An entrepreneur’s dream, any company’s wishes fulfilled: you have identified a potential white space. Now what: strategize, probe, launch? The opportunity one of my clients was going after appears to fit this profile. It is a mid-market segment, regional banking sector, where there is pressure for performance, given recent history. It is the land where Excel still rules. None of the typical, large players appear dominant. And, here we are about to enter this space, equipped with the right application, understanding the vertical requirements, a well-thought-through business and delivery model, and a product road-map which includes tying well with the existing ecosystem – collaboration & integration. The question we asked is one that most mountain climbers ask: what can we learn from the trailblazers?
We dug up a bit of history, found an insightful blog entry, a self-analysis written by the CEOs of the trailblazing firm LucidEra -successful, seasoned entrepreneurs, happy customers, “white” space, offering an attractive business proposition and offering flexibility in business model to make it work. But ultimately they just did not get enough customers off the ground. So what went wrong?
Key insights: 1) Total benefit provided is after including the costs & disruption introduced by your solution and 2) The way your target customer frames their problem and the way their core skill set enables the actual use of your solution may ultimately drive whether you succeed. There could be a hidden “last mile problem” that goes beyond technology or know-how.
5 Key Pre-Market Launch Questions
- Is this central to your target’s business operations/revenues/profits? Yes. Business Intelligence is central to banking executives who with their analysts run their business by numbers. They produce volumes of reports on a weekly/monthly basis for decision making.
- Will you be addressing a real business pain and will the benefits accrued outweigh the added costs, risks and disruption introduced by your solution? This is only a borderline “Yes” for LucidEra. Yes the solution addressed tasks that were repeated, that directly impacted business results. Yes, it would also impact efficiency through automation and introduce collaboration, less rework and integration to other pieces of data existing in other systems. But it is NOT clear that the benefits outweighed the added cost, deployment risk and business upheaval, ongoing support costs and dependence on a 3rd party. This is an important check that is often missed.
- Is there an entrenched solution that is not Excel? No. Only relatively ad hoc, home-grown automation, islands of internally-grown ways of doing things, and most using Excel.
- Does your target frame the problem as you do? When customers respond saying “I don’t see value” to what you see as a high-powered solution you know there is an issue. It usually a level deeper than feature-function fit. It may be because the customer sees the underlying problem differently. Business Intelligence is NOT equivalent to Data Analysis which is not equivalent to Information and Insights. Yes, your solutions may improve access, availability and presentation of data but this may still leave a gap in the buyer’s mind especially if they are leaping from Excel. Tweaking business model changes, like say, “freemium” to get to premium over-time or providing free self-diagnostics like LucidEra did, do not typically fill this gap. Asking what is the end-game enabled by your solution and how do you help the target traverse the gap helps get back on track.
- Does your target’s core skill set enable use of your solution? Is there a “last mile” problem? I see this as the central and most important question here. Amidst the flurry of market analysis, not forgetting to ask the following questions can make a difference
- What is the profile of the target buyer?
- How is the target user different?
- What are the users’ core skills?
- How do they sub-divide issues into recurring and one-offs?
- How would our target see value from what we our offer?
- What are human-factor issues that are coming in the way?
- Are there fallacies of how people thinking about this problem in the first place? (For a very interesting, right-brain foray on this topic see Senthil Mullainathan’s insightful speech on TED)
These questions ultimately help configure the solution to increase the likelihood of adoption. Example, segregating routine vs. one-off issues may allow focusing your offering on the recurring issues and outsourcing the one-offs to a third party/partner using a services-centric model.
In conclusion, ultimately it comes down to going deep on this one question regarding your target market- “WIFT-What’s In it For Them?”
Do you postmortem? What have you learned?
Tags: Business Development, Last-mile problem, Market launch, New Market Development, Post Mortem, Pre-Launch Strategies
Point (5) is very relative and inherently is the core objective of why the solution is built.
The product is a success when it not only satiates the immediate need of the customer (end user) but also creates a long term impression in the minds of people using it….and the people who put thier hardwork building it.
So the dictum “WIFT-What’s In it For Them?” works.
Regards
I like the addition-satiety and long-term impression which I would add ultimately results in repeat purchase, references and referrals.