When long-standing market dynamics shift, many companies simply take cover to protect their interests. Others see – and seize – the opportunity to raise their game and compete more effectively.
One of the world’s largest providers of services to support life sciences research opted for the latter. The $25 billion company had built its business on serving the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies with products as well as services to support clinical trials. In recent years, however, emerging biotech companies had become a critical segment of the market – a segment with vastly different needs and concerns. At the same time, expectations of the customer experience were rising across the board.
The shift in market dynamics, and the impact of recent acquisitions, created new urgency behind elevating the customer experience. The company had traveled down this road before, but with limited success. Navigate was engaged to re-energize the leadership of the all-important clinical trials division to create a new long-term vision and a robust plan to transform the customer experience.
Navigate-led sessions with executive leaders, including several from a large, recently acquired business, began by leveraging human-centered design to arrive at a new understanding of how the customer experience might be transformed, and to define a common vision for success. Further ideation and solutioning led to identification of two core concepts which had the greatest potential to drive early improvements. Within days, the team had created a definitive roadmap, identifying corresponding phases, activities, work streams and timelines.
Together, the team had charted a clear course to a much-needed transformation by putting their customers’ needs and expectations – not the company’s products – at the center. In so doing, leadership gained new and valuable perspective on the business they had built, and the customers they would be serving into the future. As the division’s general manager remarked, “With Navigate, we achieved breakthrough thinking right from our first session.” With this first chapter complete, the division’s leaders were not simply motivated and equipped to launch this transformation journey: they had already begun to seize the opportunity to compete more effectively.
Together, the team had charted a clear course to a much-needed transformation by putting their customers’ needs and expectations – not the company’s products – at the center.
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