From Unique Asset to Strategic Advantage: How Disney and Sedex Did It
We spoke with Sedex's product lead about how they found a customer problem to solve with their unique strenghts
š Hi! Quick update on the launch of the Continuous Upskilling program. Iām running a 30ā info session next Thursday (and another one in Spanish). Also, considering some valid requests, we introduced group discounts (you can get up to 40% off).
Many strategies come from a need to grow a existing product, or start by reviewing many opportunities to find the ideal ones. But what if we have a unique asset that we can leverage to create a strategic advantage? A recent example could be how Disney used their unique IP to create a winning streaming platform in an already competitive market.Ā
In this episode, Joe Jenvey from Sedex shared a more ādown to earthā example: using their unique supply chain data to create new value propositions for their customers.Ā
Joe explained (among many other topics that we covered) how they started from the business need and did a discovery process to understand the customer problem they could solve and how to solve it.
Listen now on Apple, Spotify, Google, and YouTube, and read on for my takeaways and highlights of the episode.
My takeaways from this episode
Joeās strategy story is quite interesting because it starts with a unique asset and tries to turn it into a strategic advantage: the vast amount of data and insights they can gather for their customers from their own supply chains.
The strategy itself started with a discovery process: how the customer may want to use this data. Customers already had a problem and were already solving it, so it was about understanding that need and finding a better way to solve it.Ā
The strategy was about listening to the business need and identifying a customer problem that, by solving it, will deliver not only value to the customer but also that business impact.Ā
Stakeholder management was critical during this process. Between the lines, Joe shared a successful way to handle it: 1. Using a āLean Canvasā as a visual model to generate shared understanding. 2. Coming up with a proposal based on evidence to debate. 3. Have a mix of people in a room to ensure every area has a say.
Joe synthesizes strategy with the lean canvas to provide a holistic view, articulating multiple aspects of the business and the product. They include the āsolutionā from the perspective of what the customer is trying to achieve.
They map all their opportunities in Miro and then create an impact vs. effort matrix to prioritize.Ā
They inform the strategy with a 3 to 5-year vision, accompanied by a north star they aim for.Ā
They work with a high-level roadmap, mainly focused on high-level ānextā and ālaterā timeframes, keeping flexibility for longer timeframes.Ā
For ongoing progress, they have 2-week discovery reviews with key stakeholders to see the discovery results and lean canvas updates. For more formal strategy reviews, they define key milestones where they present results and decisions all the way up to the CEO. It's good to split these groups of interest and level of information.Ā
A sound synthesis is critical because you need to balance either too much information and boring people or too little information and make them donāt believe in it. Furthermore, you will need to change that level of information depending on your audience.
Donāt miss any episodes! Subscribe to be notified when new episodes and articles are published.