From internal initiatives to a client panel focusing on sustainability, Prophet continued to build internal momentum on ESG.
Prophet celebrated Earth Awareness Month with a series of events to raise internal awareness and find measurable ways to reduce our carbon footprint. Throughout the month, Prophet’s global offices held shoe and clothing drives leading to an impressive number of items (600+) being donated to local organizations to help combat the growing number of textiles ending up in U.S. landfills (85% of all discarded clothing). Offices also participated in an informative, earth-month-themed trivia event. Prophet partner, Tosson El Noshokaty hosted an internal learning session on decarbonization and how we can apply this thinking to assist our clients. Finally, the capstone event was a panel discussion on sustainability with representatives from two Prophet clients, Cool Earth and Rainforest Partnership.
Rainforest Partnership is an environmental organization working to conserve rainforests around the world. They work to create sustainable livelihoods in areas affected by deforestation, aim to increase biodiversity, and champion long-term forest protection by working directly with indigenous and local communities as guardians and economic participants. Prophet worked with Rainforest Partnership to redefine and activate new brand positioning and architecture framework.
Client Panel Recap
Hannah Peck, deputy director, Magda Pieta, partnerships manager at Cool Earth and Niyanta Spelman, Founder and CEO of Rainforest Partnership joined Prophet for a moderated conversation that focused on everyday actions that we can do impact rainforest conservationism and sustainability.
Four takeaways from the discussion:
1. Avoiding inaction in the face of the staggering size of the climate crisis is incredibly important.
“[We must] keep banging the drum and continue talking about it to get as many people on board as you can. There is no one magical thing that will fix it all. We need to make sure that we keep staying front and center in people’s attention and focus”
Magda Pieta, Cool Earth
“[We should think through] how we can be an example. Grab a glass instead of grabbing a plastic bottle. Find what is the easiest for you to start doing and incorporate it into your home”
Niyanta Spelman, Rainforest Partnership
2. Even in the face of the current odds and predictions, we can still dream big.
“Stabilizing the climate is this generations biggest challenge”
Hannah Peck, Cool Earth
“Can you imagine what we can do together? A world where 145 countries would actually write something down that they are going to end deforestation by 2030″
Niyanta Spelman, Rainforest Partnership
3. Every small change has a waterfall effect that can create real change, beyond just recycling, e.g., getting involved with World Rainforest Day or contacting local politician(s).
Let’s [drive change] together. The sum of our parts is so much larger. Everyone can be an amplifier, no matter where you are in the world, what role you play, and whomever you know”
Niyanta Spelman, Rainforest Partnership
“One thing I recently realized I could change easily is where I bank, I can choose a more ethical bank… You can also write to your local politician about something you care about in your local environment to make an impact”
Hannah Peck, Cool Earth
4. When choosing what organizations to work with or donate to, it is pivotal to choose ones that are working in partnership with individuals on the ground.
“Funding is almost always the biggest challenge for every rainforest conservation organization. The most impactful organizations are the ones that work closely on the ground. You should choose where you give money carefully and pick those that are the most impactful and work in partnership with communities”
While Earth Month may have ended, our conversations around climate and sustainability continue. We know it will take a coordinated effort between governments, institutions, businesses, and people all over the world to build a more sustainable future. Our Earth Month activities reiterated that the best way to tackle societal, economic, and environmental challenges is by working together.
Prophet has resources for helping business leaders create and implement a sustainability mindset. Learn more about our ESG offerings here.
Relentlessly relevant brands find ways to drive connection – see how social media brands are succeeding and struggling.
Each year Prophet surveys thousands of U.S. consumers about brands that are most relevant in their lives. The 2023 Relentlessly Relevant Brands report shows the brand relevance of more than 250 brands using data from those familiar with them. Analyzing the results from different perspectives yields provocative findings. This year we decided to take a close look at seven of the major social media brands on the “makes me feel inspired” survey question. Many people are impacted by social media brands in some way on a daily basis. We also decided to dissect this angle in part because the pinnacle of a brand connection is to be inspiring. We found an interesting dichotomy. The brands either fell into a clear high or low inspiring grouping.
Social Media Brands That Inspire
The high group included YouTube and TikTok, which were in the top 8%, and Pinterest was in the top 1% in the sample of 257 brands. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and WhatsApp, in sharp contrast, were in the lowest 20%.
Each brand has its own story, which is interesting and insightful. It is hard to generalize, but it seems true that the high group has coolness, momentum and a superior ability to gain engagement in competition with those in the low group. Let’s take a closer look.
The inspiration level at Pinterest is amazing and worth exploring. Why? First, it is user personalized—content relevant to a person, for example, can be pinned to their own board. There are also niche communities so that ideas can be shared around common topics. Second, the experience is visual, easy to use and inspiring. The user gets to discover high-quality images and use a search tool to find others. Third, the experience is enriched by having e-commerce opportunities embedded.
The characteristics of the other two high group members are of interest as well. TikTok has short-video content that satisfies people’s attention span and is entertaining, discoverable and sharable with the possibility that any one spot could go viral. It has a user-friendly interface with creative tools and effects to enhance and customize videos that attract top talent. YouTube is convenient, assessable, and has vast user-generated content all of which attracts content creators and audience members. It offers high-quality educational, novel, entertaining and provocative content which means every person will find something that appeals to them. The AI algorithm is advanced; you are served up content that you will like.
Social Media Brands Lacking Inspiration
The lower four brands are not judged in isolation. They can slip by simply being “not as good as” the big three. But individually they each have issues that are not easy to deal with.
Facebook has been battling negative public perception with respect to privacy and misinformation, fake news, and generally harmful or inappropriate content. This has spread into the political realm and has been amplified by polarizing attitudes. For the younger audience, the appeal of alternatives is a factor.
Twitter has a character limit that can be limiting next to alternatives and suggests a lack of content. It is associated with cyberbullying, trolling and frenetic overuse among the young. Twitter has also received critical media coverage for its acquisition by Elon Musk and his controversial views and his decision to sharply downsize the staff.
Snapchat has an interface that is harder to use than competitors. It is aimed at younger users where TikTok has made inroads. While disappearing content has plusses, it can be inconvenient especially if it is the preferred social media vehicle for a person. Their story is interesting because Snapchat was a breakthrough brand at the time of launch (almost like a fad), but other social media brands have replicated their unique features making them easily replaceable and relevant among the core user base who now tend to prefer TikTok.
Because WhatsApp was acquired by Meta, concerns about privacy, data sharing and the potential appearance of targeted advertising have become visible. It is dependent on an internet connection and requires a valid phone number, which some are uncomfortable giving up. Because of their end-to-end encryption, it can be hard to control false information. Finally, it can consume significant storage space on devices. However, even with these limitations, WhatsApp continues to be the most popular messaging app with more than 2 billion global users and may offer Meta an opportunity to reverse some of their negative in-market perceptions.
Having a brand that inspires usually means that an exceptionally strong brand relationship has been established. Inspiration is associated with having momentum in the marketplace, an engaging offering that is unique, self-expressive benefits and an absence of negatives. Want to learn more about the most relevant brands in the U.S. Download the Relentlessly Relevant Brands report today.
Winning Hearts and Minds in Financial Services: The Imperatives to Amplifying Purpose
Purpose isn’t a mere sales tactic; it’s how you forge deep trust with your organization’s stakeholders.
In a world where trust in financial institutions is being shaken up and consumers have more options than ever, organizations must tap into their purpose to assure they can be counted on for more than high-quality products and services.
Research shows that purpose-related drivers rise to the top in motivating consumer choice – especially in financial services. Prophet’s 2023 Relentlessly Relevant Brands report found that consumers are shifting to brands that spark an emotional connection—reaching beyond functional needs. And we’re not the only ones tracking this trend: IBM and the National Retail Federation found that, for the first time, more consumers are driven by purpose than by value.
But simply having a purpose does not move the needle. To effectively build trust and harness the power of purpose, organizations must amplify their purpose. It must be fully integrated into the business, showing up in key moments and being championed authentically by employees—otherwise, it’s just lip service that leaves consumers doubting that the organization truly delivers on its promises.
In our research, we found there are four key imperatives financial services organizations must work toward to effectively amplify and deliver on their purpose:
1. Have a clear and inspiring purpose.
Taking the first step means clearly defining your organization’s purpose. It should be both authentic while also being aspirational, meaningful, and engaging for all relevant stakeholders (e.g., consumers, investors, and employees). Your organization’s purpose should be clear enough that it can be used as a locus for decision-making. Once it’s clearly defined, time and resources must be invested to socialize it internally. Employees should be able to not only understand your organization’s purpose, but easily reference and use it in their daily work.
What this looks like:
Edward Jones recently made a significant investment in defining their purpose, working to create an authentic, clear, and compelling North star for their organization. Beyond just crafting an inspiring purpose statement, they Identified clear purpose impact areas to focus their work.
Edward Jones’ purpose is to “partner for positive impact by improving the lives of their clients and colleagues and bettering their communities and society.” They achieve this by focusing on three key areas: partnering for lasting financial strength, promoting healthier futures, and advancing inclusive growth.
Questions you might ask about your organization’s purpose:
Is it clearly defined?
Is it relevant to key stakeholders?
Is it clear enough to guide decision making?
Do employees know it and understand how their role contributes to delivering against it?
2. Own your purpose.
Don’t outsource purpose through philanthropy. Instead, embed it across the organization and ways of working. Leaders at all levels should be taking actionable steps to integrate your organization’s purpose into everyday operations, making it easy for employees to action against it in their daily lives. Purpose should be inherent to each project and every team, not a siloed effort or initiative.
What this looks like:
FinTech Current’s purpose is to “create better financial outcomes for more people.” They don’t just talk about it—they deliver on it through their product. Believing that legacy banks constrain consumers, Current moves consumers forward by helping them make the most of what they have, specifically by removing all fees (minimum fees, overdraft fees, transfer fees, ATM fees, etc.), expediting direct deposits and simplifying saving through Savings Pods and Round-Ups.
Questions you might ask about your organization’s purpose:
Is it being outsourced (e.g., focused on delivery through philanthropic donations alone)?
How is it being actioned against in day-to-day operations?
Are there metrics in place to measure progress as it relates to delivering on purpose?
3. Build the capabilities to deliver on your purpose.
Purpose must be engrained into your organization’s operating model, guiding each change and transformation. The operating model should be organized to hold leaders and teams accountable for delivering on purpose through incentives and business structures. Additionally, employees should be equipped with the right tools and skillsets to effectively live out the organization’s purpose.
What this looks like:
Mastercard’s purpose is “connecting everyone to priceless possibilities.” To help employees deliver on their purpose, Mastercard created a new compensation model that ties bonus calculations to the organization’s performance on purpose across three key areas: carbon neutrality, financial inclusion, and gender pay parity.
Questions you might ask about your organization’s purpose:
Are employees adequately incentivized to deliver on it?
What tools and skills are needed to equip employees to deliver on it?
Is it a central consideration in business decisions?
4. Ensure that your purpose shows up in key moments.
After establishing purpose as a foundational component to how your organization operates, it’s time for stakeholders to feel its impact. Employees, consumers, and investors should be able to experience your organization’s purpose firsthand—whether through communications, experiences or other touchpoints. When purpose shows up in key moments, internal and external stakeholders are inspired to join in, contribute and learn more.
What this looks like:
USAA’s purpose is to “empower members to achieve financial security through highly competitive products, exceptional service and trusted advice,” and “be the #1 choice for the military community and their families.” One way they bring this to life is through their annual Poppy Wall of Honor and other Memorial Day-related installations. Aligning closely with their purpose, USAA uses their Poppy Wall of Honor to help raise awareness of the true meaning of Memorial Day and provide visitors of the National Mall an opportunity to remember the service members who have died in service to our nation since World War I. Throughout the year, USAA’s Memorial Day microsite allows users to remember heroes, visit the virtual Poppy Wall and honor heroes through action.
Questions you might ask yourself:
How is it being activated with both internal and external stakeholders?
How does it show up in the moments that matter for employees, investors and consumers?
Simply put, financial services organizations must do more than just have a purpose to build trust with consumers. Recent shakeups across the Industry elevate the need for companies to put their purpose into action, amplifying it across all levels of the organization and creating a shared experience for all stakeholders alike.
Contact us to learn more about how to develop and put an authenticate purpose Into action for your organization. organization’s purpose to life and put it into action.
Creating a More Sustainable Employee Value Proposition
Purpose has power. Learn how ESG can help retain and engage your employees.
Earlier this year, Meta, Facebook’s parent company, completed its second round of layoffs in 2023, with a third wave planned for May.
Meta is not alone. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, laid off 12,000 people this year, its largest reduction ever. Amazon has eliminated 27,000 jobs. And Disney plans to reduce its total workforce by 7,000. Some experts anticipate that one out of three companies plans to cut 30% or more of their people in 2023.
Downsizing isn’t just rough on those who are laid off. Researchers found that `survivors‘ in companies with reductions experienced a 41% decline in job satisfaction, a 36% dip in organizational commitment and a 20% drop in job performance.
Yet, the talent war still rages in other areas of the economy. “In 2023, talent will become one of our top priorities,” said a large accounting firm recently.
“Our leadership focus will be on ensuring we have a clear employer value proposition, on providing the right learning culture, offering the necessary flexibility, and on leading with purpose.”
Growth in the renewable energy sector is outstripping the leadership talent pool, forcing companies into more imaginative talent strategies. Healthcare, too, faces a worsening shortage.
Regardless of whether your company is hiring or in retention mode, your Employee Value Proposition (EVP) attracts employees, gives them a reason to stay and is critically important to future growth. And some companies are sitting on a secret weapon: Their environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies.
ESG Plays a Crucial Role in Employee Engagement
While most businesses know how vital an EVP is, with 86% of human resources executives naming it a top priority in a recent study, many are missing the opportunity to include ESG policies.
ESG elements are a significant factor in employees’ decision to join, stay or leave a company:
58% of employees consider a company’s social and environmental commitments when deciding where to work.
Employees are three times more likely to stay and 1.4 times more engaged at what they consider purpose-driven organizations.
93% of employees who believe their company is making a strong positive impact on the world say they plan to stay in their jobs. Of workers who disagree with that statement, only 43% plan to remain with their employer.
And integrating ESG and goals into an organization’s EVP can also help employers gain the upper hand in acquiring and retaining Gen Z and Millennial employees.
For example, 64% of Gen Z workers say the companies they work for must act on environmental issues. For Millennials, 96% cite sustainability as a key issue, and one in four say they’d quit if they found out their company had a poor environmental record. Women, people with higher incomes and those with higher levels of education are also significantly more likely to choose ethical employers.
1. Put your ESG goals and achievements center stage
Companies can do more to communicate sustainability achievements via social media and websites, increasing visibility to current and future employees.
Starbucks anchors its EVP on the commitment to “inspire positive change in the world while you grow in your career and in your community.” One way it demonstrates that is by offering the Starbucks Greener Apron program, a partnership with Arizona State University. This program helps employees learn about global sustainability practices and create personal pledges to support them.
2. Make ESG part of the candidate’s experience
Companies can show how they bring ESG initiatives to life by connecting prospective talent with employees deeply engaged in sustainability and social programs. They can also infuse interview guides with questions that test affinity to ESG goals or dedicate time in the “pitch” materials to highlight ESG opportunities for perspectives.
Slack, for instance, focuses on how it has reworked and implemented diversity, equity and inclusion policies into the candidate experience. It started by sharing the company’s current ethnic and gender makeup and strategies for improvement.
Slack implemented some of these experiences to rework and promote more equitable hiring practices, including revising job descriptions with more inclusive phrases like “care deeply” and “build relationships,” eliminating whiteboard interviews and replacing them with blind code reviews and using co-worker role-plays for anyone conducting interviews.
3. Make your employees part of your ESG program
Organizations can mobilize initiatives to engage existing employees in contributing to ESG goals and celebrate those “from the front lines” stories, especially via social media.
