The Red Ocean methodology for Profitable Growth ensures alignment of customers, products & Services, Market position and internal Capabilities. Creating profitable growth scenarios requires a thorough top down and bottom up analysis to consider all elements of the combined competitive strength of the company.

In many of our cases, the product portfolio does not match the needs of the customers, and the competitive landscape has changed slowly over time, creating a gap between what the company believes in and what the market wants. Contact Bent Ekvern for more information.

Revenue Management is often seen as somewhat of a black-box in a business’ set of strategic tools. It does not have to be that way!

Revenue Management is the broad practice of implementing some form of “intelligence” into your market offering and revenue stream. One of our special competencies is pricing and pricing strategy. This could be dynamic pricing such as fuel pricing, strategic pricing such as special categories in retail, or the ubiquitous practice of “Yield Management” used in hospitality services and other industries having fixed number, non-perishable products . Contact Bent Ekvern for more information on pricing and more general methods in revenue management.  

Talk to anyone involved in corporate decision making these days, and two topics will come up – Business Analytics and Big Data. Repeat the question to anyone involved in Business Intelligence Technology and they will ask you one question in return – “what do you want to see?”. We believe that this BI Technology mindset is fundamentally wrong! 

The problem is the same whether your business is in Big Data or the traditional BI space. The fundamental need when regarding data and analytics is actionable information. We use a combination of our own internal tools and the client specific  tools for data mining, exploration and visualizations, delivering business analytics solutions that provides understandable and communicative insight. The ability to provide understanding is an absolute must in business decision-making processes, and therefore vital to initiate change and growth. Read what our customers think about this under our customer stories.

The Customer Management area is constantly changing. Where we previously looked at CEM as a tool and methodology of mapping the quality of point of contact, quality of service in different channels and invoice design, we have now changed the approach entirely.

Today’s CEM is all about managing the Experience of the customer in real-time channels. Our solution incorporates both the point of contact approach and in-depth customer analysis, but has added the element of surveillance of actual customer behavior and interaction in all digital channels. This could be the website, a cloud based software in a browser, tablet or phone. We now identify every single customers struggle. All elements of the online service is automatically identified. If your customers struggle with the design of the page, we see it. If the customers experience errors that you really can’t recreate, we see it. We can even provide the customer with online help and provide customer service with a tool that displays the customers every action in every field, on every page, every time  Too good to be true? Contact us for more information.

Most companies start working with CRM from an operational perspective. Direct marketing and attempts on viral marketing through social media is the most common channels they start with. In many cases this is not a bad approach, they usually get some results, but are having a hard time explaining why. As they mature, most find themselves in a situation where they do not have a structured way of utilizing their customer data. The company is not set up properly to handle the data nor utilizing it in a structured and logical way.

We strongly believe in a more structured approach. A CRM Vision, Strategy and Master plan makes sure that all the future CRM work is aligned with the overall strategy of the company. Making sure that the roadmap has gained acceptance from other areas of the business, significantly improves the chances of running a successful CRM program for years.

Our methodology enables the company to gradually improve their internal systems and capabilities to gain tangible and repeatable results from the CRM work from day one. Contact us for more information..

Operational CRM is basically every effort you do on a daily basis to manage your customers. Campaigns, Newsletters, Call-center, branch, office etc.

It would have been nice if there were one single manager pulling the strings in these channel at all time, making sure that the customer get the same consistent and professional service in all the different channels. In our world that is wonderful, but definitely wishful thinking.

Reflection is the better part of a champion.

The sad truth is that for most companies the different channels are competing! They are by no means handled by the same manager, and definitely do not have the same objectives.

Most financial institutions want their general customers to be self-serviced on the web. Of course because the web is a (or at least used to be) a significantly more cost efficient channel than a branch or a call center. That said it should be obvious that the calls to the call-center should be all about getting their customers back to the web for all future – Well it’s not.

