Voices: the CMB Blog

How many times have you looked at all of the to-do’s you’ve crossed off your list during any given week and wondered, “What do I actually have to show for it?” The fact of the matter is that the work day is a constant struggle to separate out the important from the urgent and from the importantly urgent so that we maximize our time on activities that are most likely to contribute to corporate metrics. We must be strategic about how we get through the day.

This same concept applies when growing a business. When it comes to growth strategies, most firms don’t suffer from a lack of ideas and paths to choose from. Conceptually, most business leaders understand that deciding what not to invest in is just as important as deciding what business opportunities to pursue. Yet many companies still find themselves stretched in many directions, with various product lines, strategies and consumer segments. Budgets, time and employee energy are spread across too many initiatives, many of which are low ROI activities

It’s hard to say “no” when opportunity—in the form of a potential revenue stream—comes knocking. But the irony in finding growth is the ability to focus and say “no” even when it means turning down a potentially exciting or even lucrative business initiative. Without this focus, businesses can’t make sufficient investments in the most high-priority initiatives. Management struggles because they are doing everything at once. A company’s best people are spread across different projects and can’t execute efficiently. And, in some cases, even finding time to meet and move projects forward is stymied by overcommitted schedules.

A business leader must find the courage to make decisions and focus their people and their funds on the goals that are most likely to get them ahead of the competition.

How do you get to “no”? For starters:

• Focus on one or a few key customer segments where your value proposition is most differentiated. Look at customer segments where you perform better than the competition and customers feel you truly—instead of marginally—meet their needs. This typically requires a robust market segmentation to guide your focus.

• Focus on your business’ core capabilities and strengths, and commit to investing only in these capabilities. Many companies run into trouble when they move away from their core in search of more attractive opportunities. Cisco’s Flip phone was an attractive idea, but turns out the fickle world of consumer electronics was too far afield from the company’s core business.

• Focus on balancing the needs of  your customer today versus your customer of tomorrow. A tech company, for example, will want to devote more of their investments (20-30%) on future customer needs. On the other hand, more mature industries such as insurance will dedicate most of their budget to current customer profiles and any directly adjacent capabilities.

Saying yes to everything makes it harder to achieve anything. How effective is your company at getting to “no”?

Rachel Corn is a Director at  South Street Strategy Group, she specializes in finding growth opportunities in new market segments, new products and businesses and innovative business models.

South Street Strategy Group, an independent sister company of Chadwick Martin Bailey, integrates the best of strategy consulting and marketing science to develop better growth and value delivery strategies. 

I don’t want to brag, but my smartphone is in really good shape.

Like millions of other people, I have multiple fitness and health-related mobile apps, and they’re constantly alerting, pushing—begging me to login, add my stats, and track my diet and exercise. And while I’ll confess there are times these apps get more of my attention, they are awesome tools for getting and staying in shape.

Of course, they’re not a brand new phenomenon, and in a 2011 Consumer Pulse study: Consumer Perspectives on Health and Wellness, we found 7 in 10 smartphone users interacted at least weekly with mobile fitness and diet apps. With smartphone ownership growing, the number of people using these tools has only increased, and companies are responding by bringing new and exciting additions to the mobile health (“mHealth”) app marketplace. In fact, over the next 5 years, the mHealth market is expected to grow annually by 23 percent.

There’s much more to mobile health than tracking calories and reps, and what’s truly exciting is mobile’s capacity to revolutionize how we understand and manage our health.  As Mark Curtis notes in “Your phone will know you are sick before you do,” new mobile technology—like “body hacking” will put more of our own health data literally at our fingertips. Body hacks include tools like GlucoDock, a plug in for the iPhone, allowing diabetics to track their blood sugar easily on the go; or the simple but elegant pill bottle cap that connects to a patient’s phone and alerts them when it’s time to take their meds.  Besides being extremely clever, these mobile technologies also change how we interact with those involved with our care—hospitals/providers, insurers, and pharmacies. These tools have the potential to give patients an unprecedented level of control and involvement in their own care. What was once hidden in a doctor’s files is now available to be examined by patients themselves.

Way back in 2011, we asked consumers how much they expected to communicate with their healthcare provider, insurance company, and pharmacy in the next few years. Of those who used mobile apps to perform health and wellness activities, over one-third expected their digital communication with each to increase. Well, these “next few years,” are here. Health apps are no longer restricted to physical betterment through diet and fitness; they’re helping us take control of our own health maintenance—from identifying ailments to tracking provider-patient interactions. What’s next? Look into your crystal ball, what do you wish your phone could do to make and keep you healthier?

Hilary O’Haire is an Associate Researcher at CMB. Although she enjoys working out and her RunKeeper app, a love for good food keeps her determined to eat at every Boston restaurant ever featured on a Food Network show.

Read our latest Consumer Pulse: Leveraging the Mobile Moment: Barriers and Opportunites for Mobile Wallet.

The Mobile Wallet is a hot topic for those in the retail, technology and financial services industries. As you may know, mobile wallets allow customers to pay at store checkouts with a tap or wave of their smartphones. In our recent Consumer Pulse study of 1,500 smartphone users, we learned that half are unaware of Mobile Wallets.

To drive adoption, retailers and technology providers will need to overcome a lack of awareness and fear of new technology, all while offering a clear advantage over more traditional payment methods. As shown below, loyalty programs provide a key leverage point to drive Mobile Wallet adoption.

Click to see larger version

Download our latest report on the Barriers and Opportunities for Mobile Wallet and learn more about what will drive (and block) adoption, and who has the advantage as we enter the next leg of the mobile wallet race.

Judy is VP of CMB's Travel & Entertainment practice and loves collaborating with clients on driving customer loyalty.  She's the mom of two teens and the wife of an oyster farmer. Follow Judy on Twitter at @Judy_LC

You’re about to step out your front door...

