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Customers, these days, demand ever-higher levels of personalized products and services to suit their needs.\u00a0 Their demand is grounded on technological disruption and access to up-to-date information.\u00a0 They believe that in an economy characterized by disruption and operational innovation\u2014that makes customization possible\u2014they have an excellent chance of getting customized offerings from the suppliers.<\/p>\n
Thus, Product Strategy<\/a> needs to evolve and become more robust, accordingly, to keep up changing customer needs and demands.<\/p>\n However, Leadership<\/a> at most supplier organizations believe that a strong focus of attention is the key to keeping rivals at bay and realizing amazing revenues. \u00a0But the approach has its own shortcomings, as a focused market, geography, value proposition, or segment becomes replete after a while.<\/p>\n To serve customers\u2019 fragmented needs, companies often outstretch the optimum level of complexity in their systems and portfolios while striving for customization. \u00a0Organizations need to aim for and harmonize multiple points of focus to keep up with the fragmented demand of their customers.<\/p>\n Leading firms are offering bespoke solutions to customers to drive growth through Smart Customization<\/a>\u2014i.e., by tailoring business streams and aligning strategies with customer value.<\/p>\n With rising demands for customized offerings by the customers, organizations need to gauge the value that customization offers to their customers against the complexity costs they can charge them, in order to achieve higher growth and profit margins than their competition.<\/p>\n Studies have revealed remarkable dissimilarities between enterprises in terms of their approach towards customized client requirements.\u00a0 Those organizations that offer transient solutions to customer demands can be referred to as \u201csimple customizers.\u201d \u00a0Whereas, firms that transform and bring their customer strategies and implementation plans in line with the specific customers\u2019 requirements are the \u201csmart customizers.\u201d<\/p>\n Improved focus on the specific needs of customer segments helps boost the market share. \u00a0Research on various large organizations reveals that smart customizers have a consistent focus on 3 best practices:<\/p>\n Typically, there is often a two-to-one performance difference between \u201cSmart Customizers\u201d and \u201cSimple Customizers.\u201d<\/p>\n Implementing Smart Customization isn\u2019t as easy as it sounds.\u00a0 A Booz Allen Hamilton<\/a> study of product and service companies\u2014conducted in North America and Europe for over 6 months\u2014revealed that customization programs at around two-third of the companies failed to improve their revenues or profits, and most customization initiatives added to organizational complexity.\u00a0 These initiatives typically draw the emphasis of sales and marketing units off of the real value-added propositions and the most profitable customers, and direct disproportionate investments that fail to boost revenue.<\/p>\n The 3 main challenges that organizations have to face while implementing Smart Customization<\/a> are:<\/p>\n Now, let\u2019s discuss the first challenge of Smart Customization<\/a> in further detail.<\/p>\n Organizational structure, operations or value propositions<\/a> start out simpler but get complex over time.\u00a0 There are two reasons attributed to organizations\u2019 decision to add complexity to their product or service portfolio:\u00a0 to create value for a customer segment, or in response to rivals\u2019 moves.<\/p>\n The challenges of increasing complexity stay obscured from majority of the organizations.\u00a0 These challenges may include:<\/p>\n A customization program that does not acknowledge these challenges results in diverting resources away from top priority initiatives and further squeezing top-line and bottom-line figures.<\/p>\n Interested in learning more about Smart Customization<\/a> and the challenge that value creation and delivery alignment presents while implementing it?\u00a0 You can download an editable PowerPoint on Key Challenges of Smart Customization<\/strong> here<\/u><\/a> on the Flevy documents marketplace<\/a>.<\/p>\n You can download in-depth presentations on this and hundreds of similar business frameworks from the FlevyPro Library<\/a>. FlevyPro<\/a> is trusted and utilized by 1000s of management consultants and corporate executives. Here’s what some have to say:<\/p>\n “My FlevyPro subscription provides me with the most popular frameworks and decks in demand in today\u2019s market. They not only augment my existing consulting and coaching offerings and delivery, but also keep me abreast of the latest trends, inspire new products and service offerings for my practice, and educate me in a fraction of the time and money of other solutions. I strongly recommend FlevyPro to any consultant serious about success.”<\/p>\n \u2013 Bill Branson, Founder at Strategic Business Architects<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n “As a niche strategic consulting firm, Flevy and FlevyPro frameworks and documents are an on-going reference to help us structure our findings and recommendations to our clients as well as improve their clarity, strength, and visual power. For us, it is an invaluable resource to increase our impact and value.”<\/p>\n \u2013 David Coloma, Consulting Area Manager at Cynertia Consulting<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n “As a small business owner, the resource material available from FlevyPro has proven to be invaluable. The ability to search for material on demand based our project events and client requirements was great for me and proved very beneficial to my clients. Importantly, being able to easily edit and tailor the material for specific purposes helped us to make presentations, knowledge sharing, and toolkit development, which formed part of the overall program collateral. While FlevyPro contains resource material that any consultancy, project or delivery firm must have, it is an essential part of a small firm or independent consultant’s toolbox.”<\/p>\n \u2013 Michael Duff, Managing Director at Change Strategy (UK)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n “FlevyPro has been a brilliant resource for me, as an independent growth consultant, to access a vast knowledge bank of presentations to support my work with clients. In terms of RoI, the value I received from the very first presentation I downloaded paid for my subscription many times over! The quality of the decks available allows me to punch way above my weight \u2013 it’s like having the resources of a Big 4 consultancy at your fingertips at a microscopic fraction of the overhead.”<\/p>\n \u2013 Roderick Cameron, Founding Partner at SGFE Ltd<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n “Several times a month, I browse FlevyPro for presentations relevant to the job challenge I have (I am a consultant). When the subject requires it, I explore further and buy from the Flevy Marketplace. On all occasions, I read them, analyze them. I take the most relevant and applicable ideas for my work; and, of course, all this translates to my and my clients’ benefits.”<\/p>\n \u2013 Omar Hern\u00e1n Montes Parra, CEO at Quantum SFE<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Customers, these days, demand ever-higher levels of personalized products and services to suit their needs.\u00a0 Their demand is grounded on technological disruption and access to up-to-date information.\u00a0 They believe that in an economy characterized by disruption and operational innovation\u2014that makes customization possible\u2014they have an excellent chance of getting customized offerings from the suppliers. Thus, Product… Product Strategy: \u00a0Key Challenges to Tackle while Implementing Smart Customization<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":4941,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[1570,1571,140,1119,1569,1199,1572],"class_list":["post-4800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-strategy","tag-complexity","tag-cost-of-complexity","tag-product-strategy","tag-segmentation","tag-smart-customization","tag-value-creation","tag-valueless-variety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4800"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7897,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4800\/revisions\/7897"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Smart Customization<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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<\/a><\/p>\nCost of Complexity<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Do You Find Value in This Framework?<\/h2>\n