Business Model Validation and Market Leadership Strategy Development

E-commerce is one of the most blooming sectors these days and is growing at a tremendous pace. Due to the high competition in the market, customer satisfaction has become a very important factor for the business growth. Our client, a relatively new company in the outsourced physical education space wanted their business model to be validated and put in place a concrete strategy to attain market leadership. Being one of the largest e-tailing players in India, they wanted to benchmark its customer satisfaction with the competitors and understand the satisfaction across key parameters.

Firstly, the key issues were mapped by our analysts and further analysis of the current situation was done. It was found that the business model adopted by the company did not have a detailed analysis and all the departments worked in silos and there was no vision in terms of where the company was expected to be in the future. There was a lack of foresight and focus on systems and processes. These were the predicted reasons leading to lower efficiency and problems in coordination.

Dedicated analysts were assigned to study the market dynamics (stakeholder analysis) and focus on key forces which are going to influence the industry as a whole. Several expert calls and discussions were done, and root cause analysis of the problems being faced by the organization was done. After several levels of analysis, restructuring of the organization and developing of processes and systems was done. Also, marketing strategies like initiating market awareness and brand building initiatives in sync with the sales team for higher reach out and acceptance of the product were designed.

The business model validation and leadership strategy were studied internally. Our analysts spoke to many customers across varying age groups, gender and geography who are active in e-commerce platforms to understand their perspective in a detailed manner. The analysis showed that the impact of marketing initiatives resulted in 30% increase in the top of the mind recall of the brand with targeted marketing campaign and 20% increase in the willingness to try the new program achieved by improving the market awareness by highlighting the benefits of the program. The impact of the systems and the processes was analyzed, and that resulted in 100% increase in the number of meetings attended by the salesperson per week. Also, focusing on meeting more clients by reducing the time spent in non-productive activities and introducing tracking systems for timely follow-ups and confirmation of meetings would help the organisation grow. The analysis also showed that increase in wallet share would result in 15% increase in the revenues generated from complimentary service offerings and would also increase the customer loyalty indicated by the increase in wallet share achieved by addressing the customer pain point to deliver better service quality.

To approach towards the market leadership strategy, the market size for the client’s service offerings was identified along with market demand. Also, the economic feasibility of the different service offerings and the strategic alignment with the overall corporate goals was identified and using stakeholder analysis, the needs of the market were analyzed and additional revenue opportunities were pinpointed. Therefore, a business model was developed by our expert team which is adaptable to the market and has a strategic alignment with the organization. Processes like setting up the marketing team for increased effectiveness and increased coordination with the sales and product development teams were pitched by our team and streamlining of the sales process for effective reach out was suggested. Dashboards and tracking systems with clear performance indicators were designed by our team to track all the parameters. Interviews with the people in the industry were conducted and after talking to them, it was suggested to the organisation that clarity in the message conveyed by the management and proper feedback mechanism should be introduced. Regular training, team building activities on motivation, cross-functional brainstorming and idea generation sessions should be conducted. Also, there should be a clear job description and career progression path for employees at all levels and a clear communication channels across the organization should be present. The study also concluded that a boost in employee morale and focus on achieving the targets will help in approaching the goal.

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