Getting Clarity

The enemies of good business decisions are wishful thinking and an absence of data. Our Get-Clarity™ methodology provides your management team with a reality-based view of your marketplace, leading to smarter investment of your precious product and market development resources and paving the way for market leadership. Starting with a keen understanding of the realities of your market may seem self-evident, yet our experience shows that most organizations repeatedly stray from a market-focused orientation and its operational implications.

All Clarity engagements are customized to your particular needs, timeframe and budget. The consistent anchors of a Clarity engagement are our market-focused approach, our Get-Clarity™ methodology and our collaboration infrastructure. Together, Clarity's analytical foundation and our investment in proven, repeatable processes provide the engagement outcomes that you require:

• Superior answers to difficult questions
• Increased confidence in making risky decisions
• Improved management effectiveness
• Tight alignment for execution
• Rapid turnaround and efficient use of your resources

Market-Focused Approach

Market-focus begins with the common-sense premise that sustainable, profitable growth is achieved first and foremost by understanding the value needs, preferences and possibilities of your selected market(s) and keeping that at the center of all that you do.

This may seem self-evident, yet our experience shows that most organizations repeatedly stray from a market-focused orientation. They pursue technologies that can "change the world" without identifying exactly whose life they can dramatically improve and how. Or they under-emphasize the critical internal skills or partner relationships necessary for success. Sometimes the target is right, the value proposition is valid, but it comes undone in the go-to-market execution. The net result is underperformance in the marketplace, whether through missed revenue forecasts, unsatisfactory customer experiences, or both.

Maintaining market-focus requires discipline and objectivity. Clarity's discipline is rooted within a conceptual framework taught at leading business schools and in executive education programs at over 100 companies in the US and abroad. Building upon these theoretical constructs, Clarity's field-proven framework includes simple but powerful concepts for articulating and successfully addressing the realities of your marketplace:

• Value proposition / value exchange
• Market-focused strategic lifecycle
• Value chain
• Target market / market segmentation
• Customer journey
• Aligned value delivery system

In addition to supplying intellectual rigor, actively using these concepts with your management team yields lasting organizational benefits. All functions gain from a shared understanding of customers, markets and partners to predict or explain behaviors and outcomes and to make better product and marketing decisions based on that understanding. Meanwhile, a common vocabulary and point of reference streamlines internal communication and fosters cross-functional collaboration.

Get-Clarity™ Methodology

Beginning with an objective assessment of market value needs and extending across the value chain, our Get-Clarity™ methodology consistently and reliably uncovers hidden opportunities - as well as lurking landmines.

Our process is data-driven. How deeply we dig is a function the data at hand, the criticality of the pending decisions, your risk profile, and the practical limitations of time and budget. Our open-ended, yet highly structured "Voice of the Customer" interviewing technique allows us to paint the big picture context of the customers' realities, while capturing the finer details essential to getting the offering and value proposition right.

Proven across a vast range of markets (across high tech and beyond), and refined over time to deliver reliable results with maximum efficiency, the Get-Clarity™ Methodology follows three steps:

1. 360° Assessment
   We assess the 3 C's (customers, competitors, and internal capabilities) within the context of the evolving environment (technology, standards, business models, access to capital, regulation, etc.) The assessment spans the value chain, uncovering the priorities and alternatives available to current or potential ecosystem players. Our goal is to understand the full value equation and to ascertain size and growth rates for promising opportunities.

2. Strategic Decisions
   We explore alternatives and set up the key decisions to be made. Which market segments should you target? Is there a new market in which you must participate, for example to capture portfolio synergy? What are your winning value propositions, versus competition and/or the status quo? How can you convert customer value into sustainable profit? What are your key strategic levers?

3. Execution Planning
   We define the foundations of your operating plan: a sustainable, profitable business design for providing the chosen value proposition to the chosen markets; capabilities to be developed, acquired or obtained through partnership; critical product/service characteristics; go-to-market and delivery parameters; organizational obstacles; processes and infrastructure; and financial implications.

In summary, the Get-Clarity™ methodology allows us to work rapidly with your team to develop a fact-based strategy - or tactical realignment - in which you can have confidence and which is grounded in sufficient detail to permit your organization to operationalize the plan quickly.

Tools

The Clarity methodology is inherently collaborative. Our team works closely with your team to ensure the shared understanding and alignment that are prerequisites to successful execution.

Our work is supported by technology that enables us to unite geographically dispersed teams - including your people and ours. The Clarity collaboration infrastructure is in place, ready to jumpstart the project, unify our engagement team, streamline communications, enhance teamwork, ensure quality, and accelerate results.