Released at last? How to boost or reboot revenue generation after the lockdown

BUSINESS CANVASES AND A VIRTUAL PROJECT ROOM WILL SUCCESSFULLY FAST-TRACK YOUR PROJECTS

?? As we continue facing significant business damage, we are looking for creative, robust, and agile solutions to solve the revenue conundrum. Two key things that we are fully aware of have been happening:

1. Our ways of working have been disrupted: working from home and using a broad set of digital tools is becoming the norm.
2. Our revenue generation chains (or RevGen-chains) have been challenged. Their limitations - both external (ecosystems) and internal (organization, processes, tools, digitalization) - have been exposed and aggravated. Even before the current crisis, commercial teams admitted that their Revenue Generation chains were not optimized.

The current crisis offers a unique opportunity to reboot or boost our revenue generation chains, which should be seen as the primary focus for digital transformation projects.

The stakes are high (maximizing revenue), yet we can make an ally of time: these projects can be FAST-TRACKED by blending powerful digital and business resources, known as VIRTUAL PROJECT ROOMS and BUSINESS CANVASES. 

HOW TO FAST-TRACK YOUR PROJECTS AND OUTPERFORM?

1?? Successful RevGen-Chain project teams are agile and diverse

A key success factor for a successful project is of course the quality of the team that will drive it. Equally important, agile teams and teams offering diversity consistently deliver much better results.

Agile teams are twice as effective! And even more when working remotely

An agile team is the project team assigned and responsible for executing the project. It’s typically a cross-functional group of employees and contractors, dedicated to the project, and often... co-located (more about that below). 

In a recent article entitled "Agile teams that have been pushed remote by Covid-19 are posting impressive results" (worth reading), Bain & Company shared data showing that during typical times agile teams are as much as twice as effective as non-agile teams. They also explain that agile teams work extraordinarily fast in iterative sprints, which is much needed with the current situation.

The main learning though is that agile’s advantage actually expands when teams work remotely, as they benefit from:

• Clearly defined roles, events, artifacts, and timing.
• A sophisticated set of tools for working together in a virtual environment; getting customer feedback on prototypes; and managing shifting priorities in a way that is visible to the entire team.

Blending teams for the sake of... a much-increased project's RoI

The teams and profiles who should be involved seem obvious, based on expertise: sales and marketing. However, they will also have their own agendas and will each see the world from their standpoint: their very own understanding of their role, of the market, and of their company.

There are many benefits to add a broader representation, which offers different standpoints and fresh perspectives. Blending teams and experiences add significant value to projects: they are bringing in more comprehensive inputs, with different angles, expertise, knowledge, and "languages". It is indeed often surprising how words don't mean the same for different people or different teams. It explains frequent misunderstanding, nearly needing business-to-technical-to-business translations!

Team members can be chosen from within the organization (non-sales and marketing departments, various levels of responsibilities), and from outside (representing customer, partners, channel partners). These teams already have the talent and most of the expertise needed.

External expertise? Often the key differentiator.

Add consultants if and where needed: they are neutral and don’t carry internal bias. They also complement the team, bringing a wealth of experiences, and can drive the process.

“Our teams have most of the needed expertise, but their time is limited. Yet, we need this Revenue Generation project to deliver ASAP! We are also concerned about the quality of the outputs, as the outcomes of this project are critical...”.

Client's CEO

According to Bain&Co, remote agile teams face five critical challenges: communication, team connection, prototyping, customer feedback, and team sustainability. From our own experience, focus and communication are critical to the success of this RevGen-chain project team.

This is why (and how) a virtual project room will support their work.

2?? Give your team the benefits of a virtual project room

Way before the pandemic, we successfully experimented with running several projects, using virtual project rooms. They offer drastically augmented capabilities.

What is a virtual project room?

You easily figure out what a physical project room is: your best people, brainstorming as productively as they can, usually in a unique physical location, walls covered with post-its... that will need to be gathered, copied, organized, communicated, etc.

There are many downsides to these traditional projects. Time for these project's meetings is dedicated and full of constraints, colleagues often have to be free and often fly-out from their office location to participate. It doesn’t matter if they are introverted or extroverted, if some of them need time on their own to come up with the best ideas, or if ideas come up outside of project hours!

