ROUNDMAP™ Strategic Playbook

We’ve spent a lot of time to explain the disciplines involved with Customer Dynamics (cross-functional and cross-structure) resulting in the ROUNDMAP™ Framework. Because we believe the best way to get people truly committed to a common cause is when they are engaged with what the business (unit) aims to achieve, how it plans to achieve it, and what role each and everyone has to play in the execution of the chosen strategy.

The ROUNDMAP™ is a centerpiece ─ inviting all customer-facing and customer-touching employees to sit at the Customer RoundTable™, discussing progress, barriers, threats, and opportunities ─ while it boils down to strategic orientation (Business Model Matrix™) and strategy execution (Customer Carousel™).

Before we can execute a strategy and measure its performance, we need to define the strategy. For this, we’ve created the ROUNDMAP™ Strategic Playbook, that will help you focus on what aspects give substance to a business model and how:

BLUE – Product Centricity (PC). Thus far the most popular and straightforward business model. If you read from left to right you’ll see how to plan and execute a typical product-centric business model. Obviously, Product Centricity is driven by product development. Its performance is measured by the share-of-market and the return-on-product.

GREEN – Customer Centricity (CC). A complimentary business model which requires an emphasis on sales (account-based marketing) to be able to grow customer (lifetime) value. While a product-centric business needs to focus on the supply chain (downstream), a customer-centric firm should focus on the value chain (highly integrated).

YELLOW – Resource Centricity (RC). This business model has been around for decades, however, digitalization removed most of the physical barriers, allowing firms to offer everything-as-a-service. While traditional car rental services had to rely on a central dispatch point, modern ride-hailing and ride-sharing services, driven by mobile and digital technology, do not.

RED – Network Centricity (NC). While traditional marketplaces go back thousands of years, the modern digital platforms broke the physical barrier, creating multi-sided marketspaces driven by collaborative value creation and delivery. Companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, TaskRabbit, and many others have already changed many of the industry structures and the end isn’t in sight.

Could we play a different tune?

In most cases, we do not recommend to deviate from the horizontal characteristics of each of the four Elementary Business Models™, unless you know what you are doing.

There is one exception: the value position. Contrary to other aspects, value disciplines are about how people outside your firm perceive your firm’s (relative) value position. You might want to use this to your advantage, or even design experiences to create a favorable perception.

A typical error I’ve witnessed often is when firms apply a content strategy, to help people make informed decisions, while trying to maintain or grow market share. It makes no sense at all to educate potential customers when your objective is to find as much customers for your products as quickly as possible. Similarly, it makes no sense to run massive campaigns, if your objective is to grow your share in the customer’s wallet.