Chipotle delivers its “Cultivate a Better World” EVP to employees all the time, including using more local produce in restaurants. Employee-led organizations provide millions of fresh food to local food banks. It funds fledgling Agri-Tech businesses, encourages micro-producers and helps provide meals for food-insecure members of the LGBTQIA community. It further fosters accountability by linking executives’ annual bonuses to ESG strides. This compensation plan is another way it hopes to champion responsible leadership and sustainable solutions.
ESG can become a company’s secret weapon in modernizing its EVP and revitalizing its culture, regardless of the economic climate. People want to work for companies making the world a better place, which is why infusing your EVP with your ESG strategy can help strengthen your recruitment and retention efforts.
One critical foundation of growth that IMOs typically mismanage during M&A activity is the MarTech & SalesTech infrastructure. IMOs often focus on identifying and eliminating duplication of systems and subsequent cost reduction but don’t proactively explore improvements such as tighter cross-system integrations, cleaner data or more thoughtful process automation. While these sound like minor operational factors, they can become the underpinnings of more effective customer engagement strategies, compelling user experiences and powerful upsell/cross-sell/retention initiatives.
If organizations aren’t careful, MarTech and SalesTech can fall victim to cost-focused consolidation efforts and might come out of an M&A deal tied to systems that will suffocate growth. Here’s how to spot these dangers and avoid them.
Do Not Assume Your Options are Binary
We have yet to see a sales or marketing team 100% satisfied with their existing tech stacks and workflows. After a deal, you will have to invest time and money into consolidating and migrating systems. You will also have a large pool of vendors -many of which you have great interpersonal relationships with- feeling the pressure to hold onto their accounts.
Fight the urge to pick from a subset of existing vendors. You may find yourself with a system that is only designed for half of the company, or unable to scale into the new larger enterprise. Take the time to step back and make a holistic and strategic set of choices before diving into a large migration effort. It’s better to be at the bottom of the right ladder than halfway up the wrong one. As Amber Sundell, head of demand generation at Merative, a data and technology healthcare company, puts it, “We might have fewer marketing and sales systems these days, but everyone in this space continues to feel those budget and data standardization cuts/missteps.”
Clarify Your Desired Future State and Look Backwards
Your CEO and the deal team likely won’t stop talking about this future utopia of the new combined organization. That utopia two, five, or ten years from now probably doesn’t have tech stacks designed when the two companies were operating with different intentions.
For example, lead handling systems typically put potential customers into different categories or types. What if those categories are different between the two merging companies? And what if those categories are hard-coded into all sales flows and reporting systems — how will you operate?
Or what if your organization uses Platform X for email campaign management, and the acquired firm uses Platform Y, but they both use different sets of templates and other source data to trigger the message? Is it possible to send a demand generation campaign or order confirmation message without a manual workaround?
These sorts of “differences” are assumed and understood when framing an M&A event, but rarely is there budgeting for the hard work of standardizing data taxonomies, refactoring (reducing) templates, or re-integrating systems outside of core billing. What starts as potential synergy quickly becomes invisible technical debt. Often, that debt becomes a long-term liability for the resulting Marketing or Sales Operations Teams, and it persists for years beyond the merger event.
You are Building Pipes and Plumbing, not a Funnel
If you’re not already operating in a multi-business unit enterprise, the latest acquisition might spur it, or will in the near future. There is already an invisible wall between marketing and sales on a variety of dimensions, incentives, cultures, skills, styles, etc. And as you move towards –or deeper into – a multi-BU enterprise, you’ll likely have fragmented sales teams and centralized and decentralized marketing teams. From a demand gen perspective, you need to stop thinking of lead flows as a funnel, and more like pipes and plumbing. And don’t underestimate the people risks associated with M&A activities. Sundell states, “The employees who are redistributed or leave the organization after an integration, take legacy knowledge with them. You also find yourself missing reasons why things were or were not done in a certain way.”
How do you move forward with this approach? Examine each joint and pipe and look for leaks. Measure the pressure and flow rate at each valve and faucet.
And check the temperature frequently.
Translation: Standardize data formats and integration points to make sure systems are talking and information flows correctly from one step to the next. Use reporting to capture meaningful operational metrics and KPIs for each overall process and important sub-step. And use ROI analyses with clear and simple dashboards to know when the process is working and the effort was successful.
It is said that most mergers and acquisitions fail. Many believe that it is because deals are normally predicated on growth, but the integration process is dominated by cost-related decisions. The answer is both, and most importantly, your Salestech and Martech are your biggest demand gen investments. There will be opportunities to combine stacks to lower ongoing operating expenses. But don’t lose the opportunity to step back and fully re-evaluate your platforms to maximize your demand gen efforts to support the growth of the newly combined enterprise.
Four Ways to Futureproof and Build Resilience Through Innovation in Southeast Asia
Building innovation for resilience is no longer a good to have, but a must-have for companies in Southeast Asia.
In today’s world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA), businesses continue to be challenged and their resilience tested. Innovation is increasingly crucial for enhancing resilience, yet most organizations still see tension between the two instead of the potential for a more positive business outcome. In our latest global research and report, Building Business Resilience Through Innovation, we found that the most successful organizations are using innovation to drive business resilience.
Southeast Asia (SEA), one of the world’s fastest-growing regions, faces unique challenges such as limited resources, inadequate infrastructure, and complex cultural and socio-economic contexts. Yet these constraints are also the reasons why the region is one of the most creative in problem-solving due to its frugal yet bold innovation culture. In fact, according to the Global Innovation Index 2022, SEA is one of the only regions globally closing the gap on North America and Europe in terms of innovation and has become a hotbed for tech startups and a home to a number of highly successful companies with soaring valuations.
Leading the pack is Singapore which positions itself as a hub for innovation in the SEA region. With plans to invest SG$24 billion ($18.1 billion USD) over the next three years to help local businesses build “deep, future-ready” capabilities for innovation and transformation. The country has already attracted Google, Dyson, Visa and Hyundai which have chosen to set up their APAC headquarters and innovation labs in Singapore.
Our research further unveils that several companies in SEA innovate better than many global players by leveraging diverse innovation techniques across an organization. Here are four successful innovation techniques we uncovered:
1. Embrace a Lean Startup Mentality to Drive Organization-wide Innovation
Large enterprises today possess years of built-up legacy practices and a bureaucracy that is often hard to change. A lean startup mentality allows large enterprises to operate more nimbly and flexibly, adapting to business needs or customer feedback in real time. This is achieved by organizing traditionally large innovation teams into pod-like working squads, each with the goal of building new products, testing features, and validating ideas in an agile manner. Firms in Singapore are using this tactic well and are in fact, twice as likely to use pod-like team structures / decentralized teams than in the US and UK (27% vs 13%).
For example, MB Bank, a leading bank in Vietnam, spun off a business unit when it embarked on its digital banking journey. To accelerate digital transformation, the digital bank operated much like a lean and agile startup to ramp up its digital product development process. The new digital banking model was then reverse-engineered across the legacy bank as part of the enterprise-wide transformation. Today, MB is highly regarded as one of the most innovative banks in Vietnam and has close to a thousand employees in its digital, IT and tech divisions working in pod-like structures to continuously deliver products ahead of its competition. It is therefore no surprise that MB digital banking has acquired close to 20 million retail customers today in a short period of just 3 years since its launch and is the only banking app in Apple’s Top 10 Apps two years in a row. Learn more about Prophet’s work with MB Bank.
In Singapore, DBS, one of Asia’s most digitally advanced and innovative banks, set up DBS Asia X (DAX), a collaborative innovation facility where it runs all open innovation-related initiatives, supported by partners, startups, and its other innovation teams such as DBS Ventures and DBS Xchange. Separate from its headquarters in the central business district, employees and external resources in this facility work in pod-like teams with startup mentalities to design and deliver digital products that help DBS remain one of the top digital banks in the world.
Takeaway: Large traditional organizations must break down the walls of bureaucracy, and function like startups to stay agile and ahead of the innovation curve.
