Unified Commercial Engines 2.0

Four years ago, I wrote about Unified Commercial Engines (UCE's). Then it was mainly about testing new organisational and operational strategies, based on AdaptomDNA, as it was then. We were working with several organisations to understand and implement different commercial operating models.

There now seems to be growing interest in UCE's recently from the likes of Gartner and Harvard Business Review: Traditional B2B Sales and Marketing Are Becoming Obsolete and I've recently listened to a few podcasts 'searching' for new frameworks that are 'fit for the future' of commercial strategy and operations. Broadly speaking all of this is part of AdaptomyDNA a new methodology, a framework to re-shape commercial strategy and operations and create organisational, operational and 'market-customer' models that are 'fit for the future'.

I've just written a recap of Unified Commercial Engines, UCE 2.0 , for those of you that might be interested - things have moved on a long way since the first time we talked about UCE's.

Then and now

Four years ago focus was on two 'organising models', customer touchpoints or interaction from the customer point of view, customer-centric value delivery.

These are still important principles, but we've moved on a long way from these initial organising models. Now we're focused on how to drive consistent, impactful commercial strategy and operations at scale, not just how to organise but to operationalise far more effective commercial models.

We've moved away from inconsistent and incomplete organisational siloes to a different way of thinking about creating and delivering value for customers and the business. We've been building AdaptomyDNA to reflect each of the disciplines that deliver value, how they work together, how to build new capability, more agile and adaptive commercial strategy, and operations. We're now working to ensure our models embrace the kinds of complicated and complex systems commercial strategy and operations need to contend with markets, customer organisations and the complexities of internal change.

Organisational and operational challenges

Organising differently to address some of the new commercial challenges businesses face is one thing, it's important, but not the full picture, it's not enough to reorganise. It's also important to implement different operating models, different ways of working.

These new operating models need a new framework, a way to understand the component parts of commercial strategy and operations. These are the bedrock of any new 'way of working', a way to offer shared understanding, insight and expertise, to allocate roles and responsibilities, to build capability. AdaptomyDNA is one of these frameworks, containing over 60 discrete but interconnected disciplines. It shines a light on what needs to be done to create and deliver value for customers and the business.

We've re-organised our governing framework to recognise the complicated and complex challenges that commercial strategies and operations deal with. Althouhg the underlying disciplines have not changed, the way we think about how they are applied has, (more on that later).

The bottom line

Unified Commercial Engines (UCE's) are not simply a reorganisation of existing siloes, they are a new organisation and operating model. Whether you build and implement a POD structure or some other kind of organisational model, probably doesn't matter that much. What matters is that the business has a shared understanding of the disciplines that create and deliver commercial and customer value. The sustainability of any UCE depends on this shared understanding.

If you want to know more contact Adaptomy or DM me, or if you want to become more involved in the development of AdaptomyDNA, take a look at AdaptomyREACH , a platform we're creating to change the narrative and build approaches that re-shape commercial strategy and operations.