We advise following a fairly straightforward and well-understood path when planning proposition development. We explain the reasons for each step in this blog. But this isn’t rocket science, so why work with White Space Strategy to support development of your next products and services? What is it about working with us that drives more successful propositions, reduces wasted time and money, and means that our clients keep coming back when they have new requirements?
Below, we outline 4 reasons working with White Space Strategy supercharges the product or service development process:
Uncover information that will improve the outcome
Our proprietary insight, drawn from detailed interviews with prospects, competitors and other market experts drives better outcomes across the proposition development process.
We help our clients avoid dead ends by ensuring that their propositions are meeting a significant need, even in complex or little-understood markets where the potential buyers or users are difficult to access.
Our depth interviews, conducted by our trained analysts, dig beyond the surface needs to understand the nuances which often make the difference. It’s all well and good knowing that FMCG buyers are looking for a certain packaging solution for fruit, but if that need is likely to disappear within the next 3 years due to EU regulation, there’s no point in developing a solution for it. Our analysts are experts at always asking the next question to help clients understand how needs will change in future, how they vary by company or buyer and what small tweaks would make an existing offering better.
By talking to users and understanding their current processes, we often identify elements in a user’s current approach which are causing them pain they don’t even realise they have. Hotels invoicing online travel agents by fax may be a usual part of their process, but it is a great opportunity for a payments provider to reduce cost and risk. Feeding these kinds of insights into innovation and NPD processes creates rich discussions around solving real-world problems.
EXAMPLE: A recent project for an electronics manufacturer required understanding the needs of blue light services across Europe. Our team was able to speak to the buyers of electronics for these emergency services users from Luxembourg to Moldova and present a clear view of the common needs and what’s wrong with current offerings – feeding this direct insight into NPD discussions.
Support the work of your team with robust market insight
Working with White Space Strategy provides a foundation for your internal team, helping to validate your hypotheses feeding into concept creation and supporting your business planning.
Our team can take your hypotheses around needs to the market and sense-check them with buyers and market experts. Quotes from interviewees explaining why they have these needs and elaborating on what kind of product or service they would find attractive can form a strong evidence base for business cases or securing investment to move forward in the NPD process.
Our market sizing capabilities can provide figures for total addressable market and serviceable addressable market, built from the bottom up, where market reports aren’t available or aren’t reliable. If a market for a service doesn’t exist, we can help make sensible assumptions, protecting your team from the accusation of marking their own homework. We combined Amazon sales data, market reports and interviews with ecommerce sales managers at large European retailers to size the home working opportunity for one of our clients. The breadth of sources and the market expert overlay gave us the confidence to recommend entry into one market and identify a range of possible future opportunities.
EXAMPLE: We tested high level concepts for one of our paper & packaging clients with decision-makers at their customers. We collected their views on potentials new solutions and brought the voice of the customer into the room as part of their innovation process. Seeing quotes like ‘I like that, but what would be even better would be…’ drove much more exciting discussion in the room and pushed the ideas forward.
A critical friend on the commercials and unit economics
Moving through the proposition development process can be lonely! We can be a critical friend to you and your team to bring commercial and common-sense thinking, built up through years of work on proposition development and broader strategy projects across a wide range of industries. We provide challenge to our clients around level of need, delivery model, route to market, pricing and right-to-win, to help make sure any banana skins are spotted and dealt with early, and that you’re building towards a profitable outcome from the early stages.
We can help with prioritising concepts following innovation sessions, drafting business plans that don’t ignore ROACE, refining value propositions to make them easier to deliver and considering partnership and channel strategy to achieve scale quickly.
EXAMPLE: We helped a client which manufactures construction materials assess the need for an early-stage product among 8 potential end markets. We were able to share that the primary feature of this product, while differentiated, would not add significant value to most buyers. We shared the niche opportunities that would exist, but ultimately recommended investing elsewhere in areas where there would be more demand.
Input into your sales process
Through engaging with the market around needs and testing early stage concepts with prospects, our team often identifies potential anchor customers and leads which clients can follow up now or in future.
We’d be the first to say we’re not the best options for third party sales agents for your product, but we often finish projects with a list of people who have expressed a particular need or interest in a proposition, and who are bought in to getting a solution to their problem to market.
EXAMPLE: We have helped a global payments provider set up meetings to discuss their capabilities and provided the sales team of an electric asset manager we were supporting with leads and specific talking points as an addition to our help with their proposition development processes.
What next?
White Space Strategy elevates our clients’ proposition development processes, helping them deliver better needs-based propositions to market more quickly. If you’re thinking about creating a new product or service, or you’re already working through the process alone, get in touch with us and we’d be happy to talk through any questions or challenges you’re facing, and share thoughts about options and possible solutions!
At White Space Strategy, we’ve been named by the FT and Satista as one of the UK’s leading management consultants for supporting Innovation, Growth & New Business Models. We’ve worked with top B2B organisations to help them develop and refine propositions, including Cadent, British Gas, DS Smith, Ordnance Survey and Unilever.
Get in touch with us today to talk about your new product development process and how we can ensure you maximise the value of your time.