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When Richard Affleck, Managing Director of Boaters, a Bedfordshire-based coffee distributor, began to explore an opportunity to expand the business internationally, he unleashed a process of change that transformed the company’s marketing strategy, brought renewed vigour into its relationships with its clients and improved sales.
Much of this change impetus was due to the company’s work with ValueMapping, an innovative management tool that Boaters senior management has been using since the middle of 2002.
Boaters is a leading manufacturer of own label and branded flavoured coffees in the UK, selling to a range of small and medium sized companies, as well as some of the bigger household names. During 2002, Affleck became increasingly interested in the prospect of selling Boaters coffee internationally, attracted by the opportunities found through research in markets where flavoured coffee was not widely available.
Affleck was keen to take advantage of the opportunities in the international market, but he was also very aware of the risks of committing substantial resources to new opportunities.
“I wanted to use our existing resources, rather than take on new staff, which could have undermined the profitability of the market opportunity,” he says. “I have never pursued growth just for its own sake--my goal has always been to focus on growing profits. I knew that we needed to make better use of our resources, to work smarter, in order to grow profitably.”
Affleck began to use ValueMapping, on the advice of John Adam, a business advisor with Business Link, Bedfordshire and Luton. “I decided to try out Value Mapping because of our respect for John and Business Link. They have such deep experience—and they know that my time is precious, that I am looking for results,” says Affleck.
John Adam was confident that the ValueMapping approach would help Boaters achieve their goal of working smarter, due to his experience with other companies in the region using ValueMapping.
“ValueMapping allows managers to bring a laser focus to the key areas of the business which really add value.” he says. “It is no secret that time is a manager’s scarcest resource. ValueMapping allows managers to work smarter by making it clear where to target energy and time to create the biggest impact, to grow and increase value.”
ValueMapping was created by Andrew Jack, a former consultant, as he was dissatisfied with the tools available to help managers of small and medium sized businesses. “I wanted to develop a tool that would help managers map the way forward for their business in a way that actually meant something to them--that reflected the needs of their own companies and stakeholders, unlike a lot of “off the shelf” tools and models that were available,” he says.
The core framework underlying ValueMapping has been refined with more than 100 companies over 5 years. The development of the ValueMapping process has been supported by the Small Business Service (SBS), and in 2003, ValueMapping was made available on the SBS intranet system to be used by SBS/Business Link consultants.
For Boaters senior management, the results of the ValueMapping approach were almost immediate. “ValueMapping enabled us to identify the areas of the business where we needed to focus to have the biggest impact on our growth,” says Affleck. “It really helped bring opportunities into focus and grade them in terms of importance.”
This is one the key attractions of the ValueMapping process, according to John Adam. “ValueMapping uses a powerful but simple technique to assess the impact of different possible strategies within a business. It allows you to evaluate strategies in terms of ease, opportunity and impact. In my 20 years experience as a consultant, I have never seen a tool which enables companies to achieve positive change so quickly.”
The ValueMapping process is structured around facilitated workshops where senior managers identify the needs of the various stakeholders in the company, key business goals and value drivers. The process enables managers to develop effective strategies and action plans and then ensures that these strategies and plans happen. And managers can visually map, track, and adapt the company’s strategy and plans over time using the ValueMapping computer programme.
Some of the results of the ValueMapping process surprised Richard Affleck. “We realized that we were trying to forge ahead with large customers that we thought would be profitable but were in fact very time consuming and much less profitable with their demands for discounts. And we also discovered we were neglecting the most profitable part of our customer base.”
These insights led Affleck to change the company’s marketing strategy. “We have literally redefined our approach to 100s of smaller customers. We have changed our style to “Boaters fast and friendly” and have recruited new staff to service them. And we are already seeing the benefits flow through to the bottom line,” Affleck explains.
Boaters’ success with ValueMapping led Paradigm Audio Visual (Paradigm), another Bedfordshire company to use ValueMapping the approach.
Paradigm is the market leader in the provision of high performance rear projection screens within the UK–nearly all the Footsie 100 companies use their products in the boardroom. At the time, senior management was looking for a way to really hone the company’s marketing strategy to grow the business and was attracted by ValueMapping.
“We knew we wanted to grow the business and we had a lot of ideas,” says Paul Wood, a director of Paradigm. “We needed, however, to really prioritize our efforts and this is where ValueMapping was a very powerful solution. It uses a structured process that forces you to do some really hard thinking. It becomes pretty clear whether your pet ideas stack up,” he adds.
The ValueMapping process played a central role in enabling Paradigm to raise money from the DTI to expand the business. “The DTI decided to support us as a result of our deep understanding of our market niche and our clients needs. And ValueMapping™ was crucial in enabling us to achieve this in depth understanding,” says Paul Wood.
Andrew Jack attributes much of ValueMapping’s success to the fact that it connects actions and goals. “As a consultant, I often saw that good ideas were not getting implemented. ValueMapping enables managers to develop a clear action plan to get things done, and provides clear performance measures that track progress to achieving these goals whether its to define a strategy for the business, delegate responsibility to middle management, or find new clients.”
On the basis of the results achieved with more then a dozen companies throughout the UK, ValueMapping has proven itself as a powerful tool that helps managers bring a smarter, more focused approach to their business. And with an increasing number of consultants across the UK to begin working with ValueMapping over the coming months, we can expect to hear a lot more about this innovative new management tool.
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