But wait just a moment! You can only take your phone or your wallet, which will it be?

Pre-smartphone there would be no contest, I’d take my wallet. But times have changed, and the balance has now tipped in favor of my beloved iPhone. Beyond checking email, I use my phone to deposit checks, see when the train is coming, read the news, record my ski stats, listen to music, and if I've also forgotten my lunch, I can use a mobile wallet app to buy a sandwich at the deli across the street.Of course there’s more to mobile wallets than the fate of my lunch, there are billions of dollars at stake for the banks, credit card companies, start-ups, tech giants and others who want to dominate, or just cash in on, the evolving relationship we have with our smartphones. In our latest Consumer Pulse, we surveyed 1,479 smartphone users about what they know about mobile wallets, what’s keeping them from using, what features they’d like to see, and who they'd trust to provide them.

First things first, half of respondents said they were familiar with mobile wallet technology (or proximity payments)—apps that let users swipe or tap their phone at the point of sale, rather than using credit cards or cash. When we asked this 50% to tell us about their experience and expectations for using mobile wallets most said they didn’t plan on adopting a mobile wallet…but nearly a quarter said they were planning to try out the technology in the next 6 months (TWEET THIS). That’s no small number considering smartphone ownership is nearly ubiquitous.

Now let’s consider our more reticent smartphone users, what’s keeping them from trying out the technology that’s already at their finger-tips? We weren’t surprised to find that security (73% called it a barrier to adoption)—particularly identity theft—was high on the list of what’s keeping people from giving up on cash and credit (TWEET THIS). The good news for mobile wallet providers is 79% said they’d be more likely to adopt if they were guaranteed 100% protection against fraud and theft. While many mobile wallet providers already offer this protection, the results show there’s a real opportunity to benefit from promoting this type of security measure (TWEET THIS).

If you’ve assuaged the fear of being scammed, stolen from, and over-charged (remember when people were afraid to shop online?) what’s next?  Aside from the novelty of scanning your phone, what’s the incentive behind using a mobile wallet over your, just as convenient, credit card? We found reward and loyalty points were very appealing, particularly when offered as additions to existing rewards people get with their credit cards—80% of non-adopters said they’d be more likely to adopt if offered these extra rewards (TWEET THIS). Of course people like rewards and points—you don’t need to be a marketer to understand that. But nearly as many (66%) said that getting the same rewards they got with their credit card would increase their likelihood to adopt—to which I say, c’mon people aim a little higher.

So yes, rewards are nice, but one of the best things about smartphones is the ability to look stuff up. Think of how many arguments have been nipped in the bud by a quick search of imdb.com or Wikipedia. That ability to find the information you want any time, any place, is just as compelling in a shopping context. Including location-based services like the ability to easily compare items in stores nearby increases likelihood to adopt among 78% of non-adopters (TWEET THIS). But we also found people were a little leery of getting too many alerts, both because they can be annoying and because they suck down battery life. Note to providers, offering people the choice of what alerts and discounts they receive could be a major draw as they decide who they’d like to provide their mobile wallet service.

The topic of mobile is rightly dominating the discussion in almost every industry, but the fact is, for most people mobile wallets are still incredibly new. Amid all the noise and growth, there’s still tremendous opportunity for providers who understand the concerns, goals, needs, and desires of the millions (billion?) of people with the technology right at their fingertips.

Download the full report and learn more about what will drive (and block) adoption, and who has the advantage as we enter the next leg of the mobile wallet race.

Megan is CMB's Product Marketing Manager, she loves Alpine Replay, and longs for the day she can unlock the front door with her phone.

Geoff Nicholson, 3M ambassador and former vice president for international technical operations, was recently quoted as saying “Six Sigma ‘killed’ innovation at 3M.” His reasoning? The Six Sigma process requires a full-blown business case and even a 5-year business plan to get a new idea off the ground and into production. The result: a company once synonymous with innovation saw its new product introductions drop and ranking as a BCG innovative company plummet from number 1 to number 7 in four years’ time.

Nicholson describes a core challenge to scaling innovation: how do you institutionalize it 

without stifling it?

Frameworks like Six Sigma and Stage Gate rely on strict “go-no-go” decisions at key junctures, based on quantified metrics such as market size, market share potential, volumes, etc. Quantifiable approaches like this work best with incremental innovations, such as line extensions or expansions into adjacent markets.

But, breakthrough innovations—the Model-T, iPod, Post-It Notes—target new-to-the-world markets and demand curves that are hard to quantify.

An alternative approach to assessing demand for a new offering is to take it through a proof-of-concept evaluation. With a small budget, a team of individuals passionate about the idea can use small-scale testing or research techniques to understand whether the idea works and if people want it. One of our clients always sets aside 15%-20% of his funds for sussing out new, big ideas in just this manner.

Without a doubt, companies seeking to innovate should try to learn rather than re-invent the wheel with each initiative. That is one reason South Street recommends clients seeking to “institutionalize” innovation do so with a playbook, rather than a process. A playbook assumes there are some generally repeatable steps at a high level, but they can be re-ordered and prioritized/de-prioritized based on management discretion and the unique nature of the opportunity or challenge addressed. This requires a deeper knowledge of different methods, deeper thought and judgment on the part of participants and more institutional agility, but it also ensures that the right tools are used at the right times. As the 3M story illustrates, instituting a one-size-fits-all process for innovation actually erodes this very capacity.

Is process killing your innovation?

Rachel Corn is a Director at  South Street Strategy Group, she specializes in finding growth opportunities in new market segments, new products and businesses and innovative business models.

South Street Strategy Group, an independent sister company of Chadwick Martin Bailey, integrates the best of strategy consulting and marketing science to develop better growth and value delivery strategies.