Strategy Development

There are critical steps you must take to ensure long-term business success. First of all, you must develop a clear mission statement. Then, you must establish a set of high-level objectives. Finally, you need to determine the strategies necessary to meet those objectives. All of your key personnel must understand the overall vision and their part in achieving it.

We can help you fine-tune your existing strategy or develop an entirely new set of objectives and corresponding strategies to meet your corporate mission.

Working with key company executives, we typically follow a 4-step process to develop a Mission, Objectives, and Strategies (MOS) document.

Step 1 —Assess and prioritize corporate strengths and weaknesses.

Step 2 — Identify and evaluate core competencies and/or core capabilities.

Step 3 — Evaluate alternative business models and strategies.

Given an understanding of the company’s core competencies and capabilities, we then evaluate the various options the company might pursue to exploit them. This requires work by both Acuitize and the company with whom we are working, so that we may estimate a hierarchy of each business model alternative, in terms of revenue and profit potential. We will then use the resulting matrix to select the best alternative for the company to follow, given the availability of resources (human and financial).

Step 4 — Develop a preliminary MOS plan.

This is the key document for the company - it essentially is an actionable business plan.  It should succinctly capture all the important activities to be undertaken by the company within the next 12 to 18 months. It should be distributed to all employees so that everyone is working in the same direction. Furthermore, bonus plans should be tied to one or more of the objectives listed in the MOS.

Step 4 — Develop a preliminary MOS plan.

Prior to undertaking the acuitize customer research process we typically develop a preliminary MOS plan (becomes your actionable business plan).  This help our clients make decisions and effectively run their companies before we obtain the customer research results that become fundamental to the final MOS development.

Step 5 — Customer Interviews and Anaylsis

Acuitize has developed a proprietary and powerful process we use with almost all of our clients to research and understand your customers true requirements.  We train your people on the process and then we assist you with the initial interviews.  After we gain the information we use this acuitize process to identify the defining parameters critical to 10x products for your customers. 

Step 6 — Develop a final MOS Plan

This is the key document for the company - it essentially is an actionable business plan.  The fnal MOS starts from the preliminary version and is often dramatically changed as a result of the acuitize customer research process.  It should succinctly capture all the important activities to be undertaken by the company within the next 12 to 18 months. It should be distributed to all employees so that everyone is working in the same direction. Furthermore, bonus plans should be tied to one or more of the objectives listed in the MOS.

Product Development and Refinement

A company is only as strong as its people and its products. It is critical that you design your products to meet or exceed your customer’s needs. Kim Edwards, former Iomega CEO, expressed this simple concept so well: “Give your customers what they want, when they want it, and at a price they are willing to pay.” We at Acuitize uphold that belief.

Consumer Research

It’s a fact that most companies claim to pursue customer research. Our findings indicate that very few actually do. We believe that customer research is integral to business success, and we have a proven process that can help you understand your customers’ desires, and then develop the products that meet, and then exceed, their requirements.

Overall Usability

We find most (if not all) technology companies woefully inadequate in overall usability of their products and often their websites.  Dramatically improving usability is a fundamental method to dramatically increase your sales.  It is important to remember that tasks that are intuitive for your employee experts are often baffling for your customers. Eliminating this barrier for your customers will bring only positive results.  Your company’s Web site is one example of a marketing medium where customer usability is key (and absolutely critical if your website is your primary channel). 

The addition of John Dilworth, a world leading usability expert, to the acuitize team has dramatically improved our capabilities in this area.  With John and, if necessary, additional acuitize approved development and design resources we can redesign or otherwise greatly improve your installation, user interface, and/or Website flow on an independent, parallel basis. This allows us to implement new consumer-friendly designs without impacting your software development team during the process. This gives us the ability to implement changes, which will result in dramatic improvements in the quality of your Website and/or your software and/or hardware products (while making significant impacts to your bottom line).