manage. Solution consultants, Solution architects and technical architects must have obtained necessary business & product certification but equally, they must have knowledge and training on additional products that are needed for a fully-fledged solution.
Business solution & proposal – Are there robust Business Operating model artefacts??Are robust Business process map artefacts??For example, Catalogues, Brands, Products & Prices, Services & prices, Product configurators, Metaverse, Billing & Payments & Receipts, Transfer to Inventory & Logistics & Dispatch, Delivery dates tracking & confirmation, Contacts management, Orders & fulfilment, wins & losses, Marketing reactions to leads to opportunities to demand, etc.
Technology solution & proposal - Are there enough artefacts to propose the solution??For example, Customer Identity & multi-factor Authentication, Single Sign On, fraud detection & prevention, Integration for data, Integration for email, Collaboration, CC, Telephony, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Documentation, analytics, SaaS services integration, etc. It is very important to make sure that the choice of technologies made are environmentally sustainable and safe.?Avoid dirty technologies which use up unnecessary power and energy from any source or those that are part of dump-and-pump schemes.
Implementation & Ongoing support services solution & proposal – Are there enough artefacts to talk through how the implementation and ongoing release & maintenance will be managed??For example, MVP & Backlogs management, what will be ready for use When, Testing & Assurance, Security & Resilience and Business continuity management, multi-cloud orchestration, Training, Adoption measurement, Governance, Service responsiveness & management, and a lot more.
Customer requirements and Proposal alignment – Is there a clear understanding of customer requirements or if the customer appears to be unsure, ready for asking the consultative questions that pique the customers’ interest and shape the solution? It is not uncommon to see customers choosing a product first before choosing an implementation service provider.?SaaS providers start with an MVP and when well-funded add functionalities and capabilities fast.?On the other hand, Systems Integrators would often know more by virtue of having implemented Digital marketplaces, Digital commerce, CRM, Sales Enablement and Digital marketing platforms for many customers.?This knowledge is vital to help customers to prepare not just for now but also future proof as much as possible.?Mutual Validation, Proposal defence & clarification workshops will all be easier to manage when the Practise capabilities are ready, and the right people are on the job.
Financial & Contracted solution to fast-track negotiations & closure – Typically, customer requirement variations are no more than 20% when the business solutions, technology solutions, implementation solutions are standardised.?Not many customers would choose to have complex Product configurations or Mixed Reality as part of an MVP for Marketplaces.?Similarly, not many customers would want to have an integrated contracting and pricing capabilities for products and services as part of an MVP.?Similarly, customers would seek the very basic integrations for a CRM implementation, Sales Enablement or Digital marketing implementation for an MVP.?A Service provider must have a robust Finance, Legal and Contracting solution capability to fast-track negotiations and close a deal.?No Service provider can afford to have bottlenecks.
Ready to implement
Business Operating Model & Processes – The customer would be aiming to establish a new business operating model in the case of Digital marketplaces and Digital commerce.?Demonstration an understanding of the various Digital enabled business models and business strategy is crucial to ensure alignment.?The customer may want to have an independent entity catering to its own customers or have it adjacent to an existing entity where there is cross-collaboration and shared services efficiencies.?CRM and Digital Marketing implementation may have to be tailored accordingly.?Business processes execution could be fully automated when it is an independent entity since there are no cost reductions to be done.?In an adjacent or entwined model, you have the benefit of sharing legacy systems.?The Service provider would be expected to bring in its own knowledge from implementing for other customers.?It is strongly recommended to have certified Scrum masters, certified specialists for each of the streams and/or products and/or products modules.
Organisational design & Change management – This may or may not be the Service provider’s responsibility, however, it is important to acknowledge this facet as part of implementation.?The customer may want to do it on their own or may have an independent consulting organisation helping them in this exercise.?The key is to ensure a collaborative working arrangement such that the Operating Model, Organisation design, Business processes and Product capabilities are all aligned.?There is no point introducing customisation of a SaaS package, which will make it difficult for the customer to benefit future releases.?The Service provider’s experience with other customers would come in handy and the implementation team should be ready to share its experiences.
Agile scrum teams and adaptation workshops – The implementation teams must be adept at sensing the vibes in the room.?In traditional approaches, there would be expert Business Managers and Business architects who may know what is required and would provide the lay of the land and Agile teams would take directions and implement them.?With superior capabilities available in the SaaS products, it is more likely that the Business Managers and Architects are in the process of co-creation of capabilities.?There is likely to be joint evolution, more likely mapping, of the business processes and adaption through interactions amongst individuals as part of a “Show Me, Tell Me, Walk Me through what is in the product” and then adaptation of the processes and usage.?As Agile goes, a usable software is more important than documentation. Are the teams good at Design Thinking facilitation and User Experience facilitation??Documentation is expected to be done inline.?In such a scenario, the Scrum Master must have capabilities to carefully navigate through the Backlog sprints and ensure availability of documentation for future reference and decision audits to ensure compliance related aspects were addressed as required.
Governance & communications – The daily stand-ups are helpful for the agile team’s collaboration since responding to changes is more important.?The plans must be adapted accordingly.?Upstream communications and governance are therefore vital for rapid decision making.?If there is more than one stream running in parallel, then sideways communications and governance between the Marketplaces, Digital commerce, CRM & Sales enablement, and Digital Marketing becomes essential in more ways than one.?For example, Digital Marketing capabilities could be shared amongst them all.?Credit checks could be shared amongst them all, and so on.?Last but not the least, Downstream communications and Governance is extremely important.?For example, the customer may want to have their partners know about the progress and when they are expected to integrate.?As another example, the larger user community must feel emotionally ready to accept the new ways of working and be ready to sit for training when called upon to do so.
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Ready to integrate
Integration with legacy systems - Integration now has a wider connotation when compared to simple Application-2-Application integration a few decades ago.?The customer may be keen on continuing with the existing ERP, Finance systems for a single point of billing, receivables, audits, and general financial management.?The customer may already have a robust quotation system or contracting system or documentation system and may want integration.?Solutions should be planned for such systems – complexity will be higher when those systems are extremely legacy in nature.
Integration with Customers – The customers of your customers may want to integrate with the proposed Marketplaces and/or Digital commerce platforms for seamless B2B business engagement.?Robust solutions must be in place not just for the integration but also for data protection and payments security.?
Integration with Partners and Suppliers – Your customer may want to have their business partners and/or suppliers offer their products and services seamlessly through the Marketplaces and/or Digital commerce platforms.?Alternatively, your customer could be an OEM and may want to allow for their Distribution and Reseller partners have a seamless deals transactions mechanism.?There must be robust back-to-back Inventory and/or subscription models built with Revenues/GP and commission models.?
Integration with Communication systems – Your customer may want to have an integration with chatbots, contact centres & telephony systems, social media sales navigation, video communication systems [MS Teams or Google Meet or Cisco Webex, etc.], collaboration & documentation systems.
Integration with Metaverse – Complexity could arise in the form of the experiential journey adaptation for individuals especially in the clothing and fashionwear segment.?Architects and Interior Decorators may want to have secure digital payments ahead of providing the virtual reality experience.?On the other hand, buyers may want to have the right to multiple trial experiences.?Care is needed to ensure consistency of experience across the devices that consumers may own.?Care must also be taken when there are attempts to blackmail users to pay through dirty technologies.
Integration with Data & Apps sources – Your customer may want to integrate with a plethora of data sources – sources ranging from information about customers, competitive intelligence, pricing intelligence to social media.?Similarly, there could be Apps integration requirements such as apps available from CRM & Digital marketing platforms provider, Digital commerce provider to Apps available from Analytics platforms provider.?
