Customer Value Analysis

I’m a bit cynical about “marketing-speak”, meaning the buzz words and phrases many of us use in business to communicate our company’s services and offerings. There are only so many words and phrases you can use to describe something and the skill is in describing it without sounding like your pushing it on someone.

At first, the phrase “Customer Value Analysis” can seem like another nicely packaged, over-valued service. The three words that make up this phrase are indeed important in and of themselves since they communicate the exact topics any firm would want to address.

So let’s take our marketing view off the phrase for a moment since the underlying concepts are powerful. Customer Value Analysis, or CVA, is a critical step in the life-cycle of any effort at the portfolio, program or project level in any organisation. CVA is the thing we all wish we did when we started the project, it is the thing we should have done all through the project and it is typically the one thing we neglect to do at the end.

In traditional change management systems and delivery methodologies you will always find boxes on the diagram that reference vision, feasibility, validation, test, measure and benefits. The gateways, checkpoints and stages in these processes were originally designed to quantify and ensure that there were some controls in place to move from phase to phase. These phases are all supported by specific artifacts, sign-offs and approvals.

But there is always a looming question, “what problem are we trying to solve?” The answer to that question is what drives CVA. It is the use of agile practices in a stakeholder forum that gets to the heart of answering the very questions that will determine the best course of action; questions like;

• What are the goals and objectives of this effort?
• Why are these the goals and objectives?
• How do we know that we are working on the right things in the right order?
• How will we know that we were successful?
• Who is accountable to drive any of this?

In recent months Lean Six Sigma has become another buzz phrase. The idea of taking the traditional DMAIC methodology from 3-5 months down to 3-5 weeks is predicated on the lean practices, which are nearly identical to the agile ones, in order to get to the root of the issues and objectives at the forefront and establish a heartbeat for the effort and the organisation that will allow monitoring across its lifecycle.

At emergn, CVA is in our DNA (acronym overkill…) and while the acronym and phrase appear marketing oriented, they represent the core reasons why it flows within everything we do for ourselves and clients.

• Customer – that is who we are here to serve
• Value -  the right currencies (time, money, share) that can be measured for the right reasons
• Analysis – the knowledge and validation to know why we are doing what we set out to do

The approach can be applied at any point in the life-cycle and not just the beginning, that is power of it and that is the thinking behind it. Lots to think about if you’re not able to answer the simplest questions.