2. Leverage Open Innovation to Expand Innovation Horizons
Open innovation is an approach that involves working with external partners to generate and implement new ideas. Instead of relying solely on internal resources, companies engage with a variety of external stakeholders, such as customers, suppliers, universities, startups, and other companies, to develop new products, services and processes. Our research shows that organizations in Singapore are more likely to have formal innovation incubation programs than in the West (35% vs 15%).
Singapore’s government remains one of the most innovative countries in its “Smart Nation” endeavor and continues to lead by example when it comes to open innovation. The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), a part of Singapore’s Ministry of Communications and Information, promotes open innovation through its Open Innovation Platform which offers co-funding support for prototyping and deployment of ideas from the public.
Across Singapore and Hong Kong, DBS has also been running several pre-accelerator programs, which allows them to stay connected with new, emerging fintech; resulting in new mobile features such as conversational banking, which is a combination of AI technologies from fintech startups such as Moneythor, V-Key and Kasisto.
The Malaysia-based airline, AirAsia, established Redbeat Ventures to expand its offerings beyond flights to include other travel-related products, such as hotels and travel insurance. The company also organized hackathons to generate ideas and solutions for specific challenges, inviting employees, customers and external partners to participate and providing resources and support to help teams prototype and test their ideas.
Takeaway: Organizations should adopt open innovation and increased collaboration as a strategic approach to tap into the expertise of external partners and stakeholders, and drive innovation, growth, and competitive advantage.
3. Adopt Design Thinking to build and meet dynamic consumer needs
Many innovation initiatives fail due to a lack of structure and process when developing new services and products. This is where design thinking comes in. It is a powerful tool for fostering innovation by understanding user needs, questioning existing assumptions, reframing problems, and generating pioneering solutions that can be prototyped and tested. Design thinking methods are well implemented by firms, especially in Singapore, and twice as likely to use this tactic for innovation as compared to the West (39% vs 23%).
CP Group, a Thai conglomerate with operations in agribusiness, retail, and telecommunications, embraced design thinking boldly when they set up True Digital Academy in partnership with the US-based design thinking institute, General Assembly. The Academy doubles down on the adoption of design thinking for innovating new products and services to meet shifting consumer needs. In fact, CP group’s newly launched line of high-protein instant noodles targeted at health-conscious consumers, and a plant-based brand, MEAT-ZERO is the result of the new design thinking approach. The Group’s ambition is to make MEAT-ZERO one of the top three alternative meat brands in the world by 2026.
Unilever is another example of a company that leverages design thinking to drive innovation in its target markets and has succeeded in being the first in market for many of its hair care products. In recent years, the proportion of Indonesian women wearing the hijab has grown significantly (~ 20% since 2018). In response, Unilever began increasing efforts to innovate hair care via design thinking frameworks to better serve this target segment, by taking into consideration the human truths such as pain points and needs of the hair care routine across various hijaber personas. By leveraging design thinking, Unilever can better serve the ever-changing needs of its target markets and customers.
Takeaway: The use of design thinking to innovate and adapt to shifting consumer needs and market trends, coupled with a long-term commitment to innovation, is a key driver of business resilience and growth.
4. Leverage Scenario Planning to Stay Future Proof
In the wake of increased economic unpredictability and global instability, scenario planning has become more important than ever. Scenario planning allows organizations to prepare for potential future events or unforeseen market changes. For example, DBS Bank used scenario planning to anticipate the impact of digital disruption on the banking industry and developed a digital transformation roadmap to stay ahead of the curve. It also developed a “Future of Work” scenario to anticipate how work and workplaces may change in the future and are using the scenario to inform their HR policies and strategies.
Elsewhere in Singapore, Keppel Corporation assessed multiple challenges such as overcapacity, low oil prices, prolonged downturn and increased competition from China. With scenario planning, Keppel developed the “2030 Energy Scenario” assessment which involved solutions such as diversifying their business into areas such as renewables and data centers to reduce their dependence on the oil and gas industry.
Takeaway: To future-proof their business, organizations must incorporate scenario planning into their strategy development process to identify potential risks and opportunities to develop contingency plans to mitigate risks.
Forward thinking companies in SEA are leveraging multiple techniques in tandem to stay ahead, de-risk their business, and win against competitors. Innovation, however, doesn’t start and end within the company – tapping into both internal and external resources and expertise can be crucial, especially during this period of VUCA. Building innovation for resilience is no longer a nice to have, but a must-have for all organizations. Embracing an innovation culture and integrating an innovative way of life takes time and patience. Most importantly, organizations need to foster the right innovation approach and tools in a structured manner to achieve the desired goals and results.
3 Ways to Transform Customer Engagement for the Future of Medtech
Customer engagement models are essential to maintain a thriving business, learn how Medtech firms can get theirs fit for purpose.
For a long time, the customer relationship between MedTech companies and healthcare professionals (HCPs), as well as healthcare providers (HPs), has been changing. The Medtech industry, like many others in the past couple of years, has been faced with an acceleration of nascent changes such as digital transformation and an increase in customer expectations – causing trends to solidify and become the new normal. Now, with basic assumptions around interactions and relationship building fundamentally altered, traditional customer engagement models can no longer deliver against their ambition for the future. We have witnessed different approaches by Medtech companies, some learning from inside and others from outside the healthcare space, to rethink their approach to customer engagement and how to make it more future fit.
Based on our experience, we have identified three crucial ways to transform customer engagement strategies so businesses can succeed in this new world of Medtech.
Hybrid Engagement with a Purpose
COVID-19 has permanently changed how the healthcare system works, forcing Medtech to quickly shift to remote engagements and digitize offline processes. Now, that the pandemic is more under control, it is apparent that there is no way back. Today’s customer engagement preferences have changed.
So, what does this mean for Medtech moving forward?
Medtech needs to engage with customers in a blended way – balancing the online and offline worlds – making permanent use of remote channels while at the same time recognizing the points at which a more human interaction makes a difference. In-person interactions remain a valid and irreplaceable tool at various points in the customer journey, but Medtech companies need to be targeted and purposeful in which types of interactions they favor for this and leveraging virtual interactions and multi-channel where relevant and feasible.
How to achieve a more hybrid engagement model?
Shift your mindset from sales to customer: One crucial element in our work in this space is about the organizational mindset shift – from a sales funnel mindset that focuses on closing the “deal”, to more of a customer journey mindset, where building longer-term relationships is of higher priority. The closing of a sale no longer marks the end of the journey, it is only one additional step in the MedTech-HCP/HP relationship.
Adapt engagement approach to customer type and journey stage: Different customer groups have different needs and preferences at different stages of the customer journey – understanding the journey both from a funnel perspective (awareness to conversion to loyalty/recommendation), but also from a touch point perspective (I.e. which touchpoints does a customer use across their journey). For instance, a hospital’s procurement lead will have different engagement needs than a physician who owns a single practice. Vivantes, the biggest hospital system in Germany, has different needs than a rural doctor. Understanding these needs and preferences is key to identifying which type of interaction adds the most value at each point along the customer journey.
Capture individual customer preferences: Medtech should focus on customer preferences and align with them where possible. Accurate tagging in CRM systems helps paint a stronger picture of customer understanding and personalization. It is important that this knowledge is shared within the Medtech organization so that all stakeholders act upon it accordingly (sales reps from different divisions, marketing, etc).
Ensure engagement and experiences align seamlessly: Individual high-quality interactions are relevant but diminished if a customer feels that follow-on connections are disjointed. A set of well-orchestrated interactions across the journey can improve the overall customer experience. MedTech organizations should work towards ensuring sales and marketing have a holistic view of the customer and follow through on the captured learnings.
Optimized Interactions in the Virtual Space
The pandemic has forced many to embrace tools they weren’t previously comfortable with, and these changes are permanent. The use of online tools has grown – and HCPs are using online information sources more than ever. The key benefits of more digital interactions are around convenience – research shows aspects such as flexibility of timing, less travel, less impact on workload and a more extensive selection of webinars instead of conferences. But purely digital interactions also have their shortcomings: loss of personal relationships with the sales reps, inability to network and overall, less engagement between reps and their customers. The focus should be on optimizing virtual interactions and reducing these drawbacks.