Ready to secure & protect
The need for Cybersecurity and Data protection should never be underestimated.?The complexity of cybersecurity protection has grown exponentially as integrations has extended from B2B & B2C to X2X2X.?So has data integration and the need for data traceability.??Business resilience requirements was focused on the systems hosted within the customer premises.?With the ever-increasing integration, business resilience now must take into account the X2X2X integration.?For example, non-availability of updated pricing information may affect sales if a competitor has dropped prices.?It is vital to have an extended Centre of Excellence for Cybersecurity & Data protection focused on Marketplaces, Digital commerce, CRM & Sales Enablement and Digital marketing.?Cybersecurity & Data monitoring must be in place prior to release.?Check out article below to understand the complexity and what you have to solution for and/or build as Practise capabilities.?
Ready to release, DevSecOps
Testing & Business continuity – Why is it that everyone underestimates testing and assume that everything goes to plan??A lot gets unravelled during testing.?Unit testing is one aspect from a core business process execution perspective.?The internal integration tests must be done for every business process to ensure that data exchanges are seamless including data exchange for Dashboards and Analytics.?The external integration tests appear to be simple but would often create issues.?With so many years of eCommerce, it is common to assume that the payments & receipts are easy however complexities arise at the time of tallying and/or refunds.?Social selling integration is assumed to be seamless until one finds that contacts data is not right, and data cleansing is needed over and over again. Cloud first and SaaS first principles are good however without the right sizing, performance issues may arise.?XCaaS integration testing with Video communications & Collaboration integration issues are common. Knowing when automated chatbots are causing customer annoyance rather than customer delight!?Business resilience and continuity testing is often the most underestimated and naively limited to business continuity testing of a few business processes on the primary SaaS platform.?I would strongly recommend a domain specific testing, assurance, and business continuity centre of excellence to exhibit maturity and provide assurance to the customer.
DevSecOps – DevSecOps is a fantastic paradigm shift from the earlier push<->pull Service Introduction and Service Transition approach.?The latter served its purpose towards ensuring that whatever is implemented in Production is rugged however, it delayed Production implementation due to lack of resources; still needed for future problem solving.?DevSecOps ensures that teams are operating to a common purpose with full recognition of the need to collaborate for a secure and resilient production implementation.?This is an absolute must as Business Heads would want to go to market rapidly with an MVP first and evolve capabilities through sprint releases.?
??????????????For details of DevSecOps models, check this article below.
Ready to analyse & measure
Data, Analytics and Machine Learning for customers – Digital Marketplaces, Digital commerce, CRM & Sales Enablement and Digital Marketing are not merely about transforming from manual processes to IT enabled processes or the ability to transact using a Smartphone.?Going Digital includes an inline ability to fully utilise inline analytics offered by the platforms to Grow the Revenue, optimise costs, Enhance experience and enhanced compliance.?Native analytics can only offer so much.?Customers are more likely to go for specialist Data, Analytics and AI for integrated analytics for superior business outcomes.?The Practise should be capable of addressing such wants and needs.?
Analysing and measuring your Practises’ performance – You must drink your own champagne too.?Make sure you have robust Professional services systems, robust Managed services systems to measure and manage your Practise delivery performance.?Check out your Sales performance through Digital marketplaces and Digital commerce if your Practise is mature enough to offer such capabilities via such medium.?If still following traditional sales measures, make sure that you can measure your Sales performance.?Make sure you can measure your Solutions teams performance through Win/Close ratio.?Make sure you can measure your Centre of Excellence performance with the quality of outcomes influenced to attract, win, and retain customers.?Make sure your HR performance is measured through its ability to attract, nurture, and retain talent.?Make sure your Finance performance is measured through its ability to not just report on P & L but its ability to facilitate optimal deal and procurement closure times.?Lots more but you get the gist.
Check out this article below for further details on possibilities of enhanced business outcomes from Data, Analytics, Machine Learning and AI.
