Sharing new techniques to help advance a customer's success is critical to deepening relationships. As mentioned in my prior post, strategy development is a new competency Verizon Partners Solutions (VPS) is sharing with its customers. This is a skill developed and refined through learning, doing, trying - and sometimes failing. Partnering with our customers on strategy development is a way we at VPS can demonstrate our commitment to helping our customers achieve their business success, as they move through the digital world.
VPS showcased its view of best in practice shared strategy development to the 140 customers attending its recent annual Partner Summit. VPS designed workshops that leveraged the Playing to Win strategy formulation process and Design Thinking techniques. These sessions were very popular, giving participants the tools and guidance to enable them to build strategy cascades, understand their organization’s current strategy choices and experience human centric (customer) design tactics.
Discussion around strategy didn’t end with the workshops! Throughout the VPS Partner Summit, the dialog with and between our customers continued and the most emphasis focused on understanding:
These questions are at the core of strategy development - however, they do not come with a ‘one size fits all’ response. Instead, an organization must tailor its strategy according to its particular size, resources and needs. The process of formulating strategy should be a social process: cross-functional expertise and input is important if the organization is to truly understand the customer segments it serves, market conditions, technology trends and current capabilities. The time to complete the formulation process could take hours - or even days. Most important is dedicating time to the testing of critical conditions (technology, market shifts, regulatory impacts and/or customer needs) central to the success or failure of the strategy - and the rate of change seen in these critical dependencies will determine the frequency with which a strategy should be revisited.
VPS is continuing its strong, strategic momentum in 2018 by actively partnering with its customers on their strategy development. Together, we will be well placed to identify, overcome or jointly solve common opportunities. The VPS team looks forward to completing these efforts during the second quarter and will continue communicating insights on future potential engagements via the VPS Strategy and Transformation team.
Partnering for success with our customers is at the core of the VPS team’s value proposition. Shared strategy development is just one of the tools at our disposal to ensure that we, and our customers, can evolve for the future together.
