Optimizing the consumer value stream
Technorati Tags: systems thinking , lean , consumer experience , web 2.0 , next web , loyalty
Are you thinking about your consumers' personal value stream? The businesses I generally work with are familiar with the notion of a value chain or a value stream. Whether you call it business process re-engineering, change management, six sigma deployment, lean management, or even innovation management, a great deal of effort is spent trying to optimize value streams. Whatever the name, this notion of value stream optimization is usually reserved for thinking about enterprise processes -- sometimes including the "extended enterprise" (aka, suppliers, dealers, and partners). Strangely, this language, and this way of thinking doesn't seem to be very often used when an enterprise is thinking about it's consumers. Am I wrong? Is it there and I just haven't seen it? Possible. But what I've seen lately suggests the opposite.
Forgive me for not naming names here, but my impression is that much of the dialogue around things like web 2.0, social computing, multi-channel strategies, community, etc, seems a bit exploitative in tone. For example, I've seen a number of external industry presentations recently about how technology solutions can create multiple channels in marketing activities to help enterprises deliver their marketing messages more effectively - better targeting, location-based advertising, message reinforcement, etc. These aren't bad things -- indeed, they may very well be improvements. But they represent the same old mentality that businesses are ultimately trying to manipulate and extract something (money) from consumers. With this mentality, a community oriented site with multiple channels just means more ways to hit the customer.
This is an anti-pattern, IMO, because technology has evolved to the point where it's possible to do better -- to create significantly more value for consumers. The risks of doing this poorly (or not at all) are growing as fast as the upside of doing this well.
Mindset matters here, because as an industry we're still building and pathfinding details on how the next web will be realized, how software and services will mature, and how the virtual and physical worlds can/should converge (that is, we're jointly creating the future in an environment of ontological uncertainty so the principles we hold and the stories we tell ourselves are likely to be our most impactful guides). Rather than simply thinking about new ways to market to people, technology is evolving in a such a way that we now have tremendous opportunities to think about new ways to empower consumers. Applying the language of the value stream, enterprises have new opportunities to help consumers optimize their own personal consumer value streams.
Taking advantage of these opportunties requires us to realize that in some cases the products and services we offer as enterprises may not provide much intrinsic value themselves, but instead are often just bits and pieces of larger consumer value streams -- ones that must be fully realized by consumers for the potential worth of our products and services to also become realized. Understanding the relevent consumer value streams is not always a transparent exercise.
*Aside: Product development groups sometimes use industrial anthropologists to help with this process, but I've not personally aware of other enterprise organizations taking this route (btw, if you know of some, I'd love to hear about it). The thing is, creating technology solutions that help a consumer learn about, connect with, acquire, and utilize an enterprise's primary products and services is itself often like a product development activity at its core. *
As a simple personal example of how it can be difficult to identify the primary operational consumer value stream from the multiple possible consumer value streams, consider shopping and commuting. When I need to get milk on the way home from work, I'm not really shopping -- I'm commuting, and I want to get what I need fast even if it costs a little more. Of course, I'd rather not pay more, but my time is valuable so I'll pay the extra buck on a jug of milk to get a few more minutes with my family. The retailers who understand this and help me get in and out quickly will be the ones I'll stop at on my commute. The right blend of complementary technology and business solutions can help. (Btw, more on this example and some related territory here).
There are a number of great, healthy behaviors that can emerge from this mindset of empowering consumers by helping them optimize their personal value streams. Among them:
- Encourages ongoing dialogue with consumers that expands internal enterprise awareness of what creates value for consumers
- Fosters innovation by providing a new lens to view enterprise activities that helps people see where bridging organizational silos can create customer value
- Provides a mechanism to turn consumers' time and attention deficits to their advantage, as well as your advantage, by making consumers' existing habits and behaviors more valuable to them
- Creating value for consumers drives loyalty and growth, and ultimately is the source of virtually all current and future enterprise value
Taking these benefits together, helping consumers optimize their own personal value streams is a powerful way for enterprises to accelerate optimization of their enterprise value streams.
Technorati tags: systems thinking, lean, consumer experience, web 2.0, next web, loyalty