Ready to manage & optimise
Delivery Assurance & compliances – Periodic internal reviews of Bids & Pursuits, Projects delivery and Managed services delivery must be put in place as one of the Practise capabilities.?This should include ongoing People certifications, Vendor accreditations and business process functional certification capabilities.?Quality certifications and accreditations for Cybersecurity, Resilience, Service management, People management and Projects management should be in place.?Similarly, customer compliance needs such as Payments, Data governance and others must also be in place.?Robust assurance should be in place for Sales & Solutions handover to Delivery to ensure that obligations to the customers are met.
Risks management – There are Opportunity risks that your customers may want to maximise, and you may want to maximise for your Practises. Similarly, there will be Threat risks that your customers would want to mitigate, and you may want to mitigate for your Practises.?Be ready to provide a balanced perspective.?Here are a couple of articles for some associated opportunity and threats risks management.
Automation to optimise – RPA can help to automate a lot of mundane tasks not fulfilled by any of the SaaS packages.?You can also buy bots-as-a-service from quite a few providers to automate.?These are especially needed when one is integrating with legacy systems.?Equally, AIOps can help to manage and optimise the Run operations and applications maintenance of these systems.?Check out this article below for further details on Automation outcome possibilities.
Service transparency to manage & govern – You can run but cannot hide.?I would strongly recommend having robust Professional services management systems for tracking and reporting on Projects execution, Backlogs/Sprints.?Using a transparent dashboard would help Customer, Service Providers and Partners to be on the same page; focus on the business outcomes to be achieved rather than bickering on whose fault it was.?Similarly, I strongly recommend usage of Managed services tools, Intelligent Operations monitoring and reporting tools, Cybersecurity and Data monitoring tools and integrated Service management dashboards.?Governance will then become a byword and the focus will be on enhanced business outcomes through additional projects for all parties.?Check out this article below for further details on Transparent service management and governance.
https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/achieving-siam-success-service-transparency-jagadish-rao-raghavendra
Ready to delight through innovation & enhanced experience
Customer satisfaction is typically a reflection of fulfilling contracted deliverables when viewing from the lens of Services Practises.?Customer experience, at the next level, is when the customer believes that the Service provider has also been reactive to events to the customers’ business environment with technology-based solutions.?Customer delight occurs when the Service provider has been proactive with not just fulfilling the contracted deliverables and reacting to the customers’ business environment but also brought in Insights and Foresights to influence the customer to adapt their business to create their unique marketspace amongst their competitors through solutions that enhance their revenues, improves their profitability, helps them to be efficient and enable quality improvements and compliance.?To this end, the Consulting and Service providers must have Centres of Excellence which co-innovate with Partners and Industry forums to deliver those unique solutions. As a Service Provider, you will need the following Centres of Excellence.?
Centres of Excellence for Sales, Consulting & Solutions – This is not just about the Strategy to win or Solutions to win but also about sharing best Practises between teams.?The Client Partner would also then be able to use this information to have a discussion that is relevant to customers and to optimise the solutions that maximises the benefits and mitigates the threats to customers.?You should have Practise & Solution consultants with “Ready2Advise?” capabilities and “Consult2Demand?” confidence such that they are able to conduct workshops, enable customers to work through options, arrive at recommendations that deliver the best business outcomes, which will then generate the larger demand for transformation, change leadership, implementation, and support services.
Centres of Excellence for the business functions and User Experience – You should have Centres of Excellence for each of Digital Marketplaces, Digital commerce, CRM & Sales Enablement and Digital marketing to scout around for best Practises and technologies that are coming up that could enhance your customers’ business.?You should have experts available to your customers who can share the latest know how’s. More importantly, you should have the capabilities for Design Thinking with User Experience at its heart.
Centres of Excellence for Partner specific product capabilities – This is particularly important since these SaaS Product providers would have their own Centres of Excellence and are continuously innovating to improve the business functions that are available through their products or available as additional modules.?Customers would be able to perceive the enhanced capabilities better when they see the mock-up demonstrations live.
Centres of Excellence for Implementation, Testing & Assurance, Security & Resilience and Managed services delivery – A Centre of Excellence for Implementation will ensure that Implementation management will have rigour and finesse with the ability to dovetail with the speed of change management.?A Centre of Excellence for Testing & Assurance will help focus on automated tests to reduce release time and enhance quality of tests.?A Centre of Excellence for Cybersecurity & Resilience will help to think through plugging all aspects of Cybersecurity plus Data exposure & prevention and proactive resolution as well as enable business resilience for a multi-cloud orchestrated world. A Centre of Excellence for Managed services would help accelerate AIOps, for example, as well as prepare for evergreen utilisation of upgrades.
Centres of Excellence for Automation, Data & Analytics, Machine Learning & AI – A Centre of Excellence for Automation will help to fast-track integration with legacy systems for example.?A Centre of Excellence for Data & Analytics would help your customers proactively manage future strategy, evolve to address demand, or optimise the supply chain and distribution.?A Centre of Excellence for Machine Learning and AI would help to capitalise on native capabilities available from Product providers but also look at forecasting demand or enhance revenue and margins per transaction.
For a Service Practise to self-manage and self-optimise, you must have a robust Governance to measure the continuous capability improvements and the continuous business outcomes improvements.?Such a Governance should govern all aspects of the Service Practise including Strategy, Sales, Consulting, Solutions, Implementation & Delivery, Partnerships, and ongoing capability improvements.?You must have a robust “Consult2Demand” and “XL2GrowPractise?” focus without which the Practise will meander. Practise leadership development, People management and Talent development are essential focus areas.
In Summary, there is going to be a huge demand for Consulting and IT service providers to provide value adding capabilities in the areas of Digital Marketplaces, Digital commerce, CRM & Sales Enablement and Digital marketing.?The market size is growing at a rapid scale globally.?Covid19 Pandemic helped us all to adapt to Hybrid workplace fast.?With the increase in Oil prices and pressure on costs management for companies and individuals, Digital enabled selling will be seen as a Primary driver of enterprise business transformation.?A robust Practise capabilities strategy and strategy execution capability is required if one wants to tap into this vast potential.?Muddling one’s way through is a strategy but it always makes sense to keep the end in mind with the ability to adapt and evolve to address customer demand.?Your employees will feel a sense of purpose when working to a rigorous framework, your finance teams will become an enabler and not a hurdle, your legal and commercial teams will know what they are negotiating and help you to get to a deal faster, your HR teams will know what they are hiring for and plan talent development and retention.?
Do you know the “Ready2Practise” framework??Do you know how to implement the “Ready2Practise” framework for successful business outcomes with “XL2GrowPractise”??Do you need assistance to build a robust Practise??
Connect with @Jagadish Rao Raghavendra @SLN Solutions
This complete Practise capabilities framework is the copyright of SLN Solutions Limited and Jagadish Rao Raghavendra, which includes Ready2Advise?, Ready2Practise?, Consult2Demand? and XL2GrowPractise?.?
About the Author
Jagadish is a Senior Executive leader & Digital evangelist, who has been successful at building and/or turnaround Practice capabilities, Presales/Sales enablement/Solution consulting capabilities for Application Services and IT Infrastructure Outsourcing services.?Jagadish has extensive and wide-ranging experience of Digital enabled business models & strategy, Digital - Apps & Infra Transformation solutions, Modernisation & Transformation to cloud, Cloud & Infrastructure services, Cybersecurity, multi-cloud orchestration, Service Integration and management, achieving customer business outcomes thereby delivering high win rates. Prior to that, Jagadish has delivered large Outsourcing & Technology Transformation programmes.?
Jagadish has established a network of partnerships and collaborated with partners to achieve Digital transformation for customers.?He has used deep analytics, industry insight, competitive insights and business outcomes based consulting approach to deliver differentiated solutions.
Apart from speeches at major events, Jagadish has also written many articles on LinkedIn Pulse.
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