Articles: Strategy & Survival - Testing Times
Developing a strategy has been seen by many a business guru as the key to corporate success - but does it have any relevance for the independent consultant or sole trader? I would say it is as important, if not more so.
But what exactly is strategy? In its simplest form, it is the process of answering the questions - 'Where are we now?' 'Where do we want to be?' and 'How are we going to get there?'. For larger businesses, strategy helps to bring clarity to the confusion of the organisation and its sub-systems, and to the market and all its complexity. The strategy sets the context and helps to remind all the stakeholders as to what is the agreed purpose of the organisation.
For a working individual; be they a consultant, free-lancer, or interim support; strategy is necessary to get where you want to go in work and life. It may seem strange to formalise the process in an informal and hectic world - when is the right time to sit down and think about your mission and vision when you are probably needing to book a hotel for your meeting tomorrow, chase up that invoice that was never paid, type up the presentation for next week, and go out and do a few interviews this afternoon . . .!? Thinking about why you are doing what you are doing is often the subject of procrastination, because it doesn't feel like 'real' work.
In the past, when business environments were more stable and predictable, strategy was seen as a top-down process in which whole departments of planners were employed. More recently, strategy is seen as also developing from the bottom up and to be based on the core competences of the organisation. As the environment changes, the strategy is built and develops incrementally. The impetus comes from the awareness, knowledge and input of everyone in the organisation - a meeting of minds.
For the sole trader the resources and ideas often come from outside the business rather than within. This is where networking skills, an open mind, and lots of time and patience are essential. Objectives and plans need to come from the individual, but ideas may be borrowed from business or trade literature, or from organised study. Incremental and flexible reactions to complex environmental issues can be discussed and enlightened through the use of a range of networks; both virtual and face-to-face. The ICG is a good example of how advice and insight can be shared within a group of individuals that have similar strategic issues: Independent consultants often work in informal networks that bring them further along their strategic pathways.
Developing a strategy and sticking to it, or knowing when to change it, can be easier when you are on your own. There are no excuses and no one else to blame! But that is not to belittle the temptation for a sole trader to just 'go with the flow' and hope a career develops out of it. Work may be hard to find and when it comes it is impossible to say no, even if it doesn't fit into the three-year development plan. I think this is probably a sensible approach. The benefit of working on your own is that you have the opportunity to try lots of things and no one else in your organisation will tell you that 'its not within your department's remit'! Intuition develops quickly and you soon become a good judge of what types of activities to include in your long-term plan and which ones to steer clear of!
A key point is that for a person working on their own, their business strategy is often intricately linked with their personal goals. Do I want to make enough money to have a good life-style but spend more time with my family, or do I want to be the market leader? What work you do, which clients you seek, and how you approach them; are all likely to be dependent upon your personal objectives. In this era of focus on life fulfillment and self-reliance, individuals will increasingly see themselves as enterprises, and any enterprise needs to know where it wants to go to be successful.
Published in Research magazine, September 2002.
Carol Raithatha
Carol Raithatha Ltd
Carol Raithatha argues the case for better product testing.
In the world of marketing insight, product testing has a lot to give the FMCG sector. But how often is it used only to give the thumbs up for the marketing director's preferred prototype before a launch?
Insight programmes that include an element of product testing have the solid base to develop successful marketing strategies. A carefully designed knowledge-generation programme, including targeted but frequent current and competitor product testing, can lead to the kind of insight that benefits the whole of an organisation, not just the marketing team.
Product insight techniques, such as objective, tangible, product descriptions by trained assessors (sensory evaluation), and focused product testing using quantitative acceptance and typicality scores (consumer sensory testing), can form the product knowledge foundation of long-term, multifunctional consumer insight programmes. Product testing skills can also enhance more traditional market research techniques, such as in-depth interviews and focus groups. When carefully chosen and implemented, product insight techniques will develop internal competences around core products and build bridges between marketing and technical functions.
These techniques are becoming well understood in the food, home and personal care industries, but could also be useful in a range of other retail applications including clothing and small appliances.
Take the example of a sock manufacturer. Trained sensory panel evaluation of a current product line and its competitors will give a consumer-relevant, analytical and reliable picture, of what makes up the sensory experience of the sock and how much that can vary. This picture might include descriptions and quantitative scoring of the appearance, texture and functionality of the sock.
Simple, unbranded, product testing with consumers on the same range of product will reveal which socks are preferred by which usage groups. The beauty of statistically combining analytical and consumer product testing data is that the combination will define which are the key physical drivers behind liking and use of a product without having to rely on consumer explanations. The resulting knowledge can then be used to design quality-assurance programmes and marketing communications that are driven by consumer needs. For example, ifwe know that soft toes in our socks are important to customers who wear trainers, we can monitor the softness level of every batch. The softness of our socks becomes a USP.
The combination of such product insight with more traditional usage and attitudinal consumer insight, can lead to real brand knowledge. It can reveal what really defines our product and brand in the market place for our target consumers.
Unfortunately there are few agencies/consultants in the UK that have the functional experience to manage these projects. It is to be hoped, however, that more will appear as the synergy between operational detail and consumer insight and marketing strategy becomes apparent.
Carol Raithatha
info@carolraithatha.co.uk
Published in Research in May 2004
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