With so many competing demands on attention, nurturing and managing leads with targeted engagement is even more relevant in categories where the typical product lifespan is longer, given fewer windows of opportunity to sell the product. And digital channels allow for much more customized and recurrent interactions that permit Medtech to stay within the relevant consideration set.
Excellence in virtual events is driven by recognizing where efforts should be refocused when designing the experience. The key is to ensure virtual interactions are optimized to take advantage of the technologies used to engage customers, rather than be seen as a lesser alternative to in-person interaction. How can that be done?
Update and optimize content online: While online sessions are usually seen as more convenient, it is also harder to keep the participants engaged and focused. Digitizing content used in offline interactions was the first step many Medtechs took – and quickly found that this was not sufficient. The content needs to be fully adapted to fit different channels and delivery mechanisms, in terms of level of detail, structure etc.
Use data and insights to underpin decisions: One benefit of digital is its measurability. Data and insights need to be used to ‘test and learn’ when selecting and enhancing channels, content and delivery methods. Establishing the right KPIs and monitoring them is key. Virtual interactions provide an excellent opportunity to collect further customer insights, which can help inform both future remote and in-person interactions.
Reimagine interactions to facilitate discussion: Oftentimes, virtual interactions don’t provide the same opportunities for participants to connect with peers and share experiences. Duplicating offline approaches into an online channel does not work, and MedTechs need to refocus their activities accordingly. Optimized virtual events prioritize connection and community elements while reducing the relevance of purely communicational elements.
Content is King (even more than before)
Customers are looking for convenient ways to educate themselves on specific topics. An individual Medtech’s authority in specific fields can make them a trusted source to provide education or even build connections in a non-commercial way. But they are not alone in this endeavor, and companies are feeling the pressure to deliver high-quality, relevant digital content like never before. While not all companies can keep up with the accelerated pace of content creation, Prophet’s Altimeter colleagues found that those that are successful in meeting this demand have implemented an “Agile Content System.” For many Medtechs in particular, and healthcare companies in general, internal compliance processes are a key obstacle to timely content creation, but there are simple ways to improve this:
Ensure technology and workflows are working to streamline approval processes: Approval and compliance processes need to be structured in a way that allows for speedy, efficient publishing. In healthcare specifically, reviews by multiple stakeholder groups such as the ethics boards, legal teams and subject matter experts can slow down the approval process significantly. A modular content creation approach can help, as well as clearer content ownership and roles.
Restructure content teams for greater agility: A centralized content team does not necessarily work for all Medtech firms. Depending on the key objective and business need (i.e. brand awareness building vs demand/revenue generation), the ideal structure should be set up but it’s essential they work together on a shared agenda. Our research shows that the most effective organizations balance both brand and demand.
Set bolder, clearer goals that go beyond brand: Oftentimes, Medtech organizations are focused on content to drive brand awareness. With the changing preferences of their customers, there is a need to revise this approach. This shift in thought leadership (i.e. Siemens Healthineers Insights series or their Healthcare Challenges podcast), also requires a review of the KPIs to ensure the correct content metrics are being tracked and reported on.
Customer engagement is a critical aspect of any business, and this is no exception in the Medtech industry. The complex ecosystem and the diversity of customers do not make this an easy task for Medtech organizations, but there are strategies that can help to transform and succeed in this new world of customer engagement, enabling Medtechs to become the customer’s first choice of engagement.
Bringing Trust Back to Barclays: When a Strong Social Purpose Pays Off
Not all brands create purpose-led products. Winning in the purpose era sometimes means using branded signature social programs.
There is a general acceptance that an organization’s effective social effort should also boost business, but many suggest that the route to winning in the purpose era is by directly helping society through efforts like manufacturing wind turbines, distributing healthy food or saving costs from reduced energy use. The problem is that few companies make wind turbines or offer organic food, and energy use goals over time become less and less dramatic in part because incremental progress gets harder.
An alternative is to use branded signature social programs, whether internal or through a partnership with an external nonprofit, to advance the brand driving the business by providing energy and visibility, an image lift, and engagement opportunities for employees and other stakeholders.
A reasonable question that comes to mind—can a signature program truly help a business that may not be closely related to the program? There is research in psychology and elsewhere that supports the belief that elements of an admired social program can affect the perception and liking for the sponsoring brand. However, more definitive and rare evidence comes from brands that have demonstrated the impact of a signature social program on a brand in the field. An example is Barclays, that conducted what is termed a “before-after: experiment,” where relevant measures such as perceived trust are taken before the “treatment,” in this case the communication of stories around new social programs and compared to those same measures after.
Barclays is a role model for how to use branded signature social programs to regain trust, a key brand dimension in the financial services industry. The Barclays brand was damaged by the 2008 financial crisis with accusations that Barclays had manipulated key interest rates. In 2012, the trust level for Barclays in the United Kingdom was well below that of its competitors despite several years of PR and advertising arguing that the “new” Barclays should be trusted. It is not a stretch to conclude that Barclays was one of the least trusted brands in a heavily mistrusted sector in the U.K., Needing a restart, Barclays created a new brand purpose: “Helping people achieve their ambitions—in the right way.”
The 140,000-employee base was encouraged to create programs responsive to the new purpose. Dozens of programs emerged. The Digital Eagles was created by a 17-person employee group (a decade later the team had grown to 17,000 employees) with a mission to teach the public, especially the older cohort, about surviving and even thriving in the digital world. Stories about how the Digital Eagles and other programs affected real people helped shine a light on the social purpose initiatives at Barclays.
One story featured Steve Rich, a sports development officer, who had lost his ability to play football (soccer to Americans) because of a car accident. However, he could participate in “walking football”—usually played with a six-person team on a small field with no running—and again experience the joy of the sport. Wanting to help others do the same, he decided to raise awareness of walking football and turn it into a nationwide game in Britain. With the help of the Digital Eagles, Rich created a website that linked over 400 teams across the country and connected individuals with teams. It was partly responsible for the growing interest the sport has generated, the emergence of a national tournament, and the ability of people to connect with former football mates. His accomplishments and personal regeneration are inspiring indeed.
Employees were inspired and energized by the programs driven by Barclay’s new higher purpose. And customers and prospective customers changed their perceptions of the brand (as reported by the Edelman Financial Trust Barometer for 2014 summarized in the WARC Study noted above). Two years after the emergence of the signature stories, such as those involving the Digital Eagles, trust in Barclays was up 33%, consideration was up 130%, the emotional connection was up 35% (versus 5% for the category average) and “reassurance that your finances are secure” was up 46%. The new campaign drove six times as much change in trust and five times as much change in consideration as the descriptive “this is the new Barclays” campaign that preceded it. In addition, Barclays received 5,000 positive mentions in the press.
Barclays vividly demonstrates that a signature social program such as the Digital Eagles can lift a brand and is uniquely capable of doing so. There is little doubt that a sharp increase in trust and consideration means an increase in loyalty and even the size of the customer base. Barclays explicitly observes in the 2021 Barclays PLC Strategic Report that offering a complete menu of services to customers is dependent on the earned trust attached to the Barclays brand. The further implication is the Digital Eagles will be supported over decades because its impact on the Barclays brand makes the program a business asset.
In the purpose era, trust is an even more valued attribute and, when lost, it is hard to earn back. Barclays demonstrates that communicating different intentions and programs does not move the trust needle. But the right social purpose and program such as the Digital Eagles told with emotional stories can climb the hill.
Future Back Planning: Maximizing Future Growth Opportunities
Future back planning is key to unlocking uncommon growth during times of economic uncertainty.
Future back planning is key to unlocking uncommon growth during times of economic uncertainty.
In our latest global research report, Building Business Resilience Through Innovation, we found that a leading barrier to increasing innovation efforts is that the organization lacks a long-term planning process. Unfortunately for many companies, this has only worsened in the last few years as reactive thinking characterized by the pandemic era.
As innovation leaders emerge from this reactive phase and begin to chart out the next few years of growth during a time of great economic uncertainty, it is essential to create a growth strategy that spans these three-time horizons.
