Finding advantages in a general recession can be a challenge, especially in the agriculture and food industry. A novel strategy that has helped individual companies in an industry under stress is to go on the strategic offensive and collaborate to focus on the customer.

 

Further strategic segmentation of customer portfolios provides innumerable opportunities, especially given that your customers’ needs vary from location to location.

 

A recent holiday message, “Are you ready and able to act?” reminds one that each business serves a customer, but are they ready to provide value to that customer?

 

One of the strategies is to align your supply chain strategically to innovate and provide value. It is difficult to pull off new growth that innovation can bring if you are not ready or don’t know if a new opportunity will suite or hinder your business or your supply chain.

 

Through successful collaboration, you can do the job dramatically better to solve problems that are not being done by your competitors. What is often missing is the road map that enables you to be ready to act.

 

Participants in the “Customer Focused Collaboration, mastering value chain implementation” program look at creating a customer value proposition that will fulfill an important job or need for their value chain’s customers better than the competitor. They examine what opportunities exist that satisfy ‘a real’ customer who needs a job done. 

 

The next step is to develop a plan on how your chain will fulfill the opportunity at a profit. To be able to do this, you have to review your existing strategy. What can you change to capture this new opportunity? 

 

Then comes the identification of the resources and competencies (skills) you already have available. These include capacity, structure and the assets available to manage the plan in a collaborative effort. If you are ready, then you can act together to design the offering and provide different customer segments with value.