# Business-critical for your customers
- URL: https://www.petrikajander.com/purpose-n-clarity/business-critical-for-your-customers/
- Author: Petri Kajander
- Date: 2022-12-26
- Language: en
- Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/7330d180/podcast/play/59380763/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fproduction%2Fexports%2F7330d180%2F59380763%2F0ad66da37dc8ab65b6e1b5e1d0c9f99d.m4a
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kzm4qGw7W4

How much sorrow and tears will your customers shed if you stop doing what you're doing at the moment?

## Transcript (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kzm4qGw7W4, YouTube's automatic captions)

[0:03] Welcome to business purpose and Clarity with patreon your host we talk about startup live insights practical tips mistakes failures and everything between how fundamental are you yeah big word what does it mean I mean how foundational are you for the company another big word doesn't mean anything yeah I know if you think about from the customer's perspective how replaceable are you how quickly devil does you over if they need to cut costs how quickly will they replace you if they need to do some changes how quickly will they remove you from the service bundle if somebody else gives a better offer this is what I mean it's not just that what we're going to talk about today we can also talk about more important question which is related to this one and as an outcome will come out of this question.

[1:09] And the question is what is it what are you aiming at what is the product doing what is the end you are really targeting to improve all soul and these are abstract things and at the moment I know you are probably confused I don't know what I'm talking about but it will come clear in a minute so bear with me you're optimizing some processes and let's say it's in a manufacturing segment sector so you have a bunch of machines and maybe there's even a factory and you want to optimize a lot of these things a lot of inbounding raw materials there's some stuff working safes there's a different inputs maybe electricity we're just getting more expensive maybe gas or something else you need for heating or whatever it is so there's a lot of variables a lot of stuff going on and you are part of that optimization in some shape or form with your software.

[2:13] Because usually it is software some kind of a Source product you're building for example what is it what do you do is the question customers are asking this is the crucial moment and is in the heart of your business do you say for example that we are making your processes more efficient we are saving your costs we are helping you to reduce the downtime or whatever it is what you're saying oh are you saying that our goal is to improve your profits our goal is to optimize your total process in a way that you can save costs and really hit your profit margins or Target revenues or the total efficiency in 11 weights run at its optimal level because how do you phrase the question what are they trying to achieve.

[3:16] Will actually Focus the effort you're gonna put in and I don't mean this in any philosophical sense I mean this the most concrete sense possible because if you Define it to yourself and and to your employees and everybody who's working in your company and building the product and selling and marketing and all those fancy things they will look it from that lens and they will optimize they will make it better in that framework so for example if you taking the metrics as some kind of input message like time or efficiency or megawatts or whatever it is and you want to improve them that's what you're getting as well better output megawatts or units like that from the customer's perspective is probably the production managers manufacturing plans managers chop to.

[4:22] Look those megawatts and whatnotes in the previous episode I was talking about being in a box and this is exactly the Box you're gonna you're gonna pay compared to the other Solutions who are providing better efficiency efficiency in a megawatt scale or can improve the maybe the Swift utilization or whatever downtime but that's all it is you're gonna talk to the CEO you usually kind of talk about it in the sea level in a megawatt outputs and whatnotes because that's not the level it's usually handled so if you want to be in a different box if you want to be more fundamental then you have to structure your business in a way that that's exactly what it is I'll give you an example how to do that for for example let's say that you want to improve the revenues for the company or the profits you convert everything.

[5:25] Into Euros if you're in a euro tone so even though you have megawatts even though you have hourly basis and you have shifts and you have a raw material inputs and then you have a maintenance issues you put up in your system in your software you put a price tag on those you measure them you sort of Unified in revenues for example or costs in so you see a total approach is about and money is the language which sea level people usually love to talk about this shifts the focus from this maybe sometimes sub-optimal or really good optimizations but they're not in the contextual level in a higher level which makes more sense and is more meaningful for example if you just optimize the working shifts in a factory but you don't take into account that the electricity is now like 10 times more expensive.

[6:28] So actually the labor is cheaper maybe you should have it in in three shifts instead of two or maybe you just need to shift everything to the night shift that kind of overview that kind of a bigger perspective comes relevant and important and significant only if you see it from that C Level does your software sub optimize something which needs to be optimized in a higher level or do you have a more fundamental more overview more bigger problem solving capability which makes you more foundational more difficult to replace more important and usually if you're more important to the customer you can also chat a bit maybe this doesn't change much in the product maybe it's just a point of view how you see things how you focus.

[7:30] But it might be the difference between positioning and in your profit margins that the other company is in your field are not doing so how foundational are.