If you place a call to the customer service, they are eager to solve any issue you might have – at any cost. They even have incentives to sell you a cheaper product than you can get on the web, but  – why?

The channel conflicts are growing stronger every year. We are treating customers like before even though we have predictive models saying they do not want to be treated that way!

Loved, hated and feared. Segmentation and predictive analysis is here to stay. Most people want to be treated as an individual. They want to treated by friends who know there habits, likes and dislikes. They want to be with their equals to feel comfortable. If you walk into the grocery store, and forgot that you actually forgot to buy the same product that you liked so much, but forgot the name. People actually want the merchant to remind them – “remember to buy the raspberry semi-skimmed milk”. They also want to know what others that also likes your recently discovered favorite likes.

Segmentation is all about clustering customers who are very much alike in their behavior in groups and treat the groups differently. Why ? – Because that is what they want. Few want to be treated as a “standard customer”. They want to feel special. Segmentation is facilitating this, and if done correctly provides you with tremendous insight and fantastic results.

A few years back we also learned something that thrilled us even more. We had just completed a segmentation model for the business customers. When looking at the results, we found that three of the segments had all requested a new product for some time. When exploring this further we also found that this had been dismissed by product development since “there was not enough customer potential for this product”. Now, 18% of their customers commonly expressed the need for the product. Product development was stunned and took a chance of launching the product. The result – blew them away. The white spot that was discovered catered for a substantial revenue increase and an even better profit than any of the other existing products.

Too many companies are trying to create a superior model that gives you all the answers. Our advice: “keep it simple, and base it on your own transactional and behavioral data”. Relying on external data as discriminating variables is in our world extreme sports, extremely costly, unreliable and just plain dumb.

So, can customer segmentation work? If done the right way, definitively!. To learn more about customer segmentation. Contact one of our solution experts.

Lean Management is an improvement methodology and work philosophy to reduce waste in every process and activity performed by an organization, as seen from their customers view. It is realized when every executive, manager and employee perform improvement activities as a part of daily operation. Execution is a controlled process with a systematic and structured way of problem solving by focusing on activities and results.

Lean and the Continous Improvement Method has its background in the automotive industry, where Toyota is the most successful example. Lean has evolved greatly over the past decade, and the improvement philosophy can be used in all types of businesses. Success with Lean is achieved within the media industry, retail trade, health, industry, banks, insurance companies and other businesses in the financial services industry.

Compared with traditional business improvements methods, Lean is a radical change and transition is more substantial – but so are the effects. Our services within Lean are:

• Development of Lean business strategy and implementation plan
• Project and program management within the “Lean Service”, “Lean Administration” and “Lean Sales”
• Training courses for management and employees

Business Performance Management is all about understanding your business and doing the right thing – or as one of our clients puts it “Let’s just get our ducks in a row”.

We love making “things” work as well as it possibly can, and even a little bit better. To do this on a corporate level, you need to:

1. Know what to do in the short and long term
2. Making sure that you actually do what you should do through monitoring and corrective actions
3. Use the experience and insight gained in operations to do it even better the next time around

We have worked extensively with different aspects and levels of Business Performance Management, such as corporate performance management and sales performance management. We also govern our most important technology service, Application Performance Management, using the same methodology.

The process of finding the optimal balance between network performance and network costs, in consideration of the customers SLA requirements.

Optimized network

Once you we have collected the datainput to picture the costs involved in storing, picking and transporting products across the networks, we can model and compare alternative scenarios to explore the options for improving logistics performance through network optimization.

Does it make sense to close, relocate or build and how does this affect our transportation costs?

Our approach is to analyse a Greenfield scenario (ideal) and a Constrained (down to basics) scenario – evaluate and set the high-level hypothesis for the long term scenario. Typically Greenfield warrants the highest gain but is unrealistic to implement but will act as a Benchmark for the Constrained scenario and clarify the risk/reward to be decided. Analysis of appropriate sub-scenarios will evaluate the effects of radical and incremental changes to the baseline.

