5 Methodologies that we use at Clarika to innovate

COVID 19 makes companies rethink their business model in this critical situation. Some companies are forced to innovate and adapt their business strategies.

Today, more than ever, it is a good idea to consider ways to accelerate digital transformation, especially for those who are not yet using digital platforms.

The moments of crisis are both an opportunity and the perfect moment to reinvent yourself and develop those business strategies that were not yet contemplated.

Leaving the comfort zone and adapting business models to a digital one can be the main solution to attract potential clients and keep in touch with current clients and keep on growing.

At Clarika, we use different tools and methodologies that help us in this process and allow us to reduce risk and adapt faster. We share with you five of them that we think will change the way you do business.

1. Design Thinking

It is a methodology to generate innovative ideas that focus its effectiveness on understanding and solving the real needs of people when they are considered as users of a product or customers of a company. The methodology is inspired by the way in which product designers work, so the objective when using it is to replicate how designers think. The main keys to using the Design Thinking methodology are:

• Empathy: develop the ability to put yourself in the client’s place, understand their problems, their needs and wishes.
• Define: clearly identifying which problem or problems to solve is essential at this stage.
• Create: select the ideas collected in the previous stage. No idea should be discarded and various creative methods such as brainstorming or mind mapping can be used, whichever strategy is best suited to a team.
• Prototyping: it can be a prototype of a product, a service, a strategy or whatever is being worked on. The important thing is to make an idea functional.
• Evaluate: at this stage, tests are carried out with the prototypes previously made and users are asked for their opinions and comments in this regard, based on the use of the prototypes.

2. Lean Startup

The Lean Startup provides a scientific approach to creating and managing startups and get the desired product to customers’ hands faster. The Lean Startup method teaches you how to drive a startup-how to steer, when to turn, and when to persevere and grow a business with maximum acceleration. It is a principled approach to new product development.

A core component of the Lean Startup methodology is the build-measure-learn feedback loop. The first step is figuring out the problem that needs to be solved and then developing a minimum viable product (MVP) to begin the process of learning as quickly as possible. Once the MVP is established, a startup can work on tuning the engine. This will involve measurement and learning and must include actionable metrics that can demonstrate cause and effect question.

The objective is to reduce the risk of the launch of new products and services. The key is to learn from the client and the faster and cheaper the better.

3. Business Model Canvas

Business Model Canvas is a useful system to define the business model and ask the necessary questions.

It is a great tool to help you understand a business model in a straightforward, structured way. Using this canvas will lead to insights about the customers you serve, what value propositions are offered through what channels, and how your company makes money.

There are nine building blocks:

1. Customer segments: list the top three segments. Look for the segments that provide the most revenue.
2. Value proposition: what are your products and services? What is the job you get done for your customer?
3. Revenue streams: list your top three revenue streams. If you do things for free, add them here too.
4. Channels: how do you communicate with your customer? How do you deliver the value proposition?
5. Customer relationships: how does this show up and how do you maintain the relationship?.
6. Key activities: what do you do every day to run your business model?.
7. Key resources: the people, knowledge, means, and money you need to run your business.
8. Key partners: list the partners that you can’t do business without (not suppliers).
9. Cost structure: list your top costs by looking at activities and resources.

4. Value Proposition Canvas

At the heart of every strong business model is a compelling Value Proposition.

These are the powerful forces that drive our customers’ behavior, and they probably aren’t obvious at first.

If we can understand what our customers are really looking for, we can design new offers that will delight them, and speak their language in our advertising.

Without a compelling offer, even the best products and services get overlooked.

The Value Proposition Canvas is formed around two building blocks — customer profile and a company’s value proposition.

Customer Profile

• Gains: the benefits which the customer expects and needs,
• Pains: the negative experiences, emotions, and risks that the customer experiences in the process of getting the job done.
• Customer jobs: the functional, social, and emotional tasks customers are trying to perform, problems they are trying to solve, and needs they wish to satisfy.

A customer profile should be created for each customer segment, as each segment has distinct gains, pains, and jobs.

Value Proposition Map

• Gain creators: how the product or service creates customer gains and how it offers added value to the customer.
• Pain relievers: a description of exactly how the product or service alleviates customer pains.
• Products and services: the products and services which create gain and relieve pain, and which underpin the creation of value for the customer.

5. Agile

Agile is the ability to create and respond to change. It is a way of dealing with, and ultimately succeeding in, an uncertain and turbulent environment.

It’s really about thinking through how you can understand what’s going on in the environment that you’re in today, identify what uncertainty you’re facing, and figure out how you can adapt to that as you go along.

Agile software development is an umbrella term for a set of frameworks and practices such as Scrum, test-driven development, extreme programming, kanban, among others.

One thing that separates Agile from other approaches to software development is the focus on the people doing the work and how they work together. Solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams utilizing the appropriate practices for their context.

If you extend the idea of Agile as a mindset, then people seeking Business Agility ask themselves, “How might we structure and operate our organization in a way that allows us to create and respond to change and deal with uncertainty?”

You might say that business agility is a recognition that in order for people in an organization to operate with an Agile mindset, the entire organization needs to support that mindset. Agile software development was never truly Agile until the organization changed its structure and operations to work in an uncertain environment.

Learn more about this methodology and how we implement it in our .Net development outsourcing.

Conclusion

These digital transformation processes need to be reviewed periodically in order to adapt them to the needs of the industry in which your company is developing.

Today, more than ever, we believe that recessions, as we are experiencing right now, are accelerators of innovation. For this reason, companies that innovate will be successful and be able to adapt faster.

It is time to face a structural change in organizations and give technology a central strategic role.

At Clarika, we believe that this transformation will allow your company to improve performance, increase reach, and guarantee better results.

Contact us to be your strategic partner and accompany your business all the way. We have a trained team ready to help you!

Originally published at https://clarikagroup.com on April 21, 2020.