Client
Our Client was a leading European supplier of electrical equipment for the building industry. With production and R&D facilities spread across Europe, the company was struggling to align all stakeholders on the product development strategy for the different countries it was active in.
Type of project
Roadmap & Strategy coaching.
The challenge
- Different opinions existed between the national sales organizations and the various product development teams on what needed to be developed & how to approach the market.
- Product Management had a very technical focus with limited market focus. Very strong function thinking, limited use-case thinking.
- Fragmented understanding of who the customer is and what needs could be solved.
What we did
- Following an assessment period, the Skein coach determined in close cooperation with the CEO how to approach the challenge.
- Together with management, cross-function teams were assembled to tackle the challenge. Each team was a combination of sales & product people.
- These teams were trained in methodology and assisting frameworks to:
- Segment the market
- Analyse customer needs through Value Chain Mapping
- Analyse competitive positions in function of their capabilities to fulfil customer needs
- Determine competitive position & differentiation strategy in the market
- Through a series of internal workshops, the teams were coached in rigorously analysing the current situation
- Based on customer, market & capability analysis, the Skein facilitator coached the team in determining the desired state and the course of action to reach this.
The result
- Internal alignment on how to segment the market enabling clear understanding between sales and product teams when talking about the market.
- Common understanding of customer needs and how to solve them in function of internal capabilities and competitive positions.
- Main product and service development directions determined per segment and product family