Typically a reduction in logistics costs of 10 to 15% should be expected.

From Model to Reality

A target design is worth nothing if it cannot be implemented. A detailed and realistic masterplan considering the practical implications of the change to be addressed must be developed. The sequence and timing of changes to the distribution system must be carefully planned and lead by managers with the necessary skillset and experience.

Sustaining Network Performance

For the long term success any changes in the logistics network design often warrants the need for a redesign of current organization structure, skill set and management system. We help you implement this to maintain an optimized network over time.

To get one point straight from the start: We love sales people! Loved and hated for their results and sometimes despite lack of product and service competence, they keep delivering results every day.

Their true skill is not the knowledge of the product they are selling, but the knowledge of the customer who is buying the product, and the skill convincing the customer that this is the only right product to buy.

Great salespeople are those who combines the two worlds. They know their customer needs and know how your company can fulfill that demand. They also know how this will be implemented and are able to tweak the offer in the way that fits your organisations capabilities.

That said, the rogue reputation of salespeople is not entirely undeserved. A few years ago I met with a sales rep from a software company who had a software we were interested in. After the initial standard product presentation and demo, we went through our exceptions to the software. All was of course met with a simple “Yes we can do that” by the rep. We drilled a little more, and soon realized that this was to good to be true. We confronted the rep with this, he paused and said. “Well, you know. There is a very special, reserved place for software salespeople in Hell” – We bought the software…

The good thing is that our view on sales is not the “kill”, “closing” nor “argumentation techniques”. Our approach is in motivating the sales organisation by applying a structure. Sales performance Management is no magic. It’s displayed in numbers and handled by processes. Contact one of our solution specialists to know more.

The technology side of customer experience starts with Application Perfomance Management. Red Ocean have a highly specialized and skilled team that can implement tools to monitor and resolve end-to-end service delivery problems.

The ability to monitor and quickly pinpoint any issues in a complex application infrastructure is crucial to consistent service quality and issue resolving. We have partnered with CompuWare to deliver high capacity APM and increase service delivery for our customer. Contact Philip Duns for more information on how we help some of Norway’s largest enterprises with APM.

To provide appreciable support for strategic business developments, functional divisions and IT units need a common, agreed basis for designing future organisational and technical arrangements.

Master Plan
The IT Master Plan outlines the strategic goals, objectives and initiatives of a company or organization IT organization. The Master Plan usually has a long-term horizon, and includes a prioritized project portfolio, budget estimates, and staffing requirements to implement it. The Information Technology Master Plan is not intended to provide an exhaustive list of the technology-related projects an organization must undertake, but rather focuses on those areas where technology is expected to deliver significant additional value to the organization.

Vision
Information technology is rapidly becoming an essential component of the core enterprise. It is no longer just a productivity enhancer, but rather will be at the center of nearly everything an organization does. To adapt organizations to the changes this will likely bring, the organization must provide each user with the technology they need and support them in using it effectively. Users in the organization must embrace the use of information technology in their roles, and be committed to using it to improve and enhance their own work, and the organization as a whole.

The process and goal of achieving competitive advantage through developing and sustaining a symbiotic relationship between business and IT.

Value delivery for IT governance is impossible without strategic alignment and resource management.

The essential components of IT governance can be expressed as follows:
1. IT governance overall is about delivering value and managing risk.
2. Value delivery, which embodies the concept of risk-related returns, is perhaps the most important.
3. Value delivery is not possible without strategic alignment and resource management.
4. It is impossible to provide transparency of success or failure without performance measurement.

Business/IT strategic alignment has been discussed as a key subject for managers for a long time. This is while IT governance is also amongst the most important organizational subjects. Indeed, since IT has become an important resource for organizations, the governance of this resource is an essential subject that the organizations must go through. Combination of IT strategic alignment with IT governance could be an effective strategic innovation allowing organizations make efficient use of IT.