Across these horizons, there is an inverse relationship between the investment in resources and the investment in strategic decisions. Running the business of today is resource intensive and requires operating with excellence with much less space for strategic exploration. In contrast, exploring the business’ target destination over the next five to ten years within a wide open divergence environment is time intensive. Due to the scarcity of resources, it often requires time-bound investment to collect data on the most relevant drivers of change, model potential scenarios that could unfold over time, and based on that, determine what new opportunities are worth further validation and investment.
In Horizon 1, the existing value chain is used to optimize and scale the business, but in Horizon 3, the needed value chain will most likely be adjacent to today’s value chain. The inversion point of building the new value chain is challenging to manage because resources are ramping up as the ability to make strategic decisions is fading. At this point, the skills required to be successful change. It is operationally complex to get something to move through the inversion curve.
If a business neglects Horizon 3 activities today, it sets itself up to be leapfrogged by the competition because it will not have invested in the assets and capabilities needed to act on emerging opportunities.
Future Back Helps Companies Maximize Growth Opportunities in Horizon 3
While it is impossible to predict the future, market leaders and makers proactively anticipate preferred and disruptive future scenarios. The first step is understanding the most impactful drivers of change that will shape the future market landscape. Drivers of change come from a range of sources: the classic Porter’s Five Forces of suppliers, buyers, new entrants, substitutes and competitors that determine industry profitability, as well as macro-forces that are broader than industry boundaries, often categorized as social, technological, economic, environmental, and regulatory drivers (STEER).
From doing future back work across industries, we have found three non-mutually exclusive factors that help us see around corners. Across these factors, emerging technology is critical in reshaping societal norms, enabling new interaction modes, and determining future profitability and competitive advantage sources.
3 Non-MECE Factors that Shape the Future Market Landscape
1. The Overton Window describes the range of policies that are accepted by the mainstream at a given time and can be used to identify ideas on the threshold of gaining mainstream acceptance. For example, over the last 50 years, public acceptance of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) has rapidly increased as the availability of IVF technology has also grown. In 2021, fertility support startups raised $345M, up 35% from the previous year. Health systems and payors that anticipated this shift ten years ago were able to differentiate themselves within a rapidly growing market. However, with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, societal progress regarding IVF is now under threat. Industries heavily funded by the government, such as healthcare and clean energy, are also strongly shaped by changing societal norms.
2. Behavioral shifts often emerge due to technological advancements that make it easier to do more with less or create new modes of interaction between humans and machines. For example, Figma’s significant innovation was being browser-first, with the ability to edit files in real-time in the cloud, allowing teams of developers, designers, and product managers to collaborate in one place efficiently.
Adobe was late to the game of browser-first collaboration and, as a result, paid $20 billion to acquire Figma, which had roughly $400M in revenues at the time. The steep price was considered a solid investment given the future value of Figma’s product spaces. Thinking more broadly, technological advancements across the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, artificial and virtual reality, and autonomous machines will enormously impact behavior and interaction modes, changing how we learn, work, collaborate and entertain ourselves.
3. Business model shifts are often required to capitalize on or meet emerging technology demands, regulation, the economic environment, and ESG agendas. For example, Fundrise was the first company to crowdfund real estate investment successfully, and the founders did it by seeking the expertise of regulators from the beginning. Working with a former regulator, Ben Miller figured out how to use Regulation A to raise money from non-accredited investors, which was the first time anyone had ever done. Eventually, the regulation changed to Regulation A+, which allowed the company to raise more equity from non-accredited investors while streamlining the filing process. Still, at that point, Fundrise was already the category leader in a new market.
Four Questions to Determine a Company’s Options within the Future Market Landscape
Once we understand the most impactful drivers of change, the next step is modeling the most viable opportunities for a specific company to pursue. We begin with four questions:
1. How is a company encumbered and advantaged?
This includes understanding a company’s options based on its funding and regulatory moats. Firms funded by unregulated capital have an entirely different set of options than firms funded by regulated capital. A venture capital-funded firm can take on much higher fixed costs to stand up a new capability without a near-term path to profitability. For example, the data cloud company Snowflake raised $2.1B over eleven rounds of funding since 2012 and isn’t expected to reach profitability until 2023.
On the other hand, an advantage of being a large, publicly traded company is that it is easier to find suppliers and partners to test and validate Horizon 3 growth hypotheses with and bring new offerings to market. Along with understanding the implications of funding sources, it’s essential to know where margins come from today – is it from hardware, software, or services? Who has the most power in the value chain to extract more margin over time? What parts of a company’s existing product line, assets, and capabilities might serve as a moat? Does it have access to a rare resource on the supply side or a lock-in effect on the consumer side? Finally, is there a regulatory moat that will make it difficult to unseat an incumbent?
2. Who has the preferred position in the market to launch and scale this idea?
The most critical mindset of future back work is humility. We always assume that another player is better set up to execute an idea. The big four (Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta/ Facebook) dominate their innovation ecosystems due to their scale, network effects, and ability to buy entire markets. Firms operating within these ecosystems are often unlikely to win share-of-wallet among end consumers and are much more likely to succeed by playing a critical infrastructure or support role. We look at the role of aggregators and integrators in the innovation ecosystem to understand how parts of the market are consolidating and where technology is being abstracted away from the end user.
3. Who is the player that can shut this idea down?
As Archimedes said, “The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.” In highly regulated industries such as financial services and healthcare, a significant source of Horizon 3 growth is creating new business models based on the changing regulatory landscape. Like the Fundrise example, the founder of Coinbase realized that abiding by U.S. law rather than moving offshore could act as a long-term defendable moat for the company. With the collapse of FTX, that bet has already paid off.
4. What has prevented this idea from being launched and adopted before?
Is the idea on the threshold of becoming mainstream? Is there a consumer experience problem or a price-to-value problem? Or does capital not think it’s worth an investment? The inevitable endpoint of markets is to solve consumer problems rather than business and technical problems. Enterprise capital is good at solving Horizon 1 business problems, such as increasing conversion in existing channels, creating efficiencies, and increasing margins.
On the other hand, venture capital is good at investing in long-plays that create new consumer markets because it has a risk appetite and is willing to be too early. Too early might mean taking on the cost of educating the market about a problem that they should have realized could be solved. For example, Netflix was loved for eliminating late fees (a consumer problem previously considered unavoidable in a physical rental market). Still, the company was perceived as shifting to a digital-first business model too quickly. Success in bridging the gap between its Horizon 3 digital-first business and its Horizon 1 DVD rental business required subsidizing the price of the new service for end consumers.
The Mindset We Bring to Future Back Work
The future back process combines design methodology (outside-in and hypothesis-led) with business rigor (commercial opportunity assessment with an asset-forward view of value-chain adjacencies and potential competitive moats).
The mindset we apply to this work draws from design and consulting. We’ve distilled it into three design principles:
Humble
We begin this work by assuming that another player has a better solution as well as a preferred position in the market.
Anti-fragile
We create a durable portfolio of growth moves in order to hedge our bets, with the understanding that it is impossible to know exactly how the market will reshape over time.
Effective collaboration
You need to keep running the business of today while exploring what your business might be in the future. At the same time, your hypotheses around how the market might shift and what options are most attractive for your company are the entry point into this work. We design future back engagements to extract maximum input in the most time-efficient way by starting with stakeholder hypotheses, bringing in external experts to identify new opportunities and threats quickly, and then designing workshops and executive communications that bring your team along the right way at the right time.
The Outcomes We Achieve Through Future Back Work
There are three main outcomes that we have consistently achieved through this work:
Board-level alignment and buy-in on a future vision. For example, supporting the approval of a board-level, multi-hundred-million-dollar M&A strategy in order to create an entirely new product category.
Driving capital allocation for new business building. For example, on a recent project, this work led to a $5 billion acquisition as the centerpiece of a new business unit.
Updating the product roadmap to transition from now and near-term investments to decisions that will drive the next horizon of the business.
We would love to do this work with you. If you already have hypotheses on the future of your business, we can dive into a Future Back project to explore, validate, design and quantify those opportunities. If you know that your company needs a Horizon 3 growth strategy, but your leadership team isn’t bought in, we have interim steps to drive alignment among stakeholders while collecting initial hypotheses on potential sources of long-term growth.
Interested in maximizing your future growth opportunities? Please get in touch.
