What is your company famous for? It is a key question that any business leader should be able to answer about their company. For that matter any employee or customer should be able to answer this. Getting to that stage though can be tricky for cloud companies. They need to match the right strengths with the right market. Knowing your strengths and market fit will ensure you invest in, and shout about, the right business superpower.
Why knowing your superpower is important.
Knowing what your superpower is will give you a focus to build and grow your cloud business on. There is a lot of opportunity in the cloud service market, but also a lot of competition. It won’t be possible to compete well on all fronts and therefore focusing your strengths on the right places will drive bigger growth.
Starting with a narrower focus, based on your core strengths, allows you to make a bigger impact in a better-defined market. It will help you to differentiate your value giving you a good competitive edge. Once you have identified your superpower it can be the basis of your service roadmap and it will align your teams around a common vision.
Reviewing market potential is important when defining your superpower
It may seem obvious but ensuring there is a market for your defined superpower is crucial. It could be tempting to think that if you build it, they will come, however this is rare. Additionally in these cases there is already an untapped market ready to be activated. For example, many may believe that the likes of Tesla, Uber, Airbnb created new markets and categories for their products. These companies are held up as examples of disruptors and market creators however their successes all lie in understanding their strengths and market fit ahead of others. They saw problems and opportunities in existing markets and understood how their strengths could solve this in a new way.
Regardless of the level of disruption you are aiming to impart on the cloud service market success will come down to defining your superpower and ensuring potential market fit.
When looking at the market potential there are some key areas you should consider.
Current customer base.
Review your current customer data. This can give indications of changes in your customer base, their demands etc that can indicate future market potential. Or perhaps there is existing demand from your wider customer base you haven’t explored that would allow you to grow the value of each customer.
Current market demand.
Look at the existing demand in the wider market. You will need to consider what the unreached demand is you’re your key service strengths. If you already have a strong market share, then considering how you evolve this will be key.
Market trends to indicate future demand.
Understanding the whole market and where it is moving, or how it could move is where you can truly disrupt. If you can evolve based on your defined superpower and be used in unimagined, but highly useful ways, then this will allow you grow.
If you consider the market potential and there isn’t room for growth, then regardless of how strong your cloud company superpower is now you will need to evolve.
The constant need to review and evolve your cloud business.
This is the importance of ensuing you combine the market demands to your strengths. That isn’t to say if there is a limit on the current market you should be concerned. This is where innovation and a deep assessment of your strengths is needed.
To evolve your offering dig into your strengths. Why have you identified one service or specialism as your key superpower? Is it history, internal skills, or a niche in the market? By pulling this apart and getting to the core of your power you can then build on this. If you approach this challenge with an innovative mindset, you will be able to create new services and redefine your superpower with strong market fit for today and tomorrow.
As a result of Covid-19 many businesses had to change their model to adapt to a new world. Those that understood their true superpowers and the new markets could respond quickly. For example, Home Depot switched their focus to home DIY and away from commercial trade, Exact Sciences (a cancer screening and diagnostics) company started to offer Covid testing. Both companies knew their strengths, whether that was quality products or key skills and infrastructure, that allowed them to pivot.
SyncOrg were among these businesses. With our services traditionally reliant on travelling into our partners’ offices we had to pivot quickly to run our programs virtually. We understood our strengths lay in our expertise & our structured approach. This allowed us to build new programs from the existing structure and to move to a virtual way of running our programs. From here we have been helping to support even more partners through 2021 and 2022.