Currently I work with a huge scale of vendors across the globe for various products — industrial, pure cloud software, and everything in between. The growth that I can achieve from building a better solution for my customers with these vendors (partners if you will) far exceeds what I can do without them. As such, I and we must adopt a culture and philosophy of growth and collaborative efforts.
Culture, practical legal stipulations, and market forces all play a role — plus just pure old fashioned hard work with a sprinkle of fortune.
The single factor we can control is how we work together
Lowest cost isn’t always the answer. The fiercest and strictest terms and conditions do not always lead to the result you desire, and auditing / quality control checks only verify what you wanted — not what you needed. In the end, the supply chain is really the value chain to the customer, and when you start viewing it from that perspective your business and customers will benefit. You will too.
As you seek to build with your partners, suppliers, and over the course your customers capitalize on these truths. Below are a few of the strategy work patterns I am deploying today in the hopes that you’ll benefit, iterate, and share. Together we all win.
How to grow your customer value chain
Begin with the customer
What is the value your customer is gaining from the customer — not the features, but the actual benefit. Is it to allow them drive their customers around (imagine you are the technology backbone for Uber), or perhaps you are a data provider and your customers depend on your data feed to approve Loan Applications for First Home Buyers. What if you are delivering workouts to your employees at scale, is the value the workouts .. the lower medical costs and therefore higher wages, is it the community cohesiveness that is generated by such workouts between team members, or is it simply the macro view and self awareness by the leadership team that their employees who sustain these physical habits will live longer and healthier lives well past the life of their employment. Whatever you are bringing to the market has a value and result. Focus on that.
Now the part that takes some chops — how does this value breakdown for your product and how it is delivered and served? The tighter you can get to this core value the better.
Dollars and cents matter too. What is the revenue percentage of this offering relative to the market, your own business, the staffing used to support it, the infrastructure, and more. Having a lens across these areas enables you to have lens of how much of your own business is committed / obligated to supporting that value. Expanding here — what is the margin and what is the potential growth areas.
As you identify each of these subsets you unlock opportunities and expansions or risk mitigations in your own product. All of these efforts give you leverage and levers for your business. These then you can drive internally and with your partners.
EXAMPLE
For instance, I have found specific value generation for customers and that my business didn’t have the capacity to fill. After exposing this weakness I was able to secure partners to pass through a new value proposition to my customers, and therefore open a new market, eliminate my risk, and increase my relationship with my partners. Abundance and benefit for everyone involved.
Further areas to expand for you and I to help lead the culture and strategy …
- Value Chain for the Partner
- Consolidation benefit and of partners
- Tie in and win-win structures for partners
- Downstream and Upstream security, work patterns, and process alignment
- Development, software, and DevSecOps models
- Standards, market requirements, and civil mandate tracking
- Code and tech telemetry
- Telemetry within products