The next M&A banking wave may be upon us. What can be learned from past integrations where brand was left in a suboptimal place?
While there is no crystal ball, slow economic growth and an inverted yield curve continue as headwinds for the banking industry. Both have already exposed vulnerabilities of large regional banks like Silicon Valley and Signature Bank, as well as G-SIBs such as UBS and Credit Suisse. While the speculated wave of consolidation may be overblown, there will no doubt be M&A activity during the foreseeable, uncertain future.
HBR continues to cite that between 70-90% of acquisitions fail. In addition, MIT Sloan studied 200+ M&As with values exceeding $250M during a 10+ year period starting in 1995 and learned that in nearly two-thirds of those deals, brand strategy was deemed to have a low to moderate influence in pre-merger discussions. This approach leads to the new identity or identities post-merger in a suboptimal place with limited clarity and often stems from a gap in brand expertise during the M&A process and following.
Specifically, we see five common mistakes related to brand that hinders speculated growth performance and increase costs during and post-acquisition:
The deal strategy undervalues customer upside and risks: To complete a fully informed financial forecast, due diligence must quantify current and future demand, change tolerance and emerging customer requirements.
There is limited understanding of purchased brand assets: For a truly shared optimized portfolio post M&A, companies must understand how all brand assets work to drive choice, revenue, and pricing power.
Integration teams have a narrow framing as primarily a “re-branding” effort: M&A presents a rare, point-in-time opportunity to articulate a new corporate narrative, upgrade customer perceptions and drive lasting cultural change within the organization.
Integration planning without a go-to-market plan to win: Integration priorities should pair synergy plans with growth moves: product, service and experience innovation to drive growth through the new asset base.
The new enterprise under-leverages culture and employee engagement: Successfully informing, engaging and enabling employees BEFORE launching externally is critical to retaining human capital and driving cultural engagement.
As inevitable market forces drive sustained or increased M&A in the banking industry, new and exciting opportunities emerge. Here are three practical things to consider that relate to your brand (and business) during M&A:
Consider customer context early and often: Ensure all functional discussions include conversations around customer impact and set a precedent that addressing the customer impact and experience is a priority. This is especially true at retail banks, often built around specialized customer focuses or geographic footprints with entrenched identities.
Evaluate the value and values of brand assets to guide the right transition plan: Typically, fewer stronger brands win out in banking. While long-term efficiencies exist for consolidating brands, careful work must be done to explore different end-states and migration scenarios. Perform the right evaluation ahead not just to understand the brand’s value, but also the inherent values the brand holds, and the customer perception to guide the right transition plan in context.
Discover or rediscover purpose and power it through culture from within: Banking consolidation done wrong can feel like a mismatched transformer coming together with messy operating model discussions and integration cadences that unfold over time. This can be especially distancing for distributed employees working in branches or regional offices closest to the customer. Investing early in the process to better understand and sharpen a combined new culture with a more meaningful purpose can serve as a North Star for smoother and more engaged integration.
Despite certain leading indicators, it will be hard to predict exactly what will happen with M&A in the banking sector. However, we can learn from the past in some capacity through the diligence and integration process to better predict the future, learning about the importance of brand as a critical consideration in the process.
For more information on capturing greater brand and marketing value through M&A, please contact us today.
Connecting the Dots Between Innovation and Resilience: 4 Learnings for Companies in China
Companies in China believe innovation and resilience are connected but they experience strong tension. Read more on how to overcome barriers.
Investing in both innovation and organizational resilience are two essential elements of success for companies to compete in today’s rapidly changing world. Through interviews with 14 senior executives and surveying 300+ innovation experts across the globe, Prophet’s latest research explores how successful organizations use innovation to drive business resilience.
Four Learnings for Companies in China to Build Innovative Organizations
Our findings reveal that innovative companies are more likely to be resilient. Particularly, 60% of respondents in China agree that innovation and resilience are connected, more so than their counterparts in Singapore (48%), the U.S. (47%) and the UK (47%). However, there exists a strong tension between the two characteristics – while Chinese companies on average deploy more innovation tactics compared to companies globally, they also face more pronounced barriers. In this article, we share our key findings and explore implications for Chinese businesses seeking to drive sustainable growth through innovation.
1. Prioritize Cross-Functional Alignment
Incubation programs and pod-like team structures have long proven to be effective innovation tactics and are widely adopted by companies in China. According to our research, 35% of Chinese respondents report that their companies have a formal innovation incubation program compared to 21% of respondents globally. Additionally, 27% of Chinese respondents report their companies use pod-like team structures vs. just 18% of respondents globally. However, such team structures risk becoming siloed. A lack of cross-functional alignment remains a significant barrier to innovation and growth, with 44% of Chinese respondents citing it as a challenge compared to only 32% globally.
One example of how cross-functional alignment can impact innovation comes from the fast-growing beverage brand Chi Forest. As a startup, the company found tremendous success through operational agility, running pod-like teams with product managers in each team leading individual innovation initiatives. However, as Chi Forest grew, organizational inefficiencies emerged due to a lack of streamlined workflows and cross-functional collaboration, causing an overlap of roles and processes. Chi Forest has embarked on an organization-wide transformation agenda to reimagine its operation and business model.
Takeaway: It is important to implement innovation incubation programs and pod-like team structures, while also emphasizing cross-functional alignment.
Incentives are a crucial part of driving innovation, but overly focusing on short-term financial outcomes can hinder success. Our findings show that 56% of Chinese respondents report their companies to have special incentive structures for new business opportunities compared to 30% globally. Yet this has also led to an innovation barrier, where 54% of Chinese respondents say their companies have too much emphasis on short-term financial results compared to 35% globally.
To empower long-term growth for the company, innovation success should be measured against various objectives beyond financial ROI. For example, Xiaomi has a series of incentive programs to encourage innovation, including an Annual Technology Award that rewards $1 million to an internal engineering project every year, evaluating technology and engineering excellence as well as business impact. The 2022 winner, Xiaomi’s CyberDog team, impressed CEO Lei Jun because the project successfully integrated many of the group’s R&D results and presented new technologies that could be soon applied to other core products. This is a good example of how incentives can be used effectively to drive impactful innovation.
On the other hand, companies like Pop Mart are facing growing pains. Although the company offers generous incentives, it measures innovation success solely on the creation of new product lines and their short-term sales volumes. As a result, the toy maker is left with a bloated portfolio and hasn’t been able to elevate its brand equity despite years of exponential growth.
Takeaway: To avoid pitfalls, organizations must develop incentive structures to recognize results, while avoiding overly focusing on short-term financial outcomes.
3. Guide Rapid Innovation Cycles with Long-Term Vision
Rapid prototyping and iteration is a common innovation tactic, but past innovation failures and a lack of long-term planning processes can discourage innovation. Our findings show that 31% of respondents in China say their companies use rapid prototyping and iteration compared to just 19% of respondents globally. However, failed past attempts at innovation have limited commitment to future innovation for 40% of Chinese companies compared to 28% globally. Additionally, 40% of Chinese respondents say their companies lack a long-term planning process compared to 38% globally.
Shiseido’s approach to innovation is a great example of how companies can balance a strong brand vision and rapid innovation cycles. “Shiseido’s ability to have lasting success is in large part due to our dedication to creating the best quality products to meet consumer needs. This dedication to ‘craftsmanship’ is why we don’t blindly follow market trends but rather think critically about how we can further refine our products,” said Carol Zhou, SVP of China Business Innovations & Investments at Shiseido, in an interview with Prophet, “Although we may not always be at the forefront of trends, we have found the right pace to create a timeless brand.”
Takeaway: Organizations should lead innovations with a clear vision and long-term planning, while enabling rapid prototyping and iteration based on a clear strategic roadmap, to create products that meet both long-term and short-term goals.
4. Focus on Customer Insights as a Foundation of Innovation
Creating differentiating innovations and finding emergent subcategories are effective ways to separate yourself from competitors, but paying too much attention to competitors and too little attention to customer needs is a surprisingly common mishap, according to our research. Chinese companies tend to focus heavily on competitor activity, with 40% doing so compared to 29% globally. This is often at the expense of paying attention to the needs of their customers, with 52% of Chinese respondents reporting that a major barrier to innovation for their companies is paying too little attention to customer needs, compared to 37% globally.
