Client Services
For some of our clients our work has led to sharp turns in strategy or dramatic internal reorganizations. For others, efforts have focused on targeted or incremental change. We always emphasize long-term problem solving over quick fixes, which is why 80% of our projects are repeat business and some clients have been with us since the beginning.
Creating a business strategy and a clear direction
- Establishing a viable commercial direction
- Creating a strategy and process for innovation
- Revitalizing existing strategies
- Providing perspective and identifying new opportunities and business implications for new markets and potential customers
- Simplifying existing portfolios of products and services
- Creating a digital strategy that blends with a traditional one
Developing new business opportunities
- Developing new business concepts
- Finding gaps and business opportunities in the market that no one is leveraging
- Mapping organic growth opportunities
- Analyzing customers to better target unrealized needs
- Developing intelligent services to complement products
- Structuring research to move fluidly from concept to prototype
- Finding the right cultural fit for acquisitions
- Identifying natural adjacencies for M&As
Improving the customer experience
- Developing and sharpening customer segmentation in discrete markets
- Deepening the understanding of the customer
- Mapping the customer experience
- Identifying customer needs
- Developing products and services around customer needs
- Grooming new customer relationships
Building a capability for innovation
- Developing a corporate mindset for long-term innovation
- Building awareness of product vs. service innovation
- Creating innovation programs suited to a company’s hierarchy
- Organizing and implementing innovation programs internally
- Building the capacity for developing practical insights about customers
- Creating a fruitful process and environment for new ideas
Unsure of their once-solid roles, major technology and telecom players are struggling to figure out how to differentiate in a crowded marketplace, to engage new clients while holding on to old ones, and to monetize their products and services. In a fast-moving market being ahead of the curve is critical to product development—that means having a point of view about the future and following it through.
The compass is the consumer: We learn how consumers actually use the multifarious tools and platforms in their daily lives so we can help companies be judicious about investing in alliances and in developing services and technologies. We’re adept at helping companies find a path despite often conflicting messages consumers send out about the technologies and services they want—as people get caught up in trends or ideas it’s up to us to figure out how technology can streamline people’s daily lives and give them more precise ways to interact with the people they care about.
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Clients in this industry
- Deutsche Telekom Laboratories
- Intel
- Orange
- Samsung
- Swisscom
- T-Mobile
- TDC
- Verecloud
- Vodafone
- Intel
- Samsung
Companies are struggling to create relevant digital content for a new generation of information-addicted, socially driven, and advertising-averse users—while holding onto their traditional audience. While traditional companies look for new business models, web and social startups are proliferating. And while entertainment and publishing companies pursue eyeballs and growth at all costs, the transition to digital—and digital advertising—has been anything but intuitive.
The companies that succeed will be those that invest in getting to know their customers better in order to build new revenue streams—especially in the digital arena. We’re expert at helping media companies understand consumers read and process information so those companies provide richer, more portable content and the new kinds of services consumers want. We’ve directed our clients to enable consumers’ participation in personalizing that content—the right solutions will enfranchise users enough that they’ll pay for the content they appreciate.
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Clients in this industry
- Bertelsmann
- Egmont
- Gruner+Jahr
- Koda
- Nordisk Film
- Sanoma
As globalism opens up markets it produces bigger and more nimble competitors, which forces companies to rethink their strategies and to innovate more aggressively. Creating new markets or pursuing not just B2B but also consumers are issues for companies who want a foothold in global markets and who want to get in emerging markets early with sustainable technologies.
A good deal of innovation happens around creating a relationship with the consumer—as we spend time understanding his or her values we’re able to advise companies to develop more products and choices that target those values. Learning how people feel about the world around them helps us get consumers more emotionally invested in the company and its products. That emotional and ethical connection deepens with a solid customer service backbone—we guide companies to create meaningful and hassle-free user experiences that simplify people’s lives and make it easier to make decisions about investments.
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As markets have flatlined over the past few years, trends in buying have belied the old adage that “supply creates its own demand.” The proliferation of house brands, non-traditional advertising, and at-all-costs sustainability are changing the way consumer goods are made and sold. In short, the market demands a better product—much better. It also demands more alignment between physical and digital products.
In developing digital strategies we stick to the characteristics that define the consumer to ensure that digital evolves naturally from the brand. We’re good at understanding what sells on shelves because we work hard to understand why it sells; behavior drives purchasing, whether in consumer or B2B markets. Granular, nuanced knowledge of what customers need and appreciate is a matter of shelf-life or death: The most successful products we’ve prototyped have been delivered to market with spearing accuracy. Those products were successful because our clients realized they needed to understand customers in a much deeper way than before in order to be truly competitive.
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Electronic records, digital devices, data sharing, and telemedicine are all initiatives the healthcare industry developed in response to the need to simplify the process of collecting and distributing medical information and advice. And while healthcare has advanced technologically it has hit a wall—what has been left behind is a deeper understanding of patients.
We’ve studied the realities of how patients manage medication, devices, and bureaucracy and have made huge strides showing how their on-the-ground responses can and should affect what hospitals buy, how doctors work with patients, and what experts prescribe—and in turn how health-care systems are shaped. By spending long stretches of time with patients we discovered problems that impact product development and have tracked what works when communicating with and marketing to patients and healthcare professionals. Bridging the communication gap between healthcare professionals, patients, providers, and manufacturers ensures an insulated feedback loop; the benefit is livable treatments and reduced costs.
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Clients in this industry
- Abbott International
- BK Medical
- Coloplast
- LEO Pharma
- Oticon
- Coloplast
An era of cost-cutting coupled with diminishing financial and natural resources and a push for long-term energy, technology, and infrastructure investments have forced governments—and the NGOs that fill in the gaps—to be more strategic. Governments are tasked with figuring out an IT plan that will enable them to cut waste by moving service fulfillment and communication online and streamlining healthcare through digitization of records. Citizens, now better informed, have put the onus on governments and NGOs to create better services while also providing more transparency and accountability.
Globalization, which has brought more competition into the fray, has been a major force in getting governments and organizations to take a hard look at themselves. We increased productivity among government employees by helping people get motivated to work harder. We also developed responses to dramatic changes in demographics as migration to cities and growing ethnic populations put a greater strain on resources. And we stepped in when those changes demanded better solutions—we shepherded the Danish government through the Mohammad cartoon fracas and helped Realdania and the Bjarke Ingels Group envision an urban renewal project to create not just housing but to improve the quality of life in communities.
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Clients in this industry
- City of Copenhagen
- Danish Business Research Academy (DEA)
- Danish Ministry of Economic and Business Affairs
- Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- Greenland Home Rule
- Movia
- Realdania Foundation
- Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs