Companies today need to develop a high performance culture to ensure their value is market-driven, compelling to customers, differentiated, sustainable and effectively enabled for sales, resulting in revenue growth. By implementing a value-add market planning process, one can become more knowledgeable about the marketplace, customers requirements, competitors and the competitiveness of your capabilities.

Among the business lessons and rules learned over the years is that the customer really does rule. This was learned in the context of understanding that there are a finite number of sources of actual, hard cash for a business. Among the alternatives are:

Strategy involves gaining continuous insights on the external market, creating innovative alternatives, developing a business design and ensuring the executability of that design by orchestrating and developing the organization’s capabilities. It is not principally about creating a document or following a planning calendar, although both play a role.