Companies must develop an organizational-wide mindset of diving into customer insights, data analysis, and user testing to identify what customers truly need and want. By doing so, they can create innovative products and services that truly differentiate them from their competitors, making them stand out in the market. Nike has been successful in this regard, with a strong focus on the athlete and understanding their needs driving their innovations. As Mark Parker, CEO of Nike, explains, “Our success has been based on our commitment to innovation and great design, which really in our case starts with our commitment to the athlete – and really understanding the athlete and the insights we get from that relationship. So, we translate those insights into real innovation.” In China, Nike actively deploys a localized digital ecosystem to engage with its customers and understand their needs. In turn, the rich data gathered from these digital platforms continuously fuels its innovation and growth.
Takeaway: Prioritize a human-centered approach that focuses on customer needs to create truly meaningful innovations.
Building Innovative Organizations
Indeed, innovation is not a department, but a collective achievement of an organization, as one innovation leader has told us. Companies should lead with a vision, encourage risk-taking, experimentation, and collaboration across all levels of the organization. This will help to create an environment where innovation can thrive and become ingrained in the company’s DNA.
What can your company do today to turbocharge innovation?
Emphasize the importance of always-on consumer insights and deploy the right team and structure as enablement.
Ensure a holistic view of the market demand landscape, covering both consumers and competition and strategize growth moves and innovation efforts.
Build a multi-year roadmap with different chapters and cross-functional teams and land the detailed action plan in a short-term/ one-year plan.
Clarify how innovation initiatives drive business purpose, develop employee value propositions and define incentives accordingly.
Transform how your innovation team works within your organization to instill agility and collaboration.
Innovation and organizational resilience go hand-in-hand. Combined with investing in diverse innovation tactics, driving C-suite buy-in, and creating an organizational-wide innovation culture, businesses are more likely to be innovative and resilient, and become more likely to have greater financial success.
Our research shows that Chinese companies excel in deploying innovation tactics compared to companies globally, however they also under-invest in building long-term resilience. It is crucial for them to close this gap in order to drive transformative growth that’s meaningful and sustainable.
Prophet’s verbal experts share their POV on four trends we anticipate for AI and its future role in content development.
AI takeovers have long been our dystopian fantasy. Except we imagined something more apocalyptic, with explosions, volcanic skies and scarce resources, and the whole thing would be directed by Michael Bay. To our imagination’s dismay, the integration of AI into daily life has been pretty drama-free, taking on tedious tasks like filling in payment details, scheduling, and drafting texts.
But when ChatGPT showed up, boasting its domination over the written word, writers had questions:
What will happen to our jobs? What about the sanctity of writing as a labor of love? Is writing really writing if it’s developed by AI?
While it’s fair to believe AI is overstepping, we also know this is just the beginning. With so much technology of the future already in motion, we can’t deny that a new era for writing, communicating, and knowledge sharing has arrived. Sure, it will take some getting used to, but we’re starting to come around to the possibilities AI presents for writers.
Kevin Kelly, founding executive editor of Wired magazine and author of The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 technological forces that will shape our future writes: “This is not a race against the machines. If we race against them, we lose. This is a race with machines. You’ll be paid in the future based on how well you work with robots … It is inevitable. Let the robots take our jobs and let them help us dream up new work that matters.”
Let’s not forget, we’ve been in this situation before: just like typewriters made way for laptops, and typing made way for audio recording, ML and AI will surely help professional writers become more prolific, discerning, and original over time. It might even help aspiring writers gain the confidence they need to get started.
We’re eager to see what these tools are capable of, and below are four trends we anticipate in the coming months and years:
From Content Creation to Content Curation
As AI continues to take on the bulk of content creation, more people will be inspired to distill, edit and provide commentary on existing content. Content creators will eventually be succeeded by content curators. Similarly, strategists, editors, and commentators will become the creative forces brands and media outlets seek as they strive to keep up with the demand for niche and personalized content.
Podcasting and video will also continue to reign since they provide authentic, undeniably human content built on connection and collaboration.
Still, employers will need people to operate and monitor AI writing tools, which will naturally position AI prompting, co-writing, and editing as core competencies for employees in communication fields. In the same way that SEO writing matured into a core competency, employers will expect their staff to upskill, and seek employees who can use AI writing tools effectively.
A Reinvigorated Emphasis on the Craft of Writing
It’s no secret that the line between writer, content creator, and a guy with a Twitter account has all but disappeared over the last 15 years. AI will exacerbate that issue by enabling people to publish under-developed work faster.
Fortunately, that will make fresh, high-quality content more valuable and easier to spot. We’ll see more recognition for human-derived work by way of badges next to author profiles—think the esteemed “verified” checkmark used on platforms like Spotify and Instagram. As these new hierarchies of quality become the norm, top-tier writers with the appropriate credentials will be celebrated simply by writing without the help of AI.
Though, as we continue to explore the power and potential of systems like ChatGPT, we should also remind ourselves of their limitations. For example, ChatGPT is branded as AI, but it’s actually a machine learning (ML) tool operating through algorithms that mimic human intelligence. While it’s mostly impressive, it’s not sentient—and it’s not going to replace human writers any time soon. However, writers should still be actively looking for ways to welcome its assistance in their work.
Marketers will Happily Delegate Information Gathering to Focus on Creativity and Strategy
With platforms claiming the ability to produce creative company names instantly, many marketers, brand builders and creatives understandably met the launch of ChatGPT with trepidation.
At first, it felt like a threat to the very nature of the creative process. If it were true that AI could produce original work in a fraction of the time, would naming specialists have any hope for a secure professional future? Fortunately, it only takes a few queries within ChatGPT for that fear to subside. The platform cannot yet replicate the art of persuasive copywriting or effective naming. Sure, it’s fast, but it’s not creative.
We, however, can take advantage of its superior productivity skills. As we well know, the brainstorming process begins with a clearing of the obvious or “bad” ideas. ChatGPT can help us surface and trash those ideas faster, freeing us to dig deeper, explore new avenues of inspiration and test unexpected executions. Essentially, we can build off what AI can deliver as a first step and springboard to something more distinctly human and original.
Apprehensive Publications will (Eventually) Come Around
Despite the current debate on whether to publish or recognize AI-assisted content in any capacity, eventually, we will award work partially written by AI.
Not convinced? Look at the self-publishing industry. Self-published books, articles, and essays were wholly regarded as less than for years. Self-published writers were pariahs because they didn’t jump through the same institutional hoops as the “real” writers before them. Once thousands of self-published writers found their audiences and made a living doing what they loved, criticism subsided. Public figures shared their work on sites like Medium. Global sensations like EL James (50 Shades of Grey) and Robert Kiyosaki (Rich Dad, Poor Dad) and even some of Margaret Atwood’s early works were self-published. Self-publishing became a welcome professional trajectory.
It’s of course ironic that with ChatGPT, self-publishing platforms are the ones playing gatekeepers. Medium, Amazon KDB, and Substack are among the publications that have shared formal statements regarding AI regulation, like this one from Data Science:
“We’re committed to publishing work by human authors only, and we don’t—and won’t—accept posts written in whole or in part by AI tools.”
Writers who respect the craft and want to see it upheld at their preferred publications will continue to push for better regulatory practices. Others will celebrate the new possibilities of AI-generated content, advocating for its necessity in today’s content-driven world. Medium is one such publication:
“We welcome the responsible use of AI-assistive technology on Medium. To promote transparency, and help set reader expectations, we require that any story created with AI assistance be clearly labeled as such.”
Over time, the passionate opposition to AI-assisted writing will fade, and we’ll find a place for it in the hierarchy of writing quality. Soon, AI-assisted writing will become as commonplace as publishing your debut novel on Amazon.
As AI writing tools like ChatGPT continue to mature, people will continue to explore its role in art, culture, content and communication. Though these tools currently present as many pitfalls as possibilities, in time we’ll find this technology will help us shift into a new era as writers, thinkers and collaborators.
