Business Consulting

The new market model based on the concept of utility

The methodology behind the Business Consulting service aims at building a new business model or overhaul the current one so that it meets the customer's needs and creates utility and value for the company and the end user.

The aim is to translate the shift from product to utility and from cost/price to value creation into concrete activities, making people protagonists along the entire value chain. It is about putting the customer at the centre once again, creating and maintaining the relationship with the end user both pre and post-sale.

The fundamentals behind market development

The guiding principles of the development of a new market are:

Innovating products and services

in order to give utility and create value to people by making them protagonists, particularly on issues of inclusion and digitisation

Experimenting the contents of innovation on the main customer segments

before the final implementation of the products/services (learning experimentation, cf. Lean start-up) and fine-tune the product/service contents based on the indications received

Getting in contact with the end user as quickly as possible

in order to fine-tune the useful and valuable content on which to base all commercial action

Communicating the value and utility for the person

(benefits) and only then the technical contents (product characteristics)

Building the project in its entirety

by defining, for example,
How to get in touch with end users, how to generate demand, how to build academies, how to do operational leasing, how to train the Service Network, how to manage the Distribution Network

Market development: Phases and activities of the business consulting service

Starting from a phase of internal data analysis in terms of distribution and segmentation of turnover per customer and per product family, the following step will be to design the customer knowledge phase (Voice of the Customer) to understand the customer's needs to be met, the problems to be solved and what the answers might be in terms of value proposition (product, service and innovation). From there, market development opportunities will emerge, across the board, in terms of:

Network plan, i.e. reviewing commercial and distribution policies to build an effective network. A system of economic and social partnership and collaboration used by the company to supply, expand and distribute its offer.
New services
Customer projects, i.e. relaunching opportunities concerning continuing customers or identifying new target customers. The customer project stems from the Value Proposition specifically created with the customer and formalised through an action plan. In this phase, the professionals in charge of the customer are involved, as bearers of knowledge and protagonists of its implementation. They provide inputs to identify solutions and the optimisation of invested resources.
Country Projects. The Country Project represents the country aggregation of the different customer projects and is completed by the inclusion of all other customers who, although not having a specific project, represent the distribution network of that country.
The Country Project is also the normally three-year evolution of the network in terms of area coverage, strengthening of the relationship status, selection, inclusion and de-selection of customers. The Country Project then contains the network plan for the customers and zones of that country.
Product range review
Warehouse and Procurement Policies Review
Review of processes and procedures in terms of roles, responsibilities and modes of operation.
Evidence of organisational gaps in terms of process owners or missing skills

Business consulting projects have to be self-financed, so there is the need of clearly identifying the objectives to be achieved and the costs to be borne. The choice as well as the monitoring of the project will be managed through a constant Sources - Uses analysis (starting with the company's financial statements) to see what self-financing possibilities the company has and what the trends of recent years are.