VALUE AS A SERVICE: EMBRACING THE COMING DISRUPTION

Rob Bernshteyn, Chief Executive Officer and President of Coupa, gives a step-by-step manual for today’s business leaders on how they can better provide and measure the delivery of value to customers. The writer was driven by the desire to create dialog and industry about where things are going based on a lot of quantifiable successes, he alongside his group has generated in Coupa with their customers. The book summarizes the new standard brewing in business and examines how companies are gravitating offerings that offer a value to customers. Successfully delivering Value as an Agency requires a brand new sort of relationship between sellers and clients, one that’s results-based, as opposed to a transactional exchange of services and goods for money.

It is more of a partnership where both parties are permitted to support each other as well as hold each other responsible for achieving measurable results they have both agreed upon. Rob went further to explain regions of change which will be required for a business comprising of individuals with a different skill to offer value as a service. Given that change is difficult and any type of business transformation generally encounters change immunity and making this change is the hardest portion of transitioning to value as a service, the right leadership ability is required to lead the business through.

Among the key elements needed according to Rob is the leader needs to work to instill a set of core values that the full company will also ascribe to be willing to work with. Signing up for value starts from your first commitment to your prospects. They ought to get a feeling of the value clients are achieving utilizing your service. Sales discussions should focus not only on features and functions, product demonstrations or product benefits. Instead, they ought to start as authentic and receptive learning sessions about the customer’s strategic management, assets and needs. Rob describes one  Coupa strategy which has helped the organization sell value as a service.

He said, ”it is a policy from our business to sign a contract but to achieve an agreement on particular business success standards that we’ll work together to attain. In our line of business, a typical arrangement could be that together we’re going to save a hospital network $50 million on syringes, scrubs, bed linens, IT and maintenance and cut their order fulfillment and processing time by 60 percent. By working together to set these very specific, quantifiable goals, we’re already setting the tone for another type of relationship.” This effort has to be supported through an internal culture of value creation that is based on worker empowerment. In Value as a Service world, the two parties involved should remain focused on what they’re currently attempting to do together. This is where workers need the culture behind them. To get the best from your employees and clients, you want to create this culture.

And building this culture starts with clearly and frequently communicating the company values. Leadership should communicate them repeatedly until they’re tired of repeating them, and at that point, they should keep repeating them. To deliver Value as a Service, you should be able to put a greater burden of responsibility on staff members. That’s why they need a strong structure and culture supporting them. Skills are easy to learn, once you’ve made the mental shift. It’s the mind shift that delivers the value for both companies, and everyone involved.

Value as a service is an illumination of the future of business exchange, i.e. quantifiable value. You either provide it and compete or offer vague assurance, busy work and mere customers’ satisfaction on the road to irrelevance.  We no longer live in a world of product or services. Customers seek outcomes and brands promises is paramount. Value as a Service precisely highlights this shift to an outcome-based value approach and provides a roadmap on how to excel in a future of quantifiable value.

The Big Three – Key Points

Key point # 1: Leadership needs to work to instill a set of core values that the full company agrees to work with.

Key point #2: Good product and excellent customer service are no longer enough. Constant and never-ending enhancing your value are the key.

Key point #3: Value as a Service starts and ends with leadership.

One Last Thing

“What we need to do is always lean into the future; when the world changes around you and when it changes against you – what used to be a tail wind is now a headwind – you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn’t a strategy.” – Jeff Bezos