Background
Our client, a global and diversified B2B technology company, faced a predicament with its business in China. The overall market in China was growing rapidly with 40% growth in a single year, and our client’s business was also growing steadily. However, there were signs of slowing growth on the horizon. Moreover, the underlying technology was changing rapidly, and new competitors were entering the market on a regular basis—both local Chinese and global players. To compound this complexity, the industry’s two-step distribution system involved highly influential direct customers and very demanding end users, which led to ‘action by fire’ for our client. Our client needed to determine how to get a handle on the moving parts of this complexity and develop a cohesive strategy to drive sustained growth.
Action Plan
EMM Group helped the company develop its strategy for navigating this market through a rigorous approach that included secondary research, in-market interviews, and EMM Group’s proprietary Decision Accelerator™ methodology.
By partnering with the client, EMM Group:
- Built a market map which characterizes every potential area of economic activity at the project level, considering each customer group.
- Conducted voice of the customer interviews with global and local customers, direct customers, and end users, including various roles to validate and refine the market map.
- Developed value based segments that take into account project level customer priorities in light of the customer’s needs.
- Prioritized each segment based on current and future attractiveness and the ability for our client to compete.
- Worked with the local and regional commercial teams to develop and prioritize specific actions to drive growth in prioritized segments. These actions will directly impact both short-term performance (quick wins) and longer term, strategic initiatives.
Results
EMM Group was able to help the client:
- Understand the needs of the customers in the China market in a way that captures the complexities of the different value chains (competitors, direct customers, end users, global and local players).
- Identify and prioritize market segments for which our client could create unique and compelling value propositions and offers that took into account their specific needs. These needs included design engineering, end user influence on specification, technology, service, operational excellence, and cost.
- Create an action plan to outpace the market and defend its strong leadership position.
