A cowboy in the late 1800s strolls into the local trading depot to see what supplies are available. Several decades later, a soldier comes back from WWII to discover supermarkets now provide the streets of his city with an abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables the likes of which he had never seen. A Gen Zer orders their entire grocery list to their front door and puts everything away without ever changing out of their pajamas.
Through the years, customers have evolved to expect more from who they do business with
The way that we do business constantly evolves. Business either keep pace with modern technologies and find ways to adapt products, processes and offerings to account for the latest innovations or they fail. Through the years, customers have evolved to expect more from who they do business with. The logical progression of this trend is that customers will eventually expect and demand complete solutions for all that they do.
In today’s world, complete solutions are combinations of product, technology, hardware, software data and services that generate or provide an outcome for a customer. They are also streamlined, easy to procure and easy to use.
The best way to design and offer a complete solution is through a services mindset or service design approach. At their core, services are about providing capabilities, outcomes and “jobs” to others that they cannot create on their own (or at least not at the same level of value, expertise or efficiency).
Complete solutions also allow you to branch into different markets more than a single product would allow
This must not be confused with doing bolt-on services! Creating a single service or set of ad hoc services as a side show to your product does not qualify as a complete solution. That era is over. Something more sophisticated – true, complete solutions – are required to succeed in today’s market.
As an added incentive, keep in mind that complete solutions aren’t just about meeting customer expectations. Complete solutions provide significant value capture potential and enable you to serve more markets and more customers than a product-only approach would allow. And, they offer the opportunity to generate recurring revenue.
But that’s not all! On top of the new revenue boost from new markets and the enhanced enterprise valuation from recurring revenue, complete solutions also open up new avenues for customer interaction. These allow you to continue refining your complete solution as you learn more about your customers’ preferences and future needs.
That’s a win-win for sure! Now, all you need to do is get started with envisioning, ideating, prioritizing and building some complete offerings.
