Organisations can fast track their business projects and still outperform, even when teams are working remotely.
Why business canvases and virtual project rooms might be your best option to successfully fast-track your business projects and sync all your team members.
Revenue Generation Chain?
This coined “RevGen-chain” concept (inspired by the familiar supply-chain) includes the organisation, tools, processes used to generate and grow revenue:
• marketing • sales • A broader scope of departments and activities (e.g. products resp. solutions, factory, supply-chain, distribution and sales channels, ...).
1. Put together an agile revenue generation team
In a recent article (agile teams that have been pushed remote by Covid-19 are posting impressive results), Bain&Co shared data showing that in typical times agile teams are as much as twice as effective as non-agile teams. They also explain that agile teams work extraordinarily fast in iterative sprints.
Blend teams! The teams and profiles who should be involved seems obvious, based on expertise: sales and marketing teams. However, they will also have their own agenda in mind, and will each see the world from their standpoint: their very own understanding of the market and of their companies.
There are many benefits to add a broader representation, which offers different standpoints and a fresh mind. Blending teams and listening to all inputs, by experience, does add significant value to such projects, as they bring different angles, different expertise, different knowledge. These team members can be chosen from within the organisation (colleagues from non-sales & marketing departments, and from diverse level of responsibilities), and from outside (representing customer, partners, channel partners). Your teams have the talent and most of the expertise needed.
However, add consultants if and where needed: they add the expertise that you don’t have in-house, they can drive the process, they are neutral and don’t carry internal bias. Focus and communication are critical to their success. This is where a virtual project room will support their work.
2. Give your team the benefits of a virtual project room
What is a virtual project room?
Why using a virtual project room?
Always-on and real-time: a virtual project room is available anytime, as and when needed. People can brainstorm and contribute at any time, even when they have an idea in the most unusual place or time, allowing much deeper work and rework on ideas and plans.
Location neutral: teams can literally be in different locations, working from home or any office, in any time zone.
And yes, even when team members are in the office (assuming they are allowed to be physically in the same room), they benefit both from the assistance of this project room, and from the ability to make progress in collaboration with remote colleagues.
Project ready: post-it are written to last rather than being lost. Ideas are collected and combined in the most organised way, and can easily be sorted and combined to make most sense.
Collaboration: as a fully collaborative platforms, the project receive the best from your resources as it integrates the multiple contributions.
One single tool: the project can be structured and managed in the same project room. You don’t need multiple solutions and software.
However, these multiple contributions from the best experts (internal and external) add maximum value if they are triggered, complete, and organised with project enhancing business frameworks.
3. Get the best of their expertise by using proven business canvases and frameworks
What are business frameworks or canvases?
Everybody knows the “Business Model Canvas”, this strategic management and lean startup template used to either develop new or document existing business models.
There are many tested and proven business canvases and frameworks on the market. Project teams can use the most robust tools developed by the best consulting companies, or startup and innovation experts.
They are robust guides; being able to pick up the relevant ones as and when needed saves time and guarantee the quality outcomes of the project.
Why should we use these frameworks?
© Internove | Business iCanvases
4. A 3-step approach: explore, design, activate
Exploration phase
Using advanced models and tools covering a wide range of business situations, the revenue project team can investigate all possible sources of revenue (we will get back on the complexity of this – what can be missed - in another post). They enable to quickly iterate and get to the end of the exploration phase (and answer the original question: how can we optimise our revenue generation chain?), ready for the next step.
Design phase
In the design phase, or the plan preparation, 3 areas of focus are developed in parallel: organisation, processes, and systems or tools. This is also the phase when “digital transformation” of the back-end and the frond-end should get a maximum of attention. Digital transformation makes sense if it is the best solution to solve an existing issue, generate productivity and speed gains, outperform human talent, reduce bottlenecks, or sometimes bring you in a completely different space (AI). We have experienced many impressive sales and marketing automation solutions that should be part of the exploration and design phases.
Activation phase
The activation phase (implementation and execution steps) remains the most slippery one. From everyone’s’ experience, this is where projects fail when they fail, despite good or great plans. To some extent, the project really starts at this phase, with the project team still fully in the driving seat, with complete support from the management and careful management with the whole organisation. It takes more than project management tools, deadlines, and metrics. It’s also about consistency and assertiveness, as a project is never completely achieved.
5. This is a continuous and virtuous process
If a revenue generation chain project is never completely finished, should we keep the project room open? Revisiting Heraclitus, “[Accelerating] change is the only constant”.
With exponential acceleration of technology innovation (development, adoption, implementation), there is a double impact, as if the finish line was constantly pushed further away:
Digital tools constantly improve: sales automation and marketing automation are both becoming prevalent, new solutions and capabilities emerging, and the main change are triggered by the widespread use of AI.
Continuous transformation of the ecosystems: customers (both consumers and businesses) habits, attitudes, behaviours, are ever-evolving, becoming more fragmented and complex. The competitive landscape is continuously moving.
Accidents and crisis (financial, economic, health related, etc.) are regularly impacting the business cycles. We can’t underestimate the likeliness of any other unexpected situations.
A continuous project process, that can be more or less active, should keep companies and teams awake, aware, with 2 goals in mind: without disrupting the day to day business, checking that the revenue generation keeps being optimised; and continuously delivering (relevant outputs, actions, transformations) leading to maximised results.
About
Internove has been built around a highly qualified team of business and digital transformation experts: they have the seniority (sales and marketing directors, managing directors), the strategic and hands on knowledge with revenue generation chains. They have the experience of working with many business situations and business models, and can use the most cutting-edge tools, including sales and marketing automation. With simplicity, friendliness, and tons of experience, they are committed to your results! Why? Our obsession is to enable companies to be as successful as their talents allow, by optimising revenue generation, building sustainable revenue models, and adding value to their customers and the ecosystems.