A virtual project room is online. It is much more than the virtual equivalent of a physical project room, as it significantly "augments" the project process.

Why using a virtual project room?

The gains are vastly superior outputs:

• Always-on and real-time: a virtual project room is available anytime it is needed. People can brainstorm and contribute throughout the day and night, even when they have an idea in the most unusual place or time (any device access), enabling much deeper work and rework on ideas and plans.
• Location neutral: teams can be in different locations, working from home or any office, in literally any time zone. Even when team members are in the office (assuming they are allowed to be physically in the same room), they benefit both from the assistance of this project room and from the ability to make progress in collaboration with remote colleagues.
• Collaboration: as a fully collaborative platform, the project receives the best from your resources as it integrates multiple contributions.
• Project ready: digital "post-its" are written to last rather than being lost. Ideas are collected and combined in the most organized way, and can easily be sorted and combined to make the most sense.
• One single tool: the project can be structured and managed in the same virtual project room; you don’t need multiple solutions and software.

Multiple contributions from the best experts (internal and external), however, add maximum value if they are triggered, complete, and organized with project-enhancing business frameworks, or canvas.

3?? Get the best outcomes by using proven business canvases and frameworks

Are you familiar with business frameworks or canvases? They are a powerful asset to fast-track your project and ensure high-quality outputs.

What are business frameworks or canvases?

There are hundreds of tested and proven business canvases and frameworks on the market. The "business model canvas" may be the most famous of all, but for RevGen-Chain projects, there are many other frameworks that are key enablers (see below).

The "business model canvas": this strategic management and lean startup tool used to either develop new or document existing business models. The business model canvas is a visual chart with elements describing a firm's or product's value proposition, infrastructure, customers, and finances. The nine building blocks of the business model design template allows you to describe, design, challenge, invent, and pivot your business model.

There are many other models of frameworks, developed by the best consulting companies, startups, and innovation experts. In our own project room, we are using a broad selection of the most robust canvases. They give project teams the choice of relevant tools to cover:  

• Go-to-market
• Customer mapping
• Funnel mapping
• Channel and distribution mapping
• Brand mapping
• Etc.

Each of these frameworks enables you to break down your revenue generation chain into easily-understood segments: value propositions, customer segments, marketing channels, sales channels, key partners, key activities, key resources, customer relationships, branding, revenue streams. etc.

Why should we use these frameworks?

They are robust guides: being able to pick up the relevant ones as and when needed saves time and guarantees the quality outcomes of the project. Using the relevant framework keeps projects well on track.

• Even when projects’ objectives and scopes are clearly defined there can be many project pitfalls: lost ideas, exploring random and irrelevant places, wasted time, lack of focus, critical points missed and, not to be overlooked, unexplored avenues and buried creativity.  
• They also ensure teams don’t miss key aspects of the issue whilst still triggering creativity.
• Frameworks or canvases move your design thinking from the 'in-theory' stage into the planning stage. For example, what your strongest revenue streams are and how they can complement each other. Or, more closely examine your value propositions and discover better ways to position your product or service to customers. Use customer segments to find out exactly who you're talking to and how to approach them more effectively. Using the relevant framework keeps projects well on track.

By digging into the key parts of the RevGen-Chain, you can act on areas that can be improved, and identify clear paths on which to build your strategy and organization.

4?? A 3-step approach: explore + design + activate

With our project team being given access to a powerful project engine (a virtual project room filled with proven canvases), here are the 3 steps to successfully deliver on our RevGen-Chain project:

1. The exploration phase ??

Using advanced models and tools covering a wide range of business situations, the revenue generation chain project team can investigate all possible sources of revenue. They enable us to quickly iterate and get to the end of the exploration phase, and answer the original question of how we can optimize our revenue generation chain, and move on to the next step, the design phase.

2. Design phase ??

Three critical areas of focus need to be developed in parallel: organization, processes, and systems or tools.

In our experience, organizations, processes, and systems often suffer from "layers and silos". They are built over time, adding new elements (new people, new processes, new tools) to the existing organization and infrastructure. It has not been thought through to be optimized. In the design phase, you can rethink the organization, the processes, the tools. Not as parallel elements, but as an efficient combination.

The design phase is also the phase when “digital transformation” of the back-end (and the front-end should get maximum attention:

• Back-end: the key systems that support your business (e.g. data lakes, CRM, ERP, etc.).
• Front-end: the customers, partners, or even employees facing apps. (e.g. e-commerce interface, visualization tools, etc.).

Digital transformation makes sense if it is the best solution to solve an existing issue, generate productivity and speed gains, unleash human talent, reduce bottlenecks, or sometimes bring you in a completely different space (with AI).

We have experienced many impressive sales and marketing automation solutions (we will introduce them in a follow-up article, or you can also contact us directly at [email protected] to share best practices) that should be part of the exploration and design phases.         

3. The activation phase ??

This last step (implementation and execution) remains the most slippery one. From everyone’s experience, this is where most projects fail, often despite good or great plans.   

To some extent, the project really starts at this phase, with the project team still fully in the driving seat, with complete support from the management and careful management and communication with the whole organization:  

• It takes project management tools, deadlines, and metrics.
• It is also about consistency and assertiveness: what are the pursued goals? Can we consider as finished a project that has delivered the outputs originally set in the project goal?

Or, with a constantly changing environment, do we expect companies to constantly adjust to the ever-evolving ecosystems and business context? For example, over the years, the music industry went from producing, manufacturing, and distributing CDs, to a mixed model of physical sales and file downloads, to a model now dominated by streaming (and live music).

Should you consider a continuous project process?

4?? This is a continuous and virtuous process

Revisiting Heraclitus, it is fair to say that “[Accelerating] change is the only constant”. 

Keeping RevGen-chain projects "open" enables us to continuously revisit the situation, deliver new outputs to maximize results.

With the exponential acceleration of technological innovation (development, adoption, and implementation), there is a double impact, as if the finish line was constantly pushed further away:

• Digital tools are constantly improving: sales automation and marketing automation are both becoming increasingly prevalent, new solutions and capabilities are emerging, and are being triggered by the widespread use of AI.
• Continuous transformation of the ecosystems: customers’ (both consumers and businesses) habits, attitudes, and behaviors, are ever-evolving, becoming more fragmented and complex. The competitive landscape is also continuously moving.

In addition to this double technological impact, accidents and crises (financial, economic, health-related, etc.) are regularly impacting business cycles. We can’t underestimate the likeliness of any other unexpected situation.

A continuous project process, that can be more or less active and doesn't disrupt the day to day business, should keep companies and teams awake and aware. With 2 goals in mind:

1. Checking that the "revenue generation chain" keeps being optimized
2. Continuously delivering relevant outputs, actions, and transformations, leading to maximized results.

This is one of the benefits of virtual project room: you can keep them open. We can then come back to them at any time, or they can be used to continue exploring and iterating in the background.

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?? Although the current turmoil is severely damaging revenue generation, creating shifting customers and business habits, and fast adoption of digital and remote work practices, it offers companies a unique chance to invest time redesigning their revenue generation chain and fast-tracking their redesign projects, using business canvases and a virtual project room.

These tools combine the best of both worlds: physical and digital collaboration. With agile ways of working, individuals, teams, and companies are able to more effectively cope with changing circumstances and unknowns. 

The goal is to deliver a project twice as fast with double the quality. We are confident you can make it happen. Let us know your thoughts: this is a virtuous process, and sharing experiences is valuable. You can comment below or contact us at [email protected]

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Who are we?

Jean Littolff and Frederic Martin - Internove (www.internove.com) is built around a highly qualified team of business and digital transformation experts: we have hands-on expertise (sales and marketing directors, managing directors) with revenue generation chains. We have the experience of working with many business situations and business models, and can use the most cutting-edge tools, including sales and marketing automation. With simplicity, friendliness, and tons of experience, we are committed to your results!

Our obsession is to optimize revenue generation, building sustainable revenue models, and adding value to our customers and ecosystems. We enable companies to be successful using the wealth of in-house talents, by bringing the processes, the tools (Virtual Project Rooms, iCanvases, Sales Automation, Marketing Automation). We are, of course, also